THE PLAN by the police to implement an electronic system for generating and monitoring traffic tickets has our support and endorsement. The move is clearly part of the accelerating programme to modernise and enhance the efficiency of the constabulary through the use of computer technology. Indeed, not very long ago the police launched their online fingerprint-matching system, which should considerably cut the time needed for the experts to find matches in their mountain of old paper-based files.

The new technologies being implemented and utilised by the constabulary should, over time, have a positive impact on crime in the country. For if the police can increase their capacity to prosecute and convict criminals it will lessen the assumption by people that they can behave with impunity and that crime does pay. Detection and prosecution, in other words, is the best deterrent to crime.

There is another potential spin-off effect from the use of technology, such as the electronic ticketing system, which should help to improve the general quality of the police force and at the same time contribute to an improved social environment. For as Deputy Superintendent Claude Reynolds of the constabulary traffic Department has noted, this system lessens the potential for corruption by police officers once traffic tickets have been written.

Unlike with the paper-based system, a police officer, having written a ticket and placing it in the system, will not have the capacity to make adjustments. And neither can he or anyone else remove it from the files, unless they can corrupt the central database.

At the same time outstanding traffic tickets will be easier to track, an important development in the context where an estimated 300,000 unpaid tickets now floating about and offenders continue to flout the law.

With the current unwieldy paper-based system, many motorists with multiple citations for driving offences remain on the road. It is just that we don't know who they are, and it is difficult to identify and track them down. Often, they bribe the police to let them off the hook or to destroy the records, sometimes to the detriment of road safety.

We suspect that recklessness of some drivers, who, in ideal circumstances would have been taken off the roads, often leads to collisions and road fatalities over which the National Road Safety Council and its chairman, Dr. Lucien Jones, agonise so much about. Indeed, after a decline over the past two years, road fatalities are up this year, which, at 349 so far, are already 11 per cent above last year's. If this system contributes to one less death or injury on the roads it will have been of value.

But even as we embrace the technology and the fact that traffic cops will have portable, hand-held systems, we air a concern and caution. It is our habit in Jamaica to introduce technology without the capacity for upkeep. We note that not so long ago, for instance, all the breathalyser machines acquired by the police had fallen into disrepair. They are lying around somewhere. Drunken drivers need not worry too much. Hopefully, the case won't be the same with the ticketing machines.

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