Prime Minister Golding, unsurprisingly, was exasperated last week with those people who fail to recognise a grave crisis, even though daily it stares Jamaica in the face.

"I listen to some of my friends in the human-rights organisations," Mr Golding confided to journalists at a Jamaica House briefing, "and I get the sense that what we really ought to do is go in with some powder puffs and (that) we really ought to engage these people to persuade them that they must really stop the killing."

This perspective from Mr Golding, we believe, has the support of a significant number of Jamaicans, even if many will hold the view that the initiatives outlined by the prime minister do not go far enough.

New laws

These measures include extending the period for which a person can be legally detained on suspicion of involvement in a crime, or to prevent one, from 24 to 72 hours, still well shy of the 28 days that had been floated by administration officials.

At the same time, the law will be changed to deny bail, for up to 60 days, to persons charged with serious crimes such as murder, treason, serious firearm offences and arson of a home or extortion.

The same regime will also apply to persons who have previous convictions for drug trafficking, kidnapping, sexual assault or the intimidation of witnesses and others involved in court cases. Additionally, murder convictions will be allowed by qualified majorities of juries.

The administration also wants judges to get tough with sentences and to impose longer periods before persons convicted of serious crimes are eligible for parole.

Civil liberties advocates, in particular, have been angry with Mr Golding, seeing the planned adjustments to regimes for detention and bail as an affront to the age-old ideal of habeas corpus - this bulwark against the presumptive right of the state to lock away individuals that is critical to the concept of individual freedom and, ultimately, democracy.

Sense of impunity

Hardly anyone, of course, will out of hand dismiss any reasoned and reasonable concerns raised by the prime minister's critics on this issue. However, no debate on the matter can be conducted without the context of the crisis within which Jamaica finds itself and the country's ability to create systems to prevent an abuse. Each year, nearly 2,000 Jamaicans are murdered in a homicide rate of over 60 per 100,000. Extortion, shootings, rape and robbery, too, are rampant. There is a sense of impunity about criminality in Jamaica.

Hoping to uproot hard men of violence

As the person who is accountable, Mr Golding does not have the option of operating a single track. He has to understand the need for the social interventions, as well as the need for short-term action to bring a level of normality in society; which is what these measures are largely about.

Hopefully, the individuals against whom there may be intelligence, if not immediate hard evidence, can be removed from communities for a time, so their absence may provide critical space for law enforcement and other means to encourage social order and a growth of public confidence and support for the law.

In this kind of environment, and in an absence of the intimidation of witnesses, it may be possible to build the kinds of cases that can stand up in court. At least, we hope it happens that way. Mr Golding's initiatives should get a decent try.