Members of the public leave Emancipation Park in New Kingston following last week's private sector-led peace rally. - IAN ALLEN STAFF/PHOTOGRAPHER THE PRIVATE sector mobilisation and the Emancipation Park Declaration are vital steps in the fight against crime. It is only a beginning but a crucial one. A long-term effort is required. The question is how do we follow up, sustain and extend this effort?
In taking the next steps it would be fatal to adopt a narrow approach. Fixing police stations and strengthening the management and equipment capacities of the security forces is the obvious first step. Installing and using
COMSAT policing techniques is also critical. Stiffer stop-and-search measures as well as incorporating human rights advocates operationally and meaningfully are of great importance.
However, organised crime has a broad social base in Jamaica and if we do not address this base we will not get the results we want.
Two other steps are needed.
TWO BILLION NOT ENOUGH
The bad conditions in which our youth live provide the social base for crime. The second step needed, therefore, is a major programme to address the social, economic,
cultural and moral needs of our youth. We have too many little projects and organisations in the youth area. We need to consolidate them into a single, focused unit.
Lift Up Jamaica will be an important step in this direction. Its announced budget is $2
billion. The earlier Lift Up Jamaica programme conceived in 1999 was to run only for 18 months at a budgeted cost of $3.6 billion. It was enough to employ 40,000 young people each for four months, paying each one $2,500 per week. This cost was double the annual expenditure on school feeding, food stamps and the social and economic support funds combined!
A look at the numbers will tell us that the coming Lift Up Jamaica programme can only be a bridge to something more significant. We have about 672,000 persons in the 15-29 age group, 49 per cent of whom are males. In the 14-24 age group unemployment is about 33 per cent. This is roughly 100,000 people, about 40 per cent of whom are male. Crime or no crime, we should in any event, be giving budgetary priority to their needs. But in the present juncture, this becomes even more crucial. It is essential to isolate the organised criminals from this social base if we are to deal with them effectively.
We therefore need a programme large enough to have real impact. We need to think more in terms of an additional $6 billion annually. We also need the programme to be established and managed in such a way that it does not reinforce existing political divisions and garrison politics.
One huge problem with Lift Up Jamaica is that it, like the new housing initiative, will be implemented through the usual political means: MPs and ministries. So far, as I have pointed out, the effect of the new inner-city housing initiative has been precisely that: It is breathing new life into the existing garrison power structure. Much more media attention needs to be focused here!
Lift Up Jamaica, as proposed at present, is likely also to reinforce the political power of area leaders, dons and the whole apparatus of tribalism and organised crime. What is more, it will be totally devoid of the moral content which all agree is needed, if we go down the traditional political road. It would be a madness if, on top of the housing initiative disaster, a Lift Up Jamaica disaster were permitted to happen.
YOUTH PROGRAMME
Here, the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) and other civil society organisations can play a major role. Jointly with Government and Opposition, they can set about formulating a youth programme proposal seeking substantial funding from multilateral and other agencies. If the right people get involved in this effort and the governance is right, there is no doubt that such a mission can be successful. One major advantage in this approach is that an organisation can be set up which can deliver youth social services in such a manner that existing political tribalisms and garrisons are not reinforced but undermined. It is therefore an extremely urgent matter for the PSOJ to hire the technical staff to draft such a project proposal. A major figure needs to be seconded to direct this process. But this leads us to the third next step: dismantling the garrisons.
We need to be clear about exactly what the phrase 'dismantling the garrisons' means. We cannot mean bulldozing inner-city housing nor mass evictions of adherents of a political party. But we must mean that the entire matter of the concentration of one party's supporters in a single homogenous bloc of public housing is to be revamped step by careful step. We are trying to undo more than 50 years of
garrison housing political tactics which go back at least to the
hurricane housing of 1952!
POLITICAL DIFFERENCES
We must firmly reject the taken-for-granted political culture which says that People's National Party (PNP) and Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) supporters in the inner city cannot live peacefully side by side. In most of Jamaica, people with serious political differences do in fact live peacefully side by side. Who decides who lives where and who gets what units when vacancies arise in garrison housing? How is garrison housing managed and by whom in the real day-to-day reality? We need answers to these questions and we need detailed data.
The de facto ceding of housing management to garrison dons is one of the greatest scandals in our society and must be brought to an end. You may be surprised how much dismantling could be achieved by a well-thought-out programme of step-by-step housing reallocation, organised under the right conditions and backed up by robust protection and impartial oversight. This issue must be urgently explored.
Dismantling means also full police access. But we cannot just be speaking about curfews,
cordons, searches and 'surgical strikes'. We must mean dismantling the social, organisational and economic structure of the
garrisons and reducing the tribalist nature of our political culture in general. Here the proceeds from the crime bill, the wiretapping and plea-bargaining legislation have major roles to play. Again, if there are bottlenecks in the legal drafting process which are causing delays, private sector legal firms, as well as law students, must offer their
services voluntarily.
The organisational structures of the garrisons of both parties seem to have three levels: The first level is that of the enforcers who are the immediate agents of organised crime. The second level is political: These are the party workers, often women, who do the hard organisational leg work and political mobilisation. The third level is financial: Many garrisons have 'foundations' or other mechanisms of funding party work by means of which wealthy persons make financial and other contributions to the social and political operations of the garrison constituency.
The trick here is to separate out legitimate from illegal and anti-social activities. We need a special anti-garrison unit with a broad remit and a set of special measures to focus on all the operations of these three levels of organisation. Strict and intense surveillance of all levels is called for. Anti-garrison legislation may also be needed and we may also need to redraw constituency boundaries. Certain methods of financing
politics need to be banned and entirely new methods devised at the national level. An entire
anti-garrison programme is
needed in the broadest sense. The churches and human rights groups can play a major role here.
ORGANISATIONAL DISMANTLING
There is much that civil society and the media can do to address organisational dismantling. First, let the media agree to end all media partisanship,
sensationalism and pandering to populist demonstrations on behalf of criminals. Second, let us offer economic and other incentives to the crucial second-tier party organisers so that they have real alternatives to this party work. Civil society must find ways to pull them away from their existing garrison roles and to cut the personal dependence of the organisers and their families on area leaders, dons and the MP.
Third, let us publish a list of these political 'foundations' and the names of their boards and members. Just publishing such a list which identifies these uptowners would by itself have a salutary effect. Fourth, let us seriously address the mindless tribalism in our political culture. This will require a systematic programme of civic education and intervention at the level of garrison and other communities.
Honest, dispassionate and informed discussion of our national problems outside of the hothouse polemics of talk shows and mindless party conferences would be a great benefit to Jamaica. There are many persons in Jamaica in many walks of life ordinary citizens, the church, business, academia, the professions, the unions, voluntary organisations and the political parties who can play a major role in such a civic effort. We need to set about taking these next steps as a matter of urgency.
