The Ja­maica gov­ern­ment has sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to sup­port leg­is­la­tion in­creas­ing the penal­ty for crime crit­i­cis­ing law mak­ers whom it says are too soft on the sen­tenc­ing of peo­ple who com­mit mur­der, in­clud­ing chil­dren aged 14 to 17.

“There are, be­fore us, amend­ments to leg­is­la­tion, which will in­crease penal­ties for such crim­i­nal ter­ror­ists… . I urge the house to pass these amend­ments forth­with be­fore the year is out,” Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness told leg­is­la­tors as he con­demned the “bru­tal” mur­der of three peo­ple in Salt Spring, in­clud­ing two chil­dren on Mon­day.

The chil­dren have been iden­ti­fied as sev­en-year-old Justin Per­ry and nine-year-old Nah­co­l­i­va Smith, both stu­dents, and Tevin Hayle, oth­er­wise called “Ban­cel”, 26.

In Par­lia­ment on Tues­day, Prime Min­is­ter Hol­ness de­scribed the killing as “bar­bar­ic”, urg­ing leg­is­la­tors to stand in con­dem­na­tion of the act.

“It is im­por­tant that each time that this hap­pens we de­clare and re­in­force that our na­tion does not stand for this,” he said, not­ing that the in­for­ma­tion com­ing from the po­lice is that the in­ci­dent arose from a gang feud.

Hol­ness said gangs were us­ing high-pow­ered weapons in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly in a pub­lic space “with what can on­ly be as­sumed to be the in­ten­tion to cre­ate fear and pan­ic in the coun­try, to cre­ate out­side of the lo­cal­i­ty of the event, a na­tion­al fear”.

“In my opin­ion, it is the equiv­a­lent of a ter­ror­ist act and these crim­i­nals ought to be de­scribed and treat­ed in that form. The Gov­ern­ment has to take ac­tion; it can­not be am­biva­lent or equiv­o­cal in this mat­ter,” he said, adding that di­rec­tives have been giv­en to the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice to bring the nec­es­sary amend­ments to the Firearms Act to en­sure that there is no am­bi­gu­i­ty or lack of clar­i­ty in the ap­pli­ca­tion of the penal­ties rec­om­mend­ed.

“There would ap­pear that fur­ther re­view of the Bill would be nec­es­sary to align penal­ties and to en­sure that the strongest un­equiv­o­cal sig­nals are sent to the crim­i­nal el­e­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who use dan­ger­ous weapons, il­le­gal weapons such as high-pow­ered guns in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly and kill our chil­dren, that they will face the sever­est penal­ty ap­plic­a­ble un­der the law,” Hol­ness said.

He said that the re­cent­ly passed Bail Act is ex­pect­ed to have a de­ter­rent im­pact on crime in the coun­try and called on res­i­dents of Salt Spring and ad­join­ing com­mu­ni­ties, who may have in­for­ma­tion about the where­abouts of the crim­i­nals in­volved in Mon­day’s in­ci­dent, to pass it on to the po­lice.

“We will give them the nec­es­sary pow­ers and au­thor­i­ty to car­ry out their du­ties with­in our Con­sti­tu­tion, with re­spect for hu­man rights and the dig­ni­ty of the peo­ple of the area. I want to give the as­sur­ance t said.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Mark Gold­ing in con­dem­ing the killings said “each time we rise to speak on a sub­ject like this, one has to won­der when it will be the last time we have to do so.

“I join in the sen­ti­ments that have been ex­pressed con­demn­ing, in the most pro­found terms, the acts of ex­treme vi­o­lence, the de­prav­i­ty in which those two young Ja­maicans… lost their lives,” Gold­ing said.

Mean­while, Ed­u­ca­tion and Youth Min­is­ter, Fay­val Williams, said that while grief coun­sel­lors have been sent to Chet­wood Memo­r­i­al Pri­ma­ry School, which both boys at­tend­ed, she was al­so ebing crit­i­cal of law­mak­ers for be­ing too soft on the sen­tenc­ing of peo­ple who com­mit mur­der, in­clud­ing chil­dren aged 14 to 17.

Williams made this ad­mon­ish­ment as she voiced her dis­agree­ment with the ma­jor­i­ty of leg­is­la­tors who have ac­cept­ed the pro­pos­al that chil­dren con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal mur­der should serve a manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tence of 20 years in prison be­fore be­com­ing el­i­gi­ble for pa­role.

She is of the view that this sen­tence is too le­nient and should be moved to 30 years, ar­gu­ing that at the ages of 14 to 17, the child is “on the doorsteps of be­ing an adult [and should know] right from wrong”.

This mat­ter of min­i­mum sen­tenc­ing for chil­dren falls un­der the Child Care and Pro­tec­tion (Amend­ment) Act, and Williams told the joint se­lect com­mit­tee that while the fig­ures for chil­dren in the age range of 14 to 17 who com­mit cap­i­tal mur­der may seem like a small per­cent­age, “re­mem­ber, it’s what it is to­day; we don’t know five years, 10 years down the line what it will be and we con­tin­ue to be very soft in our sen­tenc­ing of peo­ple who have com­mit­ted heinous crimes.

“You can­not imag­ine the pain of the par­ent who lost her daugh­ter be­cause the child in this age range brought an im­ple­ment to school, stabbed her and killed her. And we’re sit­ting here be­ing re­al­ly, re­al­ly soft and not send­ing the strong mes­sage that we are not go­ing to tol­er­ate crime in this coun­try,” she said.

But In re­sponse, chair­man of the com­mit­tee, Del­roy Chuck, said the com­mit­tee has agreed that the sen­tence for cap­i­tal mur­der for chil­dren can be life im­pris­on­ment or 50 years.

“That per­son may well nev­er see road again. If they get life or 50 years, they may not see road again un­til they’re 64 if they get life,” he said.