A WEEK ago it was reported that the United States of America has recorded another year of decline in reported crimes, on a national basis. This seems to suggest that the responsible American authorities know what successful strategies to utilise in curbing crime, unlike the situation that obtains in Jamaica, since our crime figures make for despondent reading.
One cannot, however, transpose successful strategies in one culture to another culture and expect similar results as other elements may work against such. A rehash of the major American crime strategies and an application to Jamaica will show why this is so. The first major strategy executed in the US was and continues to be the high levels of deportation of foreign nationals, especially Caribbean ones, but not exclusively so as Colombian nationals also rank high. The US deports the highest number of convicted aliens (a strange term, as if they came from Mars), and is not hesitant in also deporting long-standing residents, who have committed crimes but never took the trouble to naturalise.
This policy has worked wonderfully for the Americans but has transferred these problems to countries like the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago, which now face a serious rise in new types of crimes, like kidnapping in Trinidad & Tobago.
DEPORTATION STRATEGY
If Jamaica was to apply the deportation strategy, the first question one would have to ask is since it is mainly Jamaicans who are committing these serious crimes, apart from a few Nigerians and Colombians, who can we deport? What is more. To where would we deport them? Lime Cay or other small islands seem unlikely, given their weekend traffic, while Cayman has already been reclaimed by the British, since independence. I wonder if we could ask the Americans to take some of them in Guantanamo Bay since they already have Al-Quaeda operatives there and seem determined to expand it.
The second major strategy has been stiffer and more mandatory sentencing guidelines in their court systems, a la the 'three strikes you are out' type. This had caused a record high prison population, which leads into the third strategy, which is the building of much more maximum security prisons.
This was possible through the creation of fiscal surpluses (prior to Bush) and widespread co-operation with the private sector in privately-run prisons.
In Jamaica, given that existing maximum security prisons, G.P. and at Spanish Town, are already stretched beyond capacity, and given the debt situation, there is no way that five or more new maximum security prisons will ever be built in the next decade. Worse, if we were to actually impose more custodial sentences, there would be every likelihood of mass prison troubles a la Brazil.
The fourth US strategy is not well-known but it is being used. It is called 'racial-profiling', where minority groups are targeted and, when convicted, sentenced to longer stretches than the majority racial groups. This means that a disproportionate number of blacks and Hispanics are found in the prison population than a similar racial cohort in the general population census figures.
RACIAL PROFILING
Racial profiling would be difficult to do in Jamaica given the majority of our skin types. Unfortunately, what some in our police force does, is to engage in 'inner-city profiling' by targeting young, unemployed black youths, which by its 'one brush' concept then alienates the very people (from which some of these policemen grew up with), and this creates less co-operation and trust from the public in these areas.
It also avoids dealing with our most dangerous 'dons', who do not live in these areas again, but reside in areas like Norbrook and Cherry Gardens, and conduct their operations in these inner city areas. 'Duppy know who to frighten' so the policemen avoid these fellows and deal harshly with the petty 'lumpen' rather than trying to take down the major dons.
If the above seems an intractable problem, at least there are Jamaican solutions (PERP report, Harriott Report, 'They cry Respect' findings, and the UWI conference on Crime). It is implementing these strategies that take time, finance and patience that we are not willing to do.
