By Anthony Harriott, Contributor 
OUR CRIME problem is not insuperable. Banish the self-doubts. We are a wise and resourceful people who are quite capable of successfully resolving it. But with each passing year, this problem seems to become more complicated and even more intractable.
Understanding how to respond to it, determining appropriate prevention and control strategies, estimating what level of resources ought to be dedicated to dealing with it, determining the commensurate sacrifices in terms of a fair tax burden that should be shouldered by the population in order to fund the proposed "solutions," calculating how much should we press for police and criminal justice modernisation-transformation (thereby risking conflicts and disunity within these institutions) are all based on our varied understandings of the problem.
As is usually the case with other acute social problems such as unemployment, controlling the crime problem requires systematic effort over a fairly long period of time, perhaps a number of decades. In order to make steady progress on this issue, and to achieve the long-term goals that will result in a safer and more just society, unity and consensus around an appropriate national response to the crime problem is vital.
In this regard, many societies have fables and proverbs that teach the importance of unity of purpose and co-operation. This is also true of our society. With regard to the crime problem, perhaps the most appropriate of these is "one finger can't ketch lice". Lice of course, may fittingly represent crime; and government, or worse, the governing party, represents but one, albeit a very important one, of the "fingers" that are needed. However, as a precondition for any consensus is a shared understanding of the problem, at least in its basics, it might therefore be worthwhile to try to properly characterise the crime problem, and to understand the present moment in its development.
PUBLIC SAFETY
By moment, is meant, as a first approximation, the present historical juncture. A few years ago, I characterised our situation as a crisis of public safety. Crises have both objective and subjective dimensions. Objectively, our rate of violent crimes, especially murder, would seem to strongly suggest that we are indeed confronted by a crisis of public safety. The murder rate for 2001 was 43 incidents per 100,000 citizens; one of the highest rates in the world (ranking us perhaps sixth).
In recent times, gunmen and the security forces have engaged in extended gun battles in some instances lasting for days. In the case of the events of July 2001 which occurred in Western Kingston, the security forces admit to firing over 15,000 rounds of ammunition, and while giving evidence before the West Kingston Commission, Senior Superintendent Adams suggested that the during the confrontation with the police, gunmen fired some "25,000 rounds" of ammunition. Mr. Adams may be given to the inappropriate use of the language of precision, but we miss the point if we focus on this misplaced precision.
Even if his method of arriving at this estimate is impressionistic and his estimate is badly off, given what is known about those events, the firing was much more intense and more protracted than in the case of the Mountain View events of the same month when the material evidence reportedly revealed that over 1,000 rounds were fired at the security forces.
Based on police reports and observations by citizens, the parties involved in these major gun battles have at times numbered over 150 on either side. In some of these battles, the number of casualties far exceeds what would be expected in clashes between law enforcement and ordinary criminals. According to the Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the events in Western Kingston during the 7-10th July 2001, the exchange of gunfire between gunmen and the security forces resulted in about 27 persons killed and a considerable number (about 40) injured.
What are we to make of these facts? They hardly suggest business as usual; rather they hint at profound changes in our security situation. Our high murder rate groups us with countries such as South Africa, Namibia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Haiti during the early 1990s, which have experienced great social and political disruptions and are indeed facing profound crises of a general sort, not just crises of public safety.
Beyond the objective situation, however, how people respond to these realities is perhaps even more important. In this regard, if we examine the available data on the fear of crime in our society, we see further support for the idea of a crisis. In early 1998, the then Ministry of National Security and Justice asked me to conduct a survey which revealed that some one in four members of the population (age 16 years and older) intensely feared being murdered. These persons who feared being murdered tended to be fearful of becoming the victims of other crimes. Thus some one in four persons were fearful of being murdered, robbed and having their homes burglarised, that is, were living in deep fear of all three types of victimisation. Roughly one in three women were intensely fearful of being raped.
Feelings about crime become more important when they actually influence behaviour. One could perhaps argue that this fear or anxiety is perhaps not sufficiently reflected in behaviour to warrant defining the present situation as a crisis. People after all do not behave in a business as usual manner during a crisis. The effort to acquire firearms is however symptomatic of how the fear of crime is changing behaviour. There are now about 50,000 legal firearm holders in Jamaica and no one knows how many illegal weapons are in the hands of citizens who believe that they must have them for the protection of their lives. Late night driving patterns in Kingston may also be influenced by the fear of criminal victimisation. For example, many persons are reluctant to stop at intersections and traffic lights. These behavioural responses are not restricted to Kingston. Earlier this year in Spaldings, crime-induced panic among its citizens impelled them to form a vigilante mob that nearly succeeded in killing innocent strangers who were believed to be criminals and the police officers who tried to protect them. More recently, in July of this year, there was a similar incident in Clarks Town, where over 300 residents attacked the local police station with the aim of punishing four offenders who had been detained by the police. I hope that these incidents do not foreshadow a future of vigilantism and lawless responses to crime.
CRISIS
Jamaica may be experiencing elements of a crisis of public safety, but the notion of a crisis doesn't quite capture the moment. For many persons, it connotes a sudden collapse, and this is unlikely. The idea of a turning point may be more appropriate. There has been one such turning point in the recent past - the period 1976-1978. This was the period when Jamaica departed from the traditional Caribbean pattern of crime in that for the first time, the number of violent crimes exceeded the number of property crimes.
With hindsight we may now see this very clearly. It was not a sudden turn; it took over ten years to develop perhaps beginning with the troubles of the mid-1960s. Since then, the pattern of high rates of violent crime has got progressively worse. But we may yet again be taking another slow turn leading eventually to sharper deterioration and a new situation. This characterisation urges decisiveness in treating with the problem but hopefully without inciting panic responses.
We may think of crime as a force shaping the present and the future of our country in a number of ways:
It is already shaping how we interact socially. For example, it may influence the decision of most members of one group (for example car owners) not to give lifts to the members of another group that sees the giving of a lift as expected civil behaviour. This furthers strain relations between some social groups. Under these conditions, the fearful car owner, for example, may readily appear to become simply a rich person who is too mean spirited to give a poor person a lift. Crime thus intensifies old problems and further exposes the stress points in the social structure (such as class and colour).
The crime problem may be shaping our economic future. Professor Francis of the Department of Economics at the UWI is currently doing some very important work on the economic impact of crime. He estimates the economic cost of violent crime at six per cent of GDP. To put this figure in context, it roughly compares with 5.5 per cent in the case of Brazil and six per cent for Mexico, both of which have serious problems with crime, and 14 per cent in the case of Colombia which is a special case. Economic developments tend to have some impact on the crime problem, but crime may also negatively affect development. Intuitively, the low level of trust among prospective business partners and by investors of the prospective pool of employees would seem to harm economic development.
Crime is shaping our very identity as Jamaicans. Members of some violence-plagued communities have already stated the case that the association between their communities and violence has served to stigmatise them and to reduce their access to employment opportunities. This problem is being replicated on a national level. Many of us who travel regularly are well aware of what being Jamaican means to the typical American and English immigration officer. How we are defined by those with the power to give these definitions force, and in turn how this shapes how we define ourselves is already having a profound effect on our lives. Some of us have taken to performing to the script of the aggressive Jamaican.
"Going on bad" is seen as the authentic Jamaican way of dealing with difficult problems. Of course this is an old method that has some grounding, perhaps even justification as a response to unresponsive institutions and disrespectful ways of dealing with one another. In these conditions, "going on bad" forces attention on one's issues and often gets results, but it also signifies lawlessness and is intended to plant some doubt about the willingness of the "actor" to use violence. This problem presents us with the challenge to make our institutions more responsive to the needs of our citizens and for us to be more respectful of each other.
Crime is shaping our policy agenda, and in the process, is shifting the allocation of resources and thus limiting our development. For example, new foreign debts are being incurred in order to implement new crime control plan.
Violent crime has now taken on such a centrality that it has become a future shaping force. This is what is meant by the importance of the moment and this is why the juncture may be characterised as a turning point. This is an issue which ought to be broadly debated as a part of the process of developing a collective understanding that may facilitate further consensus building around the major elements of a strategy to which we will commit the necessary effort and resources.
Dr. Anthony Harriott is a senior lecturer in the Department of Government on the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies. He is also author of the book, Police and Crime Control in Jamaica.
