CRIME IS stalking the streets again and while we debate whether the violence is political, which much of it obviously is, or drug-related, nature knows only the cold reality of death, earth waiting for the sharp edge of shovels to dig the graves. Eleven killed, eight wounded in a 72-hour period, not on some foreign battlefield but on native soil in the Corporate Area and Spanish Town.
And this is on top of the violence in the Kintyre area of Papine where, under the eyes of the security forces, residents have been fleeing as fire-bombings destroy their houses.
With each killing the general population becomes more desensitised, more dehumanised characterised by Monsignor Richard Albert as a culture of death descending deep and deeper into a Dantean inferno of self-destruction. And this is tragic contrast to the bounties of the landscape in which we live, perhaps the most beautiful and fecund in the world.
We note that many of the victims and perpetrators have degrading aliases or nicknames. In an alleged shoot-out with the Crime Management Unit last weekend, two brothers died, one known as 'cat' and the other as 'dog' which gives a cruel twist to the saying, "every dawg have him day; every puss him four o'clock".
Nor can we take much comfort from statistical reports indicating declines in the level of crime since the latest initiative was launched last December; nor from official suggestions that we can expect each crime fighting initiative to run its course. After which, we presume, violence will peak again until a new initiative is launched.
This would condemn us to live from one emergency to the next, a cycle of hope followed by despair which must eventually wear down the human spirit and derange the national psyche.
Some fundamental solution to the problem must be found and one step in this direction could be resuscitating the Jamaican justice system so that it can be seen as an effective and speedy alternative for those who now feel they have no alternative but to take the laws into their own blood-stained hands.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
