Hartley Neitam, ContributorONE OF the toughest speeches about the chaos in our country caused by gun-toting criminals was made by Hugh Shearer shortly after he was sworn-in to office as Prime Minister of Jamaica.
Speaking to the officers and members of the Police Federation he said:
"One of the things our country must understand is that there must be respect for whoever is in authority and for the maintenance of law and order. And when it comes to handling crime in this country, I do not expect any policeman when he is tackling a criminal to recite any
beatitude to him. For with all respect to the 'ologists, the policeman cannot tackle a wrongdoer and talk about 'blessed are the meek'."
On another occasion he added that as far as he was concerned, they should not stop when confronted with criminals carrying guns "to take a tape measure to find out what is the distance between themselves and these criminals before setting them alight."
SOCIAL TINKLERS
In more recent times, in reflecting on those comments he did say that "Poor P.J. cannot say what I did then, as the do-gooders and social tinklers would take to the streets and demonstrate."
It may well be that Hugh Shearer might have been a little too extreme in his views, but the sad fact is that we have allowed criminals to confront us, instead of we confronting them. And we have wasted time going round and round in a circle trying to find reasons why young men have chosen to use the gun to make a living, instead of the pen or the saw or the hammer or the fork. And we excuse these young men by accusing the society of not providing them with jobs to earn a honest living.
And our hearts bleed when we say to one another, "Poor little fellows, poverty is the cause of their criminal behaviour."
Now, where I am concerned, and with all due respect to the groups that seek justice only for the criminals, we have been playing tic-tac-toe with criminal behaviour. And in this tic-tac-toe game it is the law-abiding
citizens who never win.
We have allowed human-righters to confuse those who administer justice with a web of legalistics to prevent the laws which govern our society from being applied. So, because of an unwritten rule during the last one 100 years, women are no longer hanged even if they are only accomplices, and men today are never. Yet female judges can sentence a man to be hanged. It is incongruous.
SOFT ROUTE
For 30 years we have taken the soft route in our search to reduce violence and crime. It has not worked. Children today have now discovered they can take their parents to court if they are strapped for disobedience. And win.
And students can take their teachers to court if the cane or strap is used to punish them for misbehaviour. And also win.
Resident magistrates sentence criminals who rape babies and sodomise women to prison terms and lashes with the cat-o-nine. They go to prison and earn a parole reducing their sentence and walk out without receiving a flick of the tail. This means there are hundreds of men walking freely in the society without completing their sentences.
There is nothing a man fears more than a whipping. It is well-known in rural areas that men who were given the lashes prescribed by judges were so ashamed they never returned home to their villages.
And if the whipping is in public, that should even be better. And if the Constitution prevents public whipping, should we allow the Constitution to be a shackle?
