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Commentary>Jamaica in troubling times - Corrupted officials, gangs, tech-savvy deportees: Who to blame?Wilberne Persaud - Financial Gleaner Columnist |
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There is a seemingly rising tide of indiscipline and immorality. Course and uncouth behaviour in public spaces appear to be the norm.
People of all classes are generally loud and lewd; some gathering at street corners abuse decent, innocent passers-by; use indecent language; fight; show scant regard for, or courtesy to fellow users of the public thoroughfares; keep noisy nightly dance parties and balls, wakes, and 'revival' meetings without consideration for their neighbours.
Marriage is declining, illegitimacy and prostitution are on the increase; so too are drinking and gambling; while the belief in and practice of obeah remains widespread despite draconian laws sanctioning heavy fines, imprisonment and flogging.
The Jamaican people in some respects seem ungovernable.
What about the crime wave and gun killings you ask, and, surely, flogging no longer exists. Surprise, surprise - this is 'not' 21st century Jamaica.
The 'quote' above is from an absorbing book, In the Shadow of the Plantation - Caribbean History and Legacy, edited by Alvin O. Thompson, emeritus professor of history at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill campus.
The collection by Ian Randle Publishers honours emeritus professor Woodville K. Marshall. I commend it to readers wanting to understand where we are and how we got here.
Crime and Gun Violence
Authors Brian Moore and Michele Johnson describe conditions immediately compelling comparison with today's crime and gun violence. I changed the verbs to present tense. Conditions described are from the Daily Gleaner between 1875 and 1890 - a mere 120 years ago! Who, upon witnessing Dickens' London would have predicted modern day United King-dom? We haven't yet completely lost our way. There is still time.
Interesting thoughts aside, commentators cite garrisons as a major facilitating element in violence and murder. Gangs too, are blamed. Once gangs become an issue, marriage, child-rearing and family, grandmother-centred households with 'barrel children', migration and other socio-economic elements take their place among causes people identify.
Of course drugs running associated with geographical existence almost as an entrept centre for movement of contraband among producers, shippers and consumers provide a critical element in the mix.
Big Money Gains
Violent rivalries among illegal units of wealth accumulation and distribution loom large. Big money gains enable support of urban unemployed folk and payoff of corrupt officials.
Even with incorruptible officials, fear of and actual violence drugs running gangs unleash accomplishes the same purpose. Imagine an official told to walk round the block at midnight when an exchange is scheduled. He accepts half a million dollars to walk.
Imagine an incorruptible other.
He refuses, takes no money but is told his children attend a particular school normally traveling along a particular daily route. Actual violence is unnecessary, merely its credible threat. As a major chess grandmaster noted: a threat is perhaps more dangerous than its execution.
All these factors people believe help create the crime wave. Yet another on the outside lane gains in perceived importance: the comparatively recent phenomenon of criminal deportees. Convicted criminals, the story goes, deported from North America and the United Kingdom bring criminal technologies previously unknown, with ruthlessness and psychopathic amorality.
This I want to dispute. Data on this recent addition to our population are hard to find yet, from what I can discern the deportee may be getting a bum rap. Their age ranges from 25 to 40 years old. Fact is younger males commit most violent acts. Deportees, usually male, are 'repatriated' to Jamaica often after 10 or 15 more years abroad.
Gangs
Three issues arise immediately. They have no organic link to local gangs and for the most part are disoriented without a support system. They may be accepted in gangs but certainly could not command respect allowing major decisions to be made by them-they would be fryers. Finally, a 25 to 40-year-old male would find such positions untenable.
But how can someone born in Jamaica having left these shores between three and eight years old, having spent 10 to 15 years in an adopted country, often becoming a citizen, end up a problem for Jamaica having been convicted of crimes there? Some countries refuse to accept deportees under such conditions. We, unable to cope, are unwilling or unable to do likewise.
Mental Issues
From the little information available, some 40 to 60 deportees arrive from North America each month; about 500 from the UK each year. Those from the UK often present with mental issues. Generally, deportees have no family support locally.
Government or NGO groups must come to their assistance. This scheme of things seems outrageous. Primary nationality is an accident of birth. Why should Jamaica have to deal with problems it did not participate in creating?
In actual fact we passively accept another country's societal problems. Shall we jail these persons? Order probation? Re-house, and rehabilitate them? Can this be done? If we could, who pays the economic cost?
Upkeep for a US prisoner runs perhaps US$40,000 per annum. If we are forced to accept deportees - and it's not clear we must in all circumstances - can we request initial financial support, at minimum for the first year of rehabilitation?
Finally, instead of blaming deportees, without evidentiary support, for part of our crime problem, shouldn't we really make the data available so they can be independently analysed?