Geof BrownREGULAR READERS who are alert will perhaps recognise that the title of this column has appeared before. In fact it did - in The Gleaner of March 20, 1998. Those of us who write regularly as commentators, are sometimes tempted to bring back some of our previous columns.
Simply, that is because the spinning wheel of misfortunes bring us back to the same point over and over again. That leaves us quite often with very little that is new to say.
Take our crime situation. If ever there was any condition difficult to fix overnight, it is crime - especially massive crime.
Yet if ever there is a current malady where the single dose medication prescription is seen as the remedy, it is crime, the gut-space takes priority over the head-space as single solution after single solution is trotted out with fanfare.
The government has a key but won't open the door with it, we are told. The Private Sector has a key but won't turn the lock, some say. The Church has the answer but won't bother to pass it on, others claim. That's all gut speaking. Any doctor who hands out a prescription to the ailing patient without bothering to do a diagnosis of the condition, would be seen as unfit to practice.
When do we ever get rational diagnoses of our ever recurring crime waves? As each wave breaks, we get another quick-fix prescription from a wide array of all-knowing pundits, yet the nearest thing to any intelligent analysis fed to a baffled public, is The Gleaner's front-page break-down of the murder statistics. There we learn how many are killed by the gun, by the knife, by the police and by suicide; we learn the proportion of domestic murders compared with other incidents.
That's a bit helpful for understanding the murder rate - but a far cry from knowing the movements of criminals, the trends in each sub-segment of crime or the hot-spots which could alert citizens for self-protection. At this critical juncture, the new constabulary enforcement service could help considerably by putting out a regular 'Advisory' on crime, (The US does that kind of thing for its citizens travelling abroad).
Analytical approach
What, for instance are the points of car-jackings? What are the techniques being used by car-jackers? What are the most common techniques being used by burglars, by rapists, by kidnappers? What interventions by citizens are most helpful to the police? What kind of common mistakes encouraging to criminals should citizens avoid?
(The Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management does that kind of thing). In short, we need the public to be prepared for an analytical approach to crime.
The kind of investigative approach by Professor Don Robotham in his recent series on ghetto youth (carried by The Gleaner) is another way of getting a handle on the causes of crime. Merely to dismiss the inner-city areas as the source of much crime without analysing the roots and manifestations of behaviour in that context, is like trying to eradicate mosquitoes without knowing why and how they breed. We know all about mosquitoes now but that was no quick-fix either.
Take another example. The creation of employment is correctly seen as an important factor in the prevention of crime. But that by its very nature cannot be a quick-fix solution. What kind of jobs? What are the qualifications in the labour force to fill what jobs come on stream? As Leachim Semaj once pointed out, a high proportion of the labour force can only tackle jobs of the lowest skill levels - and far too many are simply unskilled. That brings us to the need for improving literacy or we will keep out foreign investors who must have literate employees. Where is the quick-fix in that solution?
It took a long and complex course of events, circumstances, commissions and omissions to get to the fix in which we find ourselves. We need to act fast, yes, or things will get worse. But we will have to think our way out or be condemned to repeat our cycles of woe. The quick-fix syndrome is the surest way for endless repetition of our problems.
Geof Brown is an HRD consultant who lectures part-time at the UWI, Mona.
