Hartley NeitaThe headline is my feeble attempt at spouting lyrics.

Ever since gun crimes and gun criminals became major elements in our social fabric some 50 years ago, our governments have been announcing anti-crime plans, one after the other. Most of these plans have dealt with the punishment of criminals after they are caught and not how to catch them - with the Crime Stop and Kingfish initiatives being the notable exceptions.

And apart from the Home Guard, Neighbourhood Watch and State of Emergency programmes, there have been few plans which have sought to prevent crime, especially those involving the use of guns.

I am well aware, of course, that the plans for catching criminals and preventing crime cannot be announced publicly. Whether crime can be prevented or not is really a judgement call. However, we get glimpses of the plans for catching criminals from time to time. One example is the release of the names and photographs of the '10 most wanted'.

fleeting glimpses

In recent months this has been done at news conferences; and on television there are fleeting glimpses of these men - no women so far. These images, however, should be repeated over and over again. Full-page advertisements in the newspapers should also be printed. And individual handbills of these men should be printed and distributed in the areas they frequent, mounted on notice boards at post offices and police stations, and shown on the screens of movie theatres every night.

I would like to see a photograph of one of these wanted men published as an advertisement on the front pages of both daily newspapers every day with a list of the crimes he has committed. These men must feel that the eyes of thousands of Jamaicans are seeing them constantly. They must walk with their eyes in the back of their heads and since they cannot see where they are going, they will trip and fall.

And speaking of photographs, I wonder why the Crime Stop advertisements carry the photographs of the victims? To me, it is misleading.

Preventing crime, of course, is very difficult. Criminals are very secretive. When they are planning criminal acts they do not keep minutes of their meetings. What is needed is a national campaign to let the country know that we are in a war and that the criminal enemy is just a few. Oh, for a motivator! Oh, for a Michael Manley!

In the meanwhile, Prime Minister Golding has announced that there will be debate in Parliament shortly about whether the law providing for the hanging of convicted murderers should be repealed, and that members will speak and vote according to their personal beliefs. It will be mea culpa.

excuse themselves

Where this debate is concerned, I would like all the attorneys who are members of parliament to refrain from speaking in this debate or voting. Whether or not they have defended murderers who are in jail, they should excuse themselves from Parliament on that day. Members of parliament who have constituents who are murderers and are in jail or on the list of the '10 most wanted' should also excuse themselves. I do not want these members to speak in this debate with relatives and friends of these murderers glaring at them from the Strangers' Gallery.