THE EDITOR, Sir:

ITS LONG experience in the field enabled the International Jamaica Council of Human Rights to see through the apparent concession by the prime minister in reducing the proposed detention period from 28 days to three days.

The prime minister needs to be reminded that for over 40 years, the police have been regularly detaining persons for periods in excess of three days, albeit illegally.

Chastise the cops

The fact that a minute handful of persons had the know-how and wherewithal to challenge the legality and constitutionality of this practice provided no comfort to the many who were subjected to it without redress. Nor was its illegality any consolation to them, as the powers-that-be and the society as a whole condoned it. No policeman has ever been disciplined or even chastised for unlawfully and oppressively detaining a suspect, innocent or guilty.

What possible benefit can it be to the effort to reduce rampant criminality by seeking to legitimise an oppressive practice which itself has contributed to the antisocial attitudes of many of our inner-city youths? The truth is that the police can only do so much in reducing the vicious antisocial behaviour being perpetrated by the cold-hearted products of an uncaring society. Whatever they do, it will run its course.

Help in fairness

What we can do is to strengthen the police's capacity to investigate and prosecute these criminals, at the same time insisting on their scrupulous fairness and profes-sionalism in doing so. This must accompany urgent measures being taken to alleviate the appalling social and economic conditions which are mainly responsible for producing these monsters.

Sops to public anxiety, such as the proposals for increasing the period of detention of suspects and proscribing the discretion of our judges in relation to bail, will hinder rather than help the anti-crime effort.

I am, etc.,

DENNIS DALY

Daly Thwaites and Company