THE EDITOR, Sir:
THE CURRENT wave of crime and violence that has infested the Jamaican society, particularly in the last few years, is an issue that is of major concern to many of our citizens and business operators.
In trying to analyse and find solutions to this crippling problem, there have been a number of suggestions and recommendations from civil society, and one such suggestion is that there is the need for a more hard-core style of policing by our security forces.
Those who have been advancing this argument have seen it necessary and have been advocating for the re-instatement of the Crime Manage-ment Unit, believed to be the best police arm to control the wanton spread of crime and violence.
While I understand the rationale behind the thinking of those advocating the return of this anti-crime unit, I have to disagree with this suggestion on the premise that there is a deeper underlying problem that is causing the ongoing upsurge of violence, which we consistently fail to recognise and address.
It is my view that the current crime problem in Jamaica is a direct result of a stagnant economy, which has existed for as long as this wanton crime rate can be traced, going back to some eleven years.
Evidence is there to confirm that where there is production and growth in the economy, where idle hands are put to work, our crime problem decreases significantly.
SUB-HUMAN CONDITIONS
The communities in which there are high levels of crime and violence are historically the ones where people live in the most depressed and sub-human conditions and find it extremely difficult each day to sustain their families economically.
This has resulted in people falling prey to individuals and entities with large amounts of resources, who used these resources to sway them and their children into illegal and criminal activities.
Based on my understanding the Crime Management Unit, which was disbanded after serious opposition by civil society to its style of policing, was established at a point when there was growing concern about these issues and our crime situation on a whole.
This Unit was given specific responsibilities and objectives that would, in a short period, make us feel safer in this country. Among those were to clamp down on Dons and the illegal drug trade, take in guns, focus on the problem of car-jacking and respond to serious upsurge of violence in specific communities across the island.
My concern with the CMU was the way in which it sought to achieve these objectives, which was to pursue a policing style that was befitting for war and not for a population so small and where there are so many innocent civilians and children.
The Crime Management Unit, as I see it, failed miserably, to execute its mission effectively and ought not to be considered for re-instatement on the basis of its record of non-performance, failure to fulfil its objectives and, its record cases of human rights abuses.
The CMU has focused on abusing people's rights than dealing with car-jacking and the illegal drug trade; has served as judge, jury and executioner rather than to take in so-called dons and gunmen and have them brought before the courts, and has been under investigation for several questionable killings.
FIRE WITH FIRE
It seems to me that if we are to control the spiralling wave of crime and violence engulfing the Jamaican society, we must first begin to understand some of the reasons for this problem and attempt to address them in a timely and strategic way. What is certain is that hard-core policing as was practised by the CMU and the whole question of fighting 'fire with fire', is definitely not going to be the solution.
During the tenure of the Crime Management Unit the murder rate did not fall in any significant way, which suggests that they were doing something wrong. When the state becomes aggressive the people respond with more aggression.
When the state uses a people-friendly approach the people respond in a civilised way. This has been demonstrated by the response that has so far been given to the Peace Management Initiative (PMI), which has introduced a different style of approaching the crime problem in our inner-city communities and one which ought to be adopted by the Security Forces.
The solution is to introduce more community policing, a gun amnesty, to respect the human rights of our citizens, to put idle hands back to work, to develop ghettos into communities, to establish more citizens associations, to invest more into education for all our people.
Let's face it, the solution to crime is not more crime and criminal activities, it's not more guns; it's not more hate; it's not more violence; it's not more human rights abuses; it's not denying youngsters access to our justice system.
The solution to our crime problem was not the Crime Management Unit then and still is not the solution today. It is a consultative and participatory approach by the security forces, where we involve and work with all our people and make them trust those in authority and not see them as the enemy. The solution is justice! Justice for all regardless of race, class, financial status or political affiliation.
I am, etc.,
MARK J. RODNEY
General Secretary,
Young Jamaica
Youth arm of the JLP
