The EDITOR, Sir:Instead of the usual intellectual impotence offered by most radio show hosts and analysts, please allow me the space to propose some concrete solutions that we might look at employing in fighting the scourge of violent crime in our nation:
Push to create jobs through a national work programme that build tourist attractions, parks and low-income housing or engage in reforestation.
Assign unused arable land for communal-type farming and offer these at nominal lease rates to private investors or cooperatives with employment provisos.
Hire and train 1,000 or more traffic wardens. Give them authority, walkie-talkies, digital cameras, speed guns and ticket books. Place them on every major street corner in every city and large town with mobile JCF officers nearby for their enhanced safety. Establish ticket quotas tied to their pay and monitor/test them to ensure honesty. This programme should pay for itself through fines, reduced accidents and a return to sanity on our roads.
Enforce the death penalty. (We can apologise to Amnesty International after we have ensured our survival.) Make possession of an illegal firearm, large quantities of illegal ammunition or wholesale quantities of cocaine punishable by death.
Build a large maximum-security prison for violent criminals, possibly on one of the outlying cays, where prisoner interaction, contraband and visitation can be properly controlled. Make a prison sentence there something to be feared.
Reform other prisons to undertake true rehabilitation of inmates with minor offenders being made to farm, sew clothes, mass-produce craft items or otherwise be productive during their period of incarceration and help pay for their keep. Develop systems to monitor and assist prisoners after their release.
Adopt the 'three-strike' rule where persons convicted of three violent crimes face life imprisonment or the death sentence.
Develop a corruption-fighting unit to plan and perform sting operations targeting cops, public officials, motor vehicle examiners and other suspected participants in corruption.
I recommend these suggestions for the consideration of our leaders and the nation.
I am, etc.,
CRIME WATCHER,
robandlev@hotmail.com.
