Editorial | Rights advocates don’t cause crime

There is increasingly a tendency by government officials of shifting the blame for Jamaica’s crime problem to human-rights advocates by accusing them of mollycoddling criminals. It is a dangerous practice that risks undermining constitutional rights and freedoms, leading, ultimately, to the erosion of the country’s democracy.

The accusations sometimes come directly. Often it is in dog whistles. At times, it is circumlocutory remarks by ministers and other public officials. The message, however, is never lost on anyone. That is why we urge the Government to take stock before things go too far.

Among the recent examples of this blame-messenger attitude on crime were, ironically, the remarks a week ago by the justice minister, Delroy Chuck, at the launch of a campaign by the rights group, Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ), promoting the universality of justice. It should be open to all Jamaicans, regardless of status or class.

Mr Chuck said in his speech: “I dare say, over the years, the decades, in Jamaica we have far too many criminals, the corrupt, the undisciplined, the lawless, who, regrettably, have been emboldened to feel that they are above the law, and that if they breach the law they can always get various organisations to speak for them. We have to be very careful.”

It was a less-than-veiled assault on JFJ.

Then Mr Chuck did a pivot, of sorts. He conceded that accused persons – the minister’s term was wrongdoers – should be “brought to justice” through a processes that afford them advice and representation, so that they “can have their day in court”.

“But what has happened now,” he said, “is that the courts are so overwhelmed, overburdened, that when people try to get justice it is almost an impossible task.”

HUGE BACKLOGS

Jamaica’s courts have, indeed, huge backlogs of cases, to which the island’s high crime rate no doubt contributes. But the clogged system is fundamentally the fault of a justice system that was, for too long, under-resourced and poorly managed. It does not help that the system depends on the investigation capacity of the undermanned and historically inefficient and corrupt police force.

In the circumstances, it seems, the Jamaican authorities are in search of law enforcement and judicial shortcuts in crime-fighting, including, it appears, a wish to invert the old common law principle, so that accused people will be presumed guilty until they prove themselves innocent. Indeed, while Mr Chuck acknowledged the right of individuals to due process, his JFJ speech had the tone and texture of a formulaic recitation, untethered from deeply embedded philosophy.

In another situation, we might have dismissed Mr Chuck’s posture as a fleeting aberration, borne out of the personal frustration of being unable to come quickly to grips with the country’s crime and criminal justice problems. Except that his seeming assumption that campaigners are too preoccupied with the rights of criminals, thereby giving them a free pass, essentially echoed previous statements by Prime Minister Andrew Holness when venting at being hindered from an unfettered use of states of emergency (SOEs) as a crime-fighting tool. The Government has been constrained from doing so by the absence of opposition support for the declaration of SOEs and legal challenges – which were won by the complainants – by people who were detained for extended periods, without charge.

LAMENTED

Last November, for instance, as he pondered the declaration of another SOE, Mr Holness lamented his Government being “crippled by an academic debate about the constitutionality of the measures, while people in Jamaica are dying”.

More recently, Mr Holness complained that for every move his government made to combat crime, “there is some legal argument or some political argument being made”. He added: “Those who believe that their eloquent pronouncements about rights are finding favour with the masses of the people, what they are doing is increasingly alienating the people from the system. I do not have the luxury of dithering on these matters anymore. We have to act on them. We have to act to protect the innocent, law-abiding citizens.”

At the same time, Mr Holness assured Jamaicans that he would do nothing to undermine Jamaica’s democracy. Which may indeed be absolute, but really beside the point. A liberal democracy’s durability is not only in the good intentions of leaders. It also depends on the resilience of its underlying institutions, whose hardiness is reinforced by robust oversight and its ability to, in the most difficult circumstances, deliver on the guarantees they offer to citizens. Human rights ought to be among the welcomed, even if at times overbearing and pesky, watchdogs of the institutions of democracy and overreach by the State.

Put another way, there is no inherent conflict between people’s enjoyment of the rights and freedoms that liberal democracies guarantee to their citizens and the maintenance of law and order. The real aberration is berating citizens, as the former head of the Jamaica Defence Force, Lieutenant General Rocky Meade, did, for being reluctant to cede or suspend those rights, presumably in exchange for security.

There are many tools to be employed to ensure security without infringing individuals’ rights, or blaming crime on the people who help to protect the powerless, including people accused of crimes, from the arbitrary actions by the State.