Horace Levy, ContributorPUT SECURITY force buffer zones in the 14 or 15 violence-hit communities in the Kingston Metropolitan Area and Spanish Town for four to six months. This is what, for half that time, sobered the situation in August Town. It is the strategy quieting Jacques Road in Mountain View, implemented by the police high command as soon as it was received from the community council. Extend the approach and the homicides will drop by half at least.
Of course, this will require 500-600 police and military personnel. It means money. But is this beyond the capability of the state? Does this Government want to stop the bloodletting? This is what everyone is asking. Are there police and military in desk jobs that civilians could do? Or other jobs that private security personnel could temporarily be seconded into? Emergency measures, with all due respect for rights, are called for! This is not to criticise current police efforts but to build on them.
This would be just step one, achieving only a ceasefire. It would provide the calm for immediately implementing step two.
This is to put teams of five to 10 social workers in each community in each team, two or three professionals guiding a number of less trained but willing and able staff, especially from the communities, as also from tertiary-level trainees.
With the lower suggested number for a start, we are talking about 75 persons, not really that costly. Is this not possible? The social workers are needed to counsel parents and guardians not to punish children excessively, which they react against with their own violence, a common cause of much of our present problems. The workers would counsel difficult children, relate to schools, deal with community treatment of HIV/AIDS cases.
DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES ESSENTIAL
To turn a ceasefire into sustainable peace, development initiatives would be essential. The social workers would link the community to state and NGO agencies providing various services in sport, culture, training, own-account enterprises and employment otherwise. They would help youth organise clubs, and citizens area associations.
This is crucial, considering that the Social Development Commission (SDC) has been depleted of the resources to carry out its community organising tasks. In addition, responsibility for youth 50-60 per cent of whom are the chief perpetrators and victims of homicidal violence was transferred five years ago from the SDC to the National Centre for Youth Development, which itself, however, lacks human resources. Community youth sport was chopped three years ago from the portfolio of the Institute of Sport. These new forms of social exclusion, on top of all the others, over decades, are spurring the escalation in violence.
The state must take the initiative here, at least by contracting a competent NGO or other institution. The Peace Management Initiative has not been given the resources for this it has three field and one office staff nor even (some believe) the mandate.
Step three is an effective clearing house for state, NGO and private sector inputs in the troubled areas. Some coordinating effort exists at Jamaica House but, perhaps lacking resources, it is ineffective. The 'tsar' proposed by Father Richard Albert some time ago might be one answer.
CLEARING HOUSE
A clearing house, however, would not impose a new structure. It would first inform, invite, facilitate; inform of the doings, possibilities and needs in the hot spots where those agencies are already making inputs but ignorant of what others are doing or those wanting to come in; invite others from the private and NGO sectors; suggest cooperation, facilitate interaction, among those on the ground; and only then, direct state resources to fill the gaps. The effect should be an assault on the violence that is more focused than what we currently see.
The foregoing is just one facet of a solution to the 'problem' of violence in Jamaica. Much much more remains to be said on forging the energising vision, the just society and the true peace that we all so want and that is possible.
Horace Levy is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work, University of the West Indies.
