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By Rickey Singh |
Quite frequently, the criminal rampage compels priority headlines coverage, leaving Heads of Government and/or their National Security Ministers striking pathetic postures with warnings to criminals and assurances to victims that hardly generate public confidence.
By last weekend, Jamaica, with its unenviable reputation as the murder capital of the Western Hemisphere on a per capita basis, had recorded some 450 killings for 2005.
Trinidad and Tobago, which has an unequally unflattering profile as the "kidnapping centre" for ransom among hemispheric states, was revealing 105 murders and at least 18 known kidnapping cases already for the year.
Guyana and Barbados seem to be heading for third and fourth position respectively in the depressing criminal scenarios.
Whenever a populace, even one perceived as being numb to crimes of murder and armed robbery, is shocked and disgusted enough to scream outrage and fear, it is not unusual for government spokesmen to roar warnings of new and tough anti-crime strategies.
No surprise, therefore, that Prime Minister Patrick Manning felt compelled last week to threaten to "lock down" Trinidad and Tobago, if necessary, to systematically move against the criminals. He also warned of the re-introduction of corporal punishment for young convicted offenders.
The cynics may say that they have heard "that kind of talk before". A hard-hitting editorial in last 'Sunday Express', had this rather disturbing observation:
"From armed robbery to kidnapping, to murder, criminals have come to believe that they can do what they please; not simply because of police inadequacy, but because of the loopholes in bail procedures, the slowness of court operations and, indeed a prison system that seems not only to breed criminals but to facilitate criminal activity both on the inside and the outside..."
In Jamaica, the wastage of lives, many of them young people - as in Trinidad and Tobago - has resulted in some folks taking the law into their own hands, with dreadful consequences.
In two known cases, one suspected robber was beaten to death; and in another, two were hacked to death. Such 'jungle law' behaviour has outraged the human rights group 'Jamaicans for Justice'. Its president, Susan Goffe, has sternly warned: "This is not justice. It is mob murder... Bypassing due process of law eats away at the heart of the justice system..."
But there was a different and comparatively creative response from a group of deeply distressed mothers over the escalating killings of sons and daughters, many leaving behind children for whom others must bear the burden for their survival.
Under the leadership of mom Doreen Billings, these women have formed 'Mothers in Crisis' with the aim, as reported by the 'Jamaica Gleaner', to use their influence as mothers with first-hand experience in tribulations associated with the consequences of sons and daughters who have ran foul of the law.
The group is encouraging empowerment of mothers with ideas on how to get their loved ones back from crime - and in so doing, reduce the crime rate.
Expansion of witness protection programmes and independent monitoring by a civilian body of the operations of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) are among some new measures being pursued by the P.J. Patterson administration.
However, given the increasing interdependence of CARICOM states and cross-border crimes, the region's people are yet to be informed about creative collective responses to beat back the crime plague afflicting too many jurisdictions.
The Regional Task Force on Crime would know that criminal networking has expanded from the national to regional boundaries and that the need for greater and more imaginative anti-crime intelligence gathering is an imperative for most, if not all member states of the Community.
At the same time, we are often faced with conflicting complaints from some police services of shortage of manpower, technical and mobile resources; while, on the other hand, there are governments that point to significant beefing up of required resources but still confronted with poor anti-crime performances.
When the Association of Caribbean Commissioners of Police meet in St Croix this month for their annual conference, they should perhaps adjust their agenda to come forward with a collective presentation to the Community's governments of a report with proposals for a minimum set of priority initiatives to combat crime at the national/regional level.
Such an initiative could be a welcome departure from the traditional business of the Association