THE EDITOR, Sir:
REPORTED CRIMES declined from 54,595 in 1995 to 29,142 last year. Even major crimes including shootings decreased. Yet, our politicians, the media and crime control bureaucrats claim for different reasons that we are now in the midst of a crime wave.
Addressing a wide and disparate array of criminal behaviour, our anti-crime plan lacks the focus to successfully confront our specific crime problem of burgeoning rates of murder which increased from 780 to 1045 and near-death woundings which increased steeply from 1269 to 4284 between 1995 to 2002.
The plan also fails to make that critical distinction between long, medium and short-term components to avoid a false sense of optimism. Setting targets to reduce murders also hide the uncomfortable fact that our anti-crime efforts are only proximate solutions to an intractable problem, much of which the police can do little about. Worse yet, having bureaucraticised the anti-crime plan it's no wonder the public have not accepted any responsibility for its perceived failure.
We must abolish the anti-crime plan except the anti-narco and police operational initiatives; expand the Urban Development Corporation with links to NGO's to reverse inner city decay and forge in partnership with all the people and the opposition JLP a new initiative to reduce violence and deepen intervention in families in need; expand conflict resolution and restorative justice; spend more on juvenile justice and criminal intelligence and seriously implement the Corporate Strategic Plans of our able Commissioner and the reform proposals of the Consortium of University of the West Indies Professors.
I am, etc.,
HAROLD CROOKS
Lluidas Vale
St. Catherine
