Bernard Headley, Contributor

Deputy Commissioner of Police Mark Shields

Deputy Superin tendent of Police Mark Shields may have indeed "come to the kingdom for such a time as this". (The allusion, for the totally un-Scriptured, is from the Old Testament story of Queen Esther.) The British lawman, now seconded to the Jamaica Constabulary, came at the behest of a nation that had begun to wonder loudly whether its police force could, by itself, deal effectively with distressing crime. Mr. Shields brings to his job as professional crime-fighter no discernible political baggage; he speaks his truth about crime in the island clearly, without fear and without favour.

Mr. Shields knows police work, particularly as it involves law enforcement and criminal investigation. To this, he brings a certain global expertise. The noted success of his efforts has depended upon him knowing who the local and international bad guys are - those involved in recent and ongoing criminal activity, those with established criminal links, and those most likely to kill. As a good, hands-on cop, who frequently does equivalent of street-cop work in Jamaica's urban badlands, Mr. Shields understands full well that his own life, and of his men and women, can depend on his ability to differentiate between types of criminal danger, seen and unseen.

So when Mr. Shields speaks of policing, and of thieves who frighten the nation "with their guns and ammunition", those of us who don't get our hands soiled with the grubby work of crime-fighting - either because we spend too much time within university ivory towers or are lucratively engaged in consultancy - ought to set aside the laptop and do what the pugnacious Mr. Alston Stewart some months ago commanded, "Shut [our] damn mouth[s]"; and then listen carefully to what Mr. Shields has to say.

NO HOCUS POCUS

The hosts of the morning news-talk radio programme, 'The Breakfast Club', asked Mr. Shields a few days before last Christmas for his assessment of the impact of deportees on crime in Jamaica. In responding, Mr. Shields said he wished to steer clear of the pros and cons in what he thought had become a controversial political issue. But, he did go on to proffer an "I'll tell you this, though." And in what followed, Mr. Shields offered with amazing clarity the commonsense truth of the matter; a truth with no hocus-pocus 'correlation'. It's a dreadful truth that we generally keep under raps, in the same way that families will make sure a deranged uncle stays hidden in the back room when visitors are stopping by. It's an irksome, inconvenient truth that only an impolitic, foreign lawman, driven only by the imperative to deal effectively with crime, would interject in mixed company.

The kind of criminal deportee 'we' in law enforcement are "most interested in", Mr. Shields authoritatively said, are the ones, "just a few" within the lot, "who were criminals before they left Jamaica". These are, to put Mr. Shields' point more sharply, pedigree criminals who are accidental deportees; criminals going and coming; criminals before they arrived at the JFK (in New York), Heathrow (in London) or Lester B. Pearson (in Toronto) international airports, and criminals when escorted back to Norman Manley or Donald Sangster. The vast majority of deportees in the island, Mr. Shields continued, are law-abiding, decent citizens.

That sort of precise, on-the-ground assessment is - with respect - a far cry from the line being parlayed by Ministry of National Security officials and their criminology consultants. They, the ministry folks and the recent Government report, A Study on Criminal Deportation, are telling us that an absolute or raw number of deportees is linked ('correlated' if you prefer) in some determinative way to unknown number of murders.

TYPES OF DEPORTEES

What Mr. Shields is correctly pointing out is that existing within the broad category of criminal or convicted deportees are two types. One type, which constitutes the overwhelming majority, is of persons convicted of sundry offences (mostly drug illegalities) in London or New York. But, having little or no criminal history, they return to Jamaica posing little or no danger to the society.

Many of them, having left Jamaica several years before, return lost and disconnected. Legitimate as well as illegitimate means for finding a way out are inaccessible or closed to them; the insistent official propaganda branding them habitual criminals serving only to worsen their dilemma. They come back to Jamaica after having been uprooted from adopted communities and dispossessed of belongings and family. What's important to this type of deportee is trying to survive in the hostile Jamaican environment they once knew as home; and not, as a matter of course, resorting to further offending. Hence the importance to this group of civic initiatives such as the 'Land of My Birth' project.

But then there are small numbers of deportees for whom the label 'deportee' is really a misnomer. Insider estimates are that scarcely more than a combined dozen of this other type are forcibly sent back (i.e., deported) each year from the deporting countries. They are home-grown, returned criminals. Their craft and criminal know-how were developed and honed in Jamaica. They go up to London or Miami (sometimes merely to escape the 'heat') as grown, adult men, while remaining well-connected back in Jamaica.

While overseas, especially in the U.S., they commit a minor violation, which gets them deported. And it's important to bear in mind (as will be shown in Part II of this series) that, again particularly in the United States, the individuals of concern here are rarely prosecuted and convicted for crimes more serious than minor, non-violent drug offences. But, once deported, they resume, in Jamaica, a normal life of crime. Returning home is something they likely would have done, anyway.

Bernard Headley is professor of criminology in the Department of Sociology, Psychology & Social Work at the University of the West Indies, Mona.