THE COUNTRY is again experiencing unusually high levels of crime, and as always happens, there is a desperate search for solutions.
Since the general election a little over a month ago, more than 80 people, including children, have been murdered, and some of these murders have been multiple killings, which have been brutal in the extreme.
The Prime Minister, Mr. Patterson, has assured the private sector that there would be "strong new measures to fight the unprecedented levels of violence plaguing the country". As the clamour for immediate answers builds up there are once again those who advocate a diminution of civil liberties and the giving up of human rights to save us from ourselves.
We would urge extreme caution because fundamental rights, once given up, are very difficult to reclaim. Our recent history is replete with examples. It was another upsurge in crime that led to the creation of the Gun Court in the 1970s. This court dispensed with the right to trial by jury and the trials are held in camera. The thinking behind the Gun Court was that it would strike such fear in the hearts of those who use the gun that they would turn from their wicked ways. Some three decades later we would have to admit that it has not achieved its stated purpose.
Another measure to combat unprecedented levels of crime was the Suppression of Crimes Act. This gave the police great powers of search without warrant, and of detention. The examples of abuses under this Act are legion and there was widespread relief when it was lifted after having been in force for more than 20 years. There is no evidence that it had the slightest influence on reducing crime but its lingering legacy is still with us in the many police officers whose actions were conditioned by it and continue to behave as if it is still in force.
The State of Emergency of 1976 was yet another measure that was supposedly introduced to combat crime. The reality was that it was used with shameful and vulgar partisanship to lock up members of the Opposition, some of whom spent months in detention without any charges being laid against them and were released as arbitrarily as they had been detained. The many special crime-fighting squads - the beleaguered Crime Management Unit was the 13th such - have also failed to deter crime.
Our country has a history of political abuses and what is now being widely recognised as a corrupt police force, hardly a context in which to trifle with human rights and civil liberties. There is a need for new thinking and approaches to the crime problem, which ought not to be beyond us.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
