Don Robotham, Contributor
Police remove roadblocks mounted by the residents of Prince of Wales Street at the intersection with National Heroes Circle on June 4. They said they had set up the roadblocks to prevent outsiders from entering the community, and also in protest against police brutality. - Peta-Gaye Clachar/Staff Photographer
Last week we went to the very brink of the precipice but we turned back. Thankfully, with the unequivocal support of civil society, Commissioner Hardley Lewin withdrew his resignation. We are grateful to him for this decision. We are grateful, too, to the thousands of Jamaicans of all walks of life who vigorously insisted with one voice that Commissioner Lewin return. Had it not been for this immense and blunt public pressure on Prime Minister Golding we would have been in a different place today.
Faced with this firestorm, those influential special interests in the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) who had demanded Lewin's resignation had to beat a hasty retreat. Mr Golding had no choice. It was either beg Lewin to return or face the collapse of his own government. He therefore begged. "Better do!" as our Nigerian friends would say.
The wealthy ones who, safely sequestered in their mansions and yachts, had demanded a tete-a-tete with Lewin, had their own tete-a-tete! By their bullying tactics they almost brought down the very government which they had spent hard cash to install. By overplaying their hand they exposed Mr Golding to a mortifying public humiliation.
This episode shed a powerful searchlight on the real behind-the-scenes workings of the JLP government. It was not a pretty sight. All the empty posturing about separation of powers - who remembers that nonsense anymore? - vanished. What we witnessed was an unprecedented concentration of power, including the power of unelected persons. One has no wish to unduly harass Mr Big. The problem, however, is that he will try it again. That's just how he is - can't help himself. At the moment he is licking his wounds but he shall return; you can depend on it. Poor Mr Golding. God save him from his friends!
HUMAN RIGHTS CHALLENGE
Lewin (left) and Golding (right)
As the dust settles on that tumultuous episode, we have some immediate challenges looming. As readers will know, I do not agree with the view that there is no conflict between human rights and hard policing. As the demonstration on Marescaux Road last Wednesday showed clearly, there is a real conflict. If we do not admit that such a conflict exists we will not rack our brains to find solutions.
According to a report on RJR, there was a demonstration by citizens from Allman Town last Wednesday in which, "The residents claimed that the police have been terrorising them instead of assisting to stem the crime problem facing the community." RJR went on to air a tape cut from a resident thus: "Dem gone wid two innocent men and dem come back and want to beat di ooman dem and tell dem bad words." This is a crucial episode which we must scrutinise very carefully indeed. We cannot afford to dismiss it with the wave of an impatient hand.
This is not simply a matter of police brutality. This is not a problem whose solution can be reduced to one of reforming the police. In the first place, reform takes time while we need a human rights solution now. More important, this kind of incident is inherent in any hard policing strategy even if we have a police force of saints coming straight from heaven. The problem here is not police brutality. The problem is the hard policing strategy.
There can be no doubt that we must have a hard policing strategy. We cannot play around with that. But abuses are inherent in all tough approaches. We seem to want incompatible things: we want human rights and we want hard policing too. So what do we do?
Let me point out further that this is not just a moral problem. It is a practical one which boils up on the ground in the heat of high risk police-military operations against an anarchic and elusive enemy bent on killing them. Yet, in the fight against crime, it is essential that we win the majority of youths to our side and isolate the criminals. But the effect of police brutality is to alienate all youths, as the Allman Town incident clearly demonstrates. Police brutality is a major strategic blunder because it throws the majority of good youths, whose loyalty we have to win, straight into the arms of the criminals. It has fatal consequences. Finding a way to conduct hard policing without alienating the majority of youths is, therefore, a challenge of the highest order.
If we do not solve this problem all social interventions will fail. We may make tactical short-term gains in suppressing the current upsurge. But we shall be laying the foundation for a much broader upsurge which we shall be unable to contain - winning the battle but losing the war. What we want is a strategy which focuses on the criminal group while offering an olive branch to the vast majority of youths. This will not be easy but it can be done. In fact, that is why I advocate a preventive detention policy, but one which is not broad-brush. It would be one which pinpoints the most violent youths and isolates only them, while allowing us at the same time to develop a strategic partnership with the vast majority of our youths.
RESOURCE CHALLENGE
The other major challenge is on the resource front. We have about 665,000 youths in the 15-29 age group. Of these about 200,000 are unemployed outright and about another 100,000 have dropped out of the labour market altogether. Of those who are employed, we have about another 100,000 who are in the bottom end of the labour market working for 'monkey money'. So in total, we are talking about 400,000 youths in severe hardship - rural as much as urban. So you see what the real dimension of our problem is.
We should stop talking loosely about the Government 'creating jobs'. No government of any kind can 'create jobs' out of thin air. It's the economy which does this 'creation' not the Government. All are agreed that we are unlikely to achieve more than three per cent GDP growth in the coming years, at the very best. This means, in case you missed it, no significant 'job creation'. So forget that unless you mean crash programmes.
Nor are there any budgetary funds for any massive social interventions in the present budget. If we claw back the funds on the free health services and free education we could garner about J$1.5 billion. This would, of course, require a fundamental restructuring of the current budget. The fact that we are forced to discuss this prospect at all - less than two months after the budget debate with the ink on the paper not yet dry - shows how far removed from reality our recently concluded budget exercise was with all the desk-pounding fanfare from the ignorant JLP backbenchers. How is it possible that a government can present a budget which proves to be irrelevant to our most burning social problems - crime and the youth - and then these same very problems explode with a vengeance less than two months later? Amazing!
What then is really possible in terms of additional resources? We tend to grossly underestimate the costs of social interventions in Jamaica. Lift Up Jamaica, when it was originally introduced, cost US$60 million to provide crash programme type 'employment' for 40,000 youths (J$2,500 per week!) but for only two weeks. This is the equivalent of about J$4.3 billion today (significantly more if you take into account inflation). And this was a budget for only 18 months. Getting anything like such an amount in real terms out of the recent budget would mean completely gutting the education and health ministries, including HEART/NTA. Sorry, Mr Zacca and Mr Matalon, but it looks like higher taxes to me. That one per cent of corporate Jamaica currently accounting for 75 per cent of corporate taxes looks like it will have to cough up more again!
THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX
The way to go is to establish a Youth Foundation which would be a public-private partnership. This foundation could then match public and private sector funds with multilateral money to accumulate the significant funds needed. It should be managed by a really outstanding person in this field, such as Scarlette Gillings, Robert Bryan or Sonita Abrahams, in whom all would have confidence. This would allow us to address our social programmes free of political constraints and on a broad national basis. Time is not on our side and we have to think outside of the box. Normal approaches are not going to work in our situation.
Above all, we must try to take the broad view. Our social problem is not simply a youth problem or an inner-city problem. The problem is Jamaica as a whole. It's not a matter of deviance at all. As a famous writer (guess who?) pointed out when discussing poverty in the English city of Manchester in the 1840s, crime among the poor is simply a parody of life among the rich. To each his own!
Please send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com
