It is hardly a surprise that the majority of the members of the House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to retain capital punishment.

It is likely that the same will happen in the Senate when the issue reaches that chamber for a conscience vote.

However, nothing fundamental has changed with the vote, except that members of parliament (MPs) were able to engage in a kind of emotional free-base, the public became charged and the Government was afforded a bit of breathing space, to continue to do little about the problem of crime in Jamaica.

Oh! The Government and the Opposition might eventually contrive - although we doubt that will happen - to amend the Constitution to eliminate the Pratt and Morgan rule that executions must be completed within five years or death sentences be commuted to life imprisonment.

But, even if that happened a year or two down the road, the time it would take to push the constitutional amendment through Parliament, there would be precious few executions in Jamaica. For there will be relatively few convicts to hang. And that is not because of a major reduction in murders in Jamaica.

A farce

Rather, the capital punishment debate has largely been a farce, with substantial energy focused entirely on the wrong issue. The country would have been better served if MPs, and particularly the members of the Government who have the responsibility, had spent their time trying to figure out how to catch criminals - particularly the murderers - at which we do a particularly bad job.

Indeed, as we have noted in these columns previously, Jamaica has among the world's highest murder rates - over 60 homicides a year for every 100,000 citizens. Or, each year, nearly 1,600 people are murdered in Jamaica.

It is not unreasonable, in the circumstances, that people are frightened and demanding action. Politicians chose to offer them froth and ephemera. Or, perhaps, a kind of Crown and Anchor or three-card trick.

The point is, of all the people murdered in Jamaica each year, the police claim to clear up perhaps 40 per cent, that is, they supposedly identify a suspect.

Generous to the authorities

So - and we believe the estimate is generous to the authorities - 60 per cent of the murderers go free. Of the 40 per cent of the 'cleared-up' cases, only a handful, and usually after several years, even reach to court, where a great proportion of the indictments fall apart. Convictions are few.

Logic doesn't suggest the failure to hang is the problem. People can kill with impunity, for it is unlikely that they will be caught and brought to justice.

It is a shame that the hot venting at Gordon House did not, with any substance, address this issue; or how the Government intends to fix the problem of crime prevention and detection; or how effective policing would be juxtaposed against social interventions and policies to drive sustainable economic growth. Neither did we hear about short- and long-term strategies to fight crime. They just talked.

It is not too late to begin to think - maybe for the Government to begin to bring some coherence, and feasible ideas, to a complex issue. Leadership demands more than playing to the gallery.

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