THE EDITOR, Sir:
THE HYPER information age in which we live places greater burden on highly regarded and widely read news sources like The Gleaner to do their homework and to get the story right as they do on political leaders to now mind well what they say in public. Well-informed, keen ears are listening, and recording. And discerning, critical eyes are reading.
One such pair of eyes, belonging to one of my students, caught your story on deportees ('CARICOM tackles deportee issue') of Sunday, May 15, 2005. The story referred substantively to a study on Jamaican deportees returned from the United States that I directed and wrote.
ACCURACY OF CONTENT
Two off-track items in the story caught our attention. First, we'd like to think that the matter of getting dates right is as important to scholars as it is to journalists. The study I directed, and the findings we released, were not 'nearly two years' ago. A reporter's check of his/her notes would have indicated that she/he attended a press conference on Monday, September 27, 2004, at which deportee findings were released. I know how terribly young your reporters are, but September 27, 2004 is hardly 'nearly two years ago'.
Then there's the weightier matter of your story saying we "found that there were no real linkages between [Jamaica's] high crime rate and deportation." Had your reporter read the executive summary handed out at the September briefing, she/he would have seen where we wrote words to the effect: "We hasten to point out ... that we were unable to ascertain from the data supplied (yes, by a self-interested U.S. government) the extent to which deportee cases in our study, convicted or not convicted of a crime in the United States, have impacted the crime situation in Jamaica. That task future research will have to undertake!"
In other words, we could not have drawn from our study any conclusion about deportee involvement in local crime, because we had no such substantiating data. Besides, "proving" recurring deportee involvement in crime was not the main aim of our study. We carefully pointed out, however, that, based on our analysis of the provisions of the 1996 U.S. Illegal Immigration Reform law, which is the driving force behind the U.S. to Jamaica deportee phenomena, and the kind of offences for which deportees are being sent back home, we had no reason to expect that deportees returning from the U.S. pose significant criminal threats to the Jamaican society.
CONCLUSION OF STUDY
We came also to that understanding, we said, from reviews of previous studies conducted in the region studies whose specific objective was to
examine the relevant impact of 'criminal deportees' on crime in the Caribbean. Our own Ministry of National Security in 2001 had conducted one such study; it concluded that deportees' impact on crime in Jamaica was negligible.
In our study we concluded that the American government, particularly its legislative arm, has a lot to answer for in its present deportation policy. But sending back to the shores of Jamaica and other Caribbean nations plainloads of Caribbean-born but American-raised violent criminals is not one of the 'sins' nor is it the aim of current U.S. deportation practice.
In a few weeks, early in July this year, the public at large will be able to read our report in full, Deported: Entry and Exit Findings of Jamaicans Returned from the U. S., published as a book and available at leading bookstores.
I am, etc.,
BERNARD HEADLEY
bernard.headley@uwimona.edu.jm
Professor of Criminology
Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work
University of the West Indies, Mona
