He­len Dray­ton

At Rose Hill RC school last Wednes­day, teach­ers took ac­tion to pro­tect chil­dren, and they hid un­der desks as gun­shots split the air. A bul­let hit the school. A shot could have killed any­one out­side the school. Yet, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty didn’t think the chil­dren were in im­me­di­ate dan­ger! Shoot­ings in Laven­tille are reg­u­lar and ex­pect­ed events. Shouldn’t the po­lice have been pre­pared to act quick­ly and lock down Laven­tille? We feel col­lec­tive pain when crim­i­nals ter­rorise chil­dren and com­mu­ni­ties, and grave dis­ap­point­ment when those we elect­ed to of­fice de­ny re­al­i­ty, mak­ing an ar­se of them­selves, the po­lice and the Gov­ern­ment.

The Gov­ern­ment and the Po­lice Ser­vice need to re­flect deeply to ex­plore all vi­able so­lu­tions to re­duce crimes.

Peo­ple charged with gun killings and gun-re­lat­ed crimes should be pros­e­cut­ed with­in the short­est pos­si­ble time, and the po­lice must have con­vinc­ing ev­i­dence to put them away. I un­der­stand many of the mur­ders are do­mes­tic-re­lat­ed, and abusers and vi­o­lence-prone peo­ple known to the po­lice and NGOs should not be able to get li­cences.

The pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns is a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to blood crimes and ag­gra­vat­ed rob­beries. Al­low­ing cas­es to snail through the clogged-up courts flies in the face of pub­lic safe­ty. The time is due for spe­cialised courts to stream­line and speed up the process of pros­e­cut­ing peo­ple ar­rest­ed on gun charges and charges aris­ing from the same in­ci­dents. The pur­pose of such courts is to ex­pe­dite these cas­es quick­ly—with­in three to six months, which re­search shows is best prac­tice. It wouldn’t stop crime, as there are thou­sands of weapons in the hands of crim­i­nals. Still, the courts will put away many peo­ple who are dan­ger­ous to so­ci­ety. Un­der our Firearms Act 16:01, a per­son could be jailed for life if con­vict­ed of pos­ses­sion of an il­le­gal firearm and am­mu­ni­tion de­pend­ing on their pre­vi­ous se­ri­ous con­vic­tions. Re­mov­ing these cas­es to a spe­cialised court should free up courts gen­er­al­ly.

Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, con­tin­ued strate­gies are nec­es­sary to re­duce the num­ber of il­le­gal weapons on the streets. No­tably, the re­duc­tion rate has slowed, from 1,054 seized in 2017 to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 500 in 2022. (JSC Par­lia­ment and news re­ports). Speedy re­sults from bal­lis­tics test­ing and oth­er foren­sic ev­i­dence are es­sen­tial if the po­lice are to pros­e­cute cas­es ef­fi­cient­ly. Re­port­ed­ly, the DNA lab­o­ra­to­ry wasn’t func­tion­ing for some time—a sit­u­a­tion akin to the port scan­ners, un­der­scor­ing fail­ures in pub­lic prop­er­ty main­te­nance. Would CCTV cam­eras al­ways be in work­ing con­di­tion? And the crim­i­nals are sur­veil­lance ex­perts. Their CCTVs mon­i­tor ri­vals and the po­lice en­ter­ing their ar­eas.

Re­search in­di­cates that in coun­tries where the po­lice and courts are work­ing ef­fi­cient­ly, there is much suc­cess in jail­ing crim­i­nals. They hold ses­sions in-cam­era (pri­vate) to pro­tect ju­rors. In Ja­maica, the gun courts have be­come clogged.

There is a thought that such courts should al­so han­dle do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es, but it would be wise to in­sti­tute it ini­tial­ly sole­ly for pros­e­cut­ing gun and gun-re­lat­ed crimes, which would in­clude many gun-re­lat­ed do­mes­tic cas­es.

Still, we will on­ly achieve sus­tain­able suc­cess if our po­lice are trained com­pa­ra­bly with the best any­where. A pri­or­i­ty fo­cus should be the wel­fare of po­lice of­fi­cers—their safe­ty and men­tal and emo­tion­al health. Progress de­pends on an in­tel­li­gent, hon­est, fit, well-trained, and ex­pe­ri­enced cadre.

There is much ado about the Bail Bill to keep al­leged crim­i­nals in jail with­out bail. If they weren’t pre­vi­ous­ly con­vict­ed of se­ri­ous crimes, and the po­lice can­not pro­duce ir­refutable ev­i­dence to prove they are dan­ger­ous to so­ci­ety or will flee the coun­try, and if the po­lice do not al­ways turn up in court, I imag­ine the court will use its dis­cre­tion. A Bail Bill can­not rem­e­dy in­com­pe­tence and jus­tice sys­tem fail­ures. There is a say­ing in the cor­po­rate world that the more you throw peo­ple and reg­u­la­tions at a prob­lem, the worse the prob­lem be­comes. Why? The prob­lem nev­er gets fixed, and the sore fes­ters. Fix the prob­lem. Crime de­tec­tion must im­prove, and the po­lice must be ex­perts and thor­ough in gath­er­ing ev­i­dence to pros­e­cute their cas­es suc­cess­ful­ly.

Sig­nif­i­cant is­sues in­clude in­sta­bil­i­ty in the po­lice lead­er­ship po­si­tion, which dis­rupts the con­ti­nu­ity of crime-fight­ing strate­gies. Al­so, among the prob­lems hin­der­ing progress are cor­rupt of­fi­cers, and the dis­man­tling, with­out valid rea­sons, of sys­tems that cost bil­lions when­ev­er we elect a new gov­ern­ment. It is self-serv­ing and wil­ful dis­re­gard for the coun­try’s well-be­ing. And there is a high like­li­hood of an in­sid­i­ous sit­u­a­tion play­ing out—the in­tim­i­da­tion of of­fi­cials.

On an­oth­er front, the Gov­ern­ment should thor­ough­ly eval­u­ate its so­cial pro­grammes, in­clud­ing URP and CEPEP, to de­ter­mine whether there are any link­ages with crimes. Chances are they al­ready know the an­swer. The prin­ci­ples that cre­at­ed the pro­grammes are valid. Some­one must em­ploy for­mer of­fend­ers who have served their sen­tences and want to earn an hon­est liv­ing. Some­one must equip un­em­ploy­able peo­ple to make a liv­ing.