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A policeman searches a suspect.
Harold Crooks, Contributor
THE MUCH vaunted report of the National Committee on Crime and Violence (NCCV) represents a high watermark in the history of crime control in Jamaica as it has succeeded, for the first time since Independence, in forging formal bipartisan co-operation in crime control and criminal justice policy.
The NCCV's more important recommendations are to empower communities, rehabilitate inner cities and improve parenting skills; eliminate political tribalism, reform the police and focus on changing values and attitudes. It recommends also that politicians re-establish their moral standing as a legitimate base for political authority. There are, however, some grievous flaws and omissions, which serve to undermine the substance of their recommendations.
The committee's original report was "revised/watered down" to gain bipartisan support. Next, it did not employ the minimum methodological rigour which is necessary for committees engaged in advising the Government on the complex issue of the solutions to crime. It did not even accommodate independent oral presentations or written memoranda from researchers, experts, reformed criminals or victims and except for Hyacinth Ellis's research for The Wolfe Task Force on Crime, the deliberations lacked local researched information directly pertaining to crime. Its method was therefore "discussional" and we all know what that means.
Second, the mandate included several impossible tasks, the focal one being to recommend solutions to the causes of crime and violence which unfortunately embrace crimes ranging from rape, corporate fraud, tax evasion, wife-beating, robberies, stealing electricity, auto theft; violence from indecent assault to serious wounding; gun crimes and all manifestation of homicides ranging from crimes of passion, drug-related murders, retaliatory killings and murder for financial gain. It could more usefully have focused on a more manageable mandate such as gun and narco-crimes. This is what Peter Phillips, National Security Minister, is doing with much success.
Holy Grail
Next, its oft-repeated search for "root causes of crime" was like a quest for the Holy Grail. Logicians and other behavioural scientists pointed out that such glib cause-and-effect relationships cannot be discerned in the complex universe of human motivation and the infinitely wide diversity of behaviour proscribed by criminal law. So from the outset, due to its methods of enquiry and impossibly wide mandate its recommendation could only be an eclectic titbit of indiscriminate but extensive generalities.
Because the committee's report was revised by our politicians it was unrealistic to expect recommendations relating to the underlying structural aspects of our society, our characteristic ways of making a living and making history; creating wealth, issues of equity and social justice except to admit the obvious, that they are among the parties to be blamed for our predicament. Not having looked at these macro influences, the field remains wide open for the underlying socio-economic superstructures and historic inequities which perpetuate our highly segmented society to continue to shape and develop the contours of urban decay, inequality, violence and criminality. After all, in the face of massive expenditure to reduce poverty since 1989, the wealthiest households in 1999 increased consumption expenditure while the lower and middle strata have lost ground. (Survey of Living Conditions, PIOJ, 1999)
It is hardly conceivable how urban renewal with the private sector facilitating "specific projects or areas of actions" can generate a reversal of the sub-contracultural responses which have developed. The community-based anti-poverty programmes recommended, have their antecedents in the Chicago Area Project in the United States, and other parts of the world since the 1930s. They have had negligible effects at the best, after absorbing several billion U.S. dollars. With little exception, the committee's recommendation implies a view of man as a creature which feeds, consumes and exists and it is unfortunate that such a recommendation has emanated from a body proposing solutions to crime, as urban renewal should be undertaken for its own sake rather than to reduce crime.
Both the Nettleford and Stone reports have pointed to the Jamaicanisation of the Westminster model, the dictatorship of the Cabinet and a weak Parliament as more pertinent political factors associated with weak representation, pork barrel politics and its handmaidens economic castles, political garrisons, mushrooming inner cities arising from policies of territorial pauperisation of rural migrants. Again, in its devotion to the conventional wisdom of liberal prescriptions and neo-conservative approaches, the issues of debilitating social segmentation, restricted economic opportunities, social distance, wide income disparities and divisive social inequities are avoided. So our inner-city dwellers only need jobs (below the poverty line?) piped water, electricity they cannot afford, and "proper" values which they have discarded.
Again having noted the people's "clamour that there is no justice" the committee timidly expressed uncertainty about what this means and adopted the narrow view of the positivists that this means there is no confidence in the Criminal Justice System, instead of the encompassing reality that ours is not a just society. This same narrow and comfortable view was adopted during the months leading to Bogle's march on the Morant Bay Courthouse. History teaches us that we do not learn from history.
Again and again the committee wisely identified a core issue and shied away from thinking things through wherever this was leading. It said that reform of the police was stymied by their culture. But it mistakenly suggested that accelerated promotion, hiring university graduates, offering early retirement, reforming structures and the Jamaica Constabulary Force's strategic plans to increase managerial competence and forge better community relations, could have significant effect on our para-military police culture and its allied processes of socialising its neophytes in the principles of instinctive obedience forged in the aftermath of the Morant Bay Rebellion and sustained ever since. Having quoted Dr. Harriot's work on our police with approval, it conveniently disregarded the directions pointed to by the author of the most validated and authoritative study of our police.
To speak of the need to give whole communities a chance for a "fresh start" and to "redeem themselves" is an expression of an exaggerated and false perception of the criminality of whole communities. Many of our inner cities consist of a majority of people who resist committing serious crime in the face of overwhelming temptations not experienced by the grilled-in residents in the more comfortable zones of our outer cities.
Conflicting views
The committee seemed to attempt to accommodate the conflicting views of its members and ended up with internal contradictions. For example, the committee expressed concern for the "get tough" approach by the police who place "dubious or minor charges" on young offenders but, later, recommended that the police "get tough" on small and petty behaviour-linked crime such as loitering, vagrancy and most surprisingly, drunkenness. These offences of loitering and vagrancy disappeared with the repeal of the Vagrancy Act several years ago and the recommendation that the police begin to arrest people for being drunk is wisely being disregarded by the authorities.
While the committee could not be expected to address all aspects of crime prevention, it should have looked at the ailing juvenile justice sector including the dungeons at the Juvenile Correctional facilities at Stony Hill and Bamboo and the weak attempts to habilitate this captive and most amenable group to succeed in open society. This continuing failure is leading many of them to go on to "post-graduate studies" at the General Penitentiary. The committee's silence is thunderous since our juveniles are over-represented in our criminal statistics yet offer the greatest return on every paltry tax dollar spent on social crime prevention.
The committee's recommendations to introduce employment affirmative action to embrace the poor and marginalised communities is as innovative and challenging as it is difficult to implement without voluntary participation of the private sector. This measure should have been twinned with a programme of greater local productive investments by our private sector, instead of the mad rush to hold Government papers i.e. Treasury bills. Grace, Kennedy and the Matalons have quietly led the way in reinvesting in projects which create employment. Another example is the quiet and unheralded investment in the work of small artisans in our villages undertaken by people such as Joan McConnell at Worthy Park. This approach when linked to the Poverty Alleviation Programme (in its sixth year), the Jamaica Social Investment Fund, Inner-City Renewal Programme and the National Youth Service, though inadequate, is superior to private sector paternalism and the incremental ameliorism which is at the heart of the committee's recommendations.
With the value of hindsight extending over six years to evaluate the reasons for the failures of the Values and Attitudes Programme, this committee of eminent scholars, politicians and practitioners, before stating a few obvious homilies about the dangers of violence, merely recommended "more formalised curriculum-based emphasis on educating young people about the consequences of crime". Certainly, it could have been instructive to hear how the schools could surpass the obstacles of crimogenic and dysfunctional families and peer groups, hostile workplaces, some aspects of dance hall and cable TV watched by nearly twice the number of Jamaicans who voted in the last general election accompanied by the media with their separate agenda all of which frequently undermine society's core values. Education is a small aspect since young people absorb values like breathing air. Furthermore, a large proportion of our serious criminals are perfectly habilitated and make rational choices to enrich themselves, improve self-esteem and status given the remote possibility of serving time.
One slip here and our inner-city dwellers could resist this with a vengeance if they suspect this could undermine their legitimate alternative lifestyles and social diversity. Luckily, the Prime Minister has assigned this responsibility to a thinker who will need a lot of cash and a highly qualified staff to succeed and which can only be very marginal.
Our Prime Minister is to establish a National Commission on Crime; it is therefore hoped that the members will ask the right questions and provide relevant resources to people to whom such questions are posed.
Harold Crooks is a former Superintendent of the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
