Taming the crime beast

Some of the bloodthirsty criminals have decided that pumping shots into people's, including women's, heads is too compassionate. So they are now taking people from their beds, lining them up and slashing their throats after applying multiple stab wounds to their bodies. Those victims have no human rights to a non-agonising death.

The dreaded Stinger gang which controls Maxfield has decreed that no more visitors - whether outside missionaries, social do-gooders or lecherous uptown men looking for the legendary "gal from Maxfield"- must come to the community unless given explicit permission from the overlords of the community. "De man dem seh dem nuh want no strange face ina dem community cause them a informer," reported the STAR last Thursday. Those community people don't have the human right of association. That human right belongs to their betters in non-garrisoned, gated residencies uptown.

Meanwhile, another afternoon paper reports that Black Roses corner is heating up again with another murder last week after a long cessation of violence. The criminals and terrorists are not worried about a thing. No speech from any minister of national security scares them; no new statement from any civil society group expressing alarm, shock and disgust over the galloping crime wave frightens them, and The Gleaner's front-page attention to their activities only, in their eyes, celebrate them. The criminals know they are safe.

While we in civil society continue to shout at one another about human rights, police corruption and police killings, they are working hard at their craft, the fruits of which they are getting front-page publicity for. The prime minister raised some critical and fundamental points of debate in his Budget speech, but because he didn't announce a slew of new initiatives, he was deemed to have said nothing worth reporting on crime. But I still maintain that the philosophical issues he raised are paramount for a serious discourse on crime and violence in Jamaica.

Referring to "the emergence of terrorism," the prime minister said, "When the security of the state is in danger, ordinary measures cannot be relied on to protect it." There are those who fundamentally and profoundly disagree with this assessment and we need to have a dialogue for that. It is a dialogue which has been taking place in the United States, Britain and Canada, particularly and one on which continental Europeans have generally taken a more liberal stance.

"Crime-fighting strategies must be appropriate to the crime that has to be fought," the prime minister said correctly in his Budget presentation. "For too long, we have allowed criminals to test our will and test our willingness to destroy theirs." One of the problems we have had in this country is that when one begins to talk about tough, hard measures to tackle crime, one is usually dismissed as making a "panic reaction" and for reaching for the "tried and failed" method of "brutalising poor, ghetto youth" rather than "focusing on the underlying causes of crime" - much of which should be laid at the feet of the very politicians who are instituting these tough crime measures.

Gaping imbalance

There is usually a gaping imbalance and myopia in how crime issues are discussed. A binary, either - or mentality usually suffocates and stymies the debate. What is particularly delightful about Professor Anthony Harriott's 2009 GraceKennedy Foundation lecture is the comprehensiveness and balance which he brings to his analysis. It is a must-read for those who wish to understand the local crime problem, and especially those who deem themselves too busy to read his books.

Harriott dismisses binary thinking on crime fighting by stating that "putting law enforcement at the core does not exclude coordinated social crime-prevention programmes". While he freely acknowledges that socio-economic and indeed political problems give rise to crime, he says, significantly, that "policy must respond to the present, not the situation at an earlier stage. Social crime prevention may not always be the lead element".

In fact, Harriott demonstrates that often social-intervention programmes strengthen the power of dons who get or direct contracts in the communities. Even NGOs have to reckon with "community leaders" and in some instances don't dare disregard them if they hope to assist those communities.

Hear Professor Harriott, our most esteemed criminologist in that GraceKennedy Foundation lecture: "To have the same solutions regardless of context and the changing character of the problem suggests ideological closure, a terrible lack of imagination or both." Those who push just social-intervention programmes, adopt a purely social justice model of crime fighting or take a human-rights fundamentalist approach to elevate ideology over pragmatic engagement and propose "solutions" which fail to deal with our immediate challenge.

If the state is threatened because of terrorist violence, then the human rights of everyone are imperiled. Yes, it is not the state which confers human rights; human rights inheres in individuals, according to one liberal tradition.(Though strictly and philosophically, this doctrine of human rights comes from natural rights doctrine which has a theological base historically. But that's another issue.) Talking about the primacy of civil liberties for individuals when the state is collapsing is to talk nonsense: When the state collapses, the human rights of everyone are threatened unless we all accept Bakuninian anarchism.

Liberal democratic theory does not privilege atomistic rights when the collective is endangered. We need a full debate on these philosophical issues for we keep making major assumptions and mask unstated presuppositions which skew our conclusions. If we determine that the kind of criminal violence which we are seeing in Jamaica is akin to terrorism, we cannot use ordinary measures to deal with it.

And in our context of garrison politics, organised narco-crime, with its international links, and the culture of violence which pervades, some of the normal things which would be expected to work can't. For example, social-intervention programmes don't necessarily reduce criminality. There is empirical evidence in Jamaica to demonstrate that.

And there have been far greater social-intervention programmes initiated here than many people realise. Despite unjustified, sensational and baseless Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) propaganda while in Opposition, the People's National Party (PNP) actually did very commendable work in social interventionism and implemented far-reaching crime-fighting strategies.

Major initiatives were made in justice reform, for example. Indeed, a lot of the crime-fighting strategies being carried out by the present JLP Government are leftovers from the PNP administration. Our silly partisanship prevents us from acknowledging what has been achieved over the years. But total solutions continue to elude us because we don't have national - not just bipartisan - consensus on crime fighting, as the prime minister rightly said.

Double police force

My colleague Martin Henry last week called for a doubling of the police force and I support that call. But that would not necessarily take us further down the road of a solution, you had better understand, Martin. Professor Harriott in his lecture provided hard empirical data from other Caribbean territories and even here in Jamaica to demonstrate that increased police strength is not a sufficient condition for improved effectiveness in tackling crime.

Then what about the vaunted increased use of sophisticated technology? Harriott again: "Technology has its limits. The experiences of the wealthy countries suggest that high police density and the application of advanced technologies to policing are not sufficient to make policing effective". So in talking solutions, you can't just talk about social interventions, justice reform, increased police numbers, use of sophisticated technologies - and certainly not just hard policing and tough measures. An integrated approach has to be taken even if at times one stream of solutions has to take precedence. (For example, hard, tough policing to act as a deterrent to hardened criminals and dons.)

I have read a number of the crime reports and studies published in Jamaica. I attest that they are excellent, encyclopaedic and erudite. They don't leave anything out. Believe me, we know the issues - and the answers too. We just need the consensus to apply them. But because we are such a partisan, tribalistic and low-trust society, solutions continue to elude us. This is the fundamental issue. The consensus issue the prime minister raised in his Budget speech is the most pressing issue. In the immediate, we must find a way to pass the Government's anti-crime bills, even with amendments.

This society has to decide what message it is going to send to criminal gangsters. Then it has to set about working on a set of integrated programmes to deal with our medium- to long-term solutions.

The issue of corruption in the police force, the appalling lack of trust between police and citizens; the arrogant and irresponsible use of power by members of the police force; our dysfunctional family life patterns and irresponsible sexual attitudes, underlying socio-economic problems and injustices are among those which have to be dealt with in the medium to long term. De-garrisonisation has to be fast-tracked.

There are two institutional recommendations of that excellent MacMillan Report which would go a far way. One is for the establishment of an executive agency under the Office of the Prime Minister "with cross-cutting authority" that would "bring the various actors inside and outside Government together for collaborative action and to mobilise resources both locally and internationally".

I agree with the report: "Coordination of the various agencies is a necessary condition of for successful results". That coordinating agency does not have to be large but must have the clout and kick-butt authority of the prime minister. There was also the recommendation for a National Council for Community Transformation which would co-ordinate efforts toward addressing "the vexing economic and special problems that give rise to crime and violence; reconstruct the fractured relationship between Government and civil society and strengthen capacity toward meeting the United Nations Millennium Development goals."

We need an integrated approach to crime fighting, combining hard, tough measures with the critical and necessary soft measures, without which there can be no sustainable attack on crime. An integrated approach led at this stage by tough deterrence is what I recommend to tame this monster of crime. Do you have any better suggestions?

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.