- NORMAN GRINDLEY/DEPUTY CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
Bishop Hero Blair (left), head of the Peace Management Initiative (PMI), tries to comfort these two women from Jacques Road, during a tour of the volatile inner--city area on September 29, 2005. There has been a reduction of violence in the area for several months.
Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer
IT HAS been four years since the Peace Management Initiative (PMI) started its work in volatile communities across the Corporate Area and the results to a large extent have been positive.
Chairman of the PMI and Political Ombudsman Bishop Herro Blair says while the PMI's impact cannot be measured fully, it is evident that the PMI has helped to reduce murder.
"If the PMI had not gone into some of these communities where the perpetrators are, murders would be at a higher rate," he says.
Donna Parchment, the deputy chairman, agrees. She says the impact can be measured in the obvious changes in many of these communities, where murder has become abnormal in these once war-torn areas.
MURDER RATE DOWN IN MOUNTAIN VIEW
"Through the intervention by PMI, what we've been able to achieve is those people who are involved in conflict, talking about what has happened and determining that, perhaps, it's not necessary to kill to bring the number to a satisfactory level," she says.
Mountain View, a volatile community in east Kingston, is an example of a community that has benefited tremendously from the work of the PMI. The community was where the initiative first started its programmes, and the murder rate there has dropped significantly since it came on stream.
"When something happens and somebody is killed, it is noteworthy because it's not considered there any longer a norm," Ms. Parchment says.
Mountain View now has a community council that serves all the districts within that area.
The community members have been engaged in leadership development and institutions such as basic schools that were closed due to violence, have been reopened.
Ms. Parchment says the success has been similar in many of the other over 60 volatile communities with which the PMI works.
"We have dealt with the combatants, we have dealt with the community in general," she says. "We have dealt with the directly affected vulnerable groups and we have sustained our support, and that has helped the community to identify its own power and become a part of its own development process."
APPRECIATION FOR EACH OTHER
The chairman agrees. A part of PMI's success, he says, is the appreciation people now show for each other and their communities, "especially when their communities are polarised.
"You have the political divisions and all they see of each other is green and orange. And whatever moves in those communities ought to be green or orange, but when they meet, they understand," he notes.
In fact, it has been so good, he explains, that there are times when the community members solve their own problems without the help of the PMI.
Social worker and PMI board member Horace Levy agrees the PMI's impact has been positive, suppressing murder by some 15 per cent. But that reduction lasted for only two years, he notes, rising in 2004 and again in 2005. This period holds the record number of murders in Jamaica's history, accounting for almost 3,200 lives.
He says violence escalated during this period because there were some ordinary 'corner crews' that transformed into full-fledged criminal gangs. Mr. Levy says these gangs also assumed the role of police, taking action against other criminals and killing those who broke community code.
"So I'm saying, why has the crime jumped up in the last two years? It is because of the community-based gangs and actually in one or two communities, the whole community has moved in a criminal direction," he says.
But with a 25 per cent reduction in murders for the first three months of 2006, there have been simultaneously fewer murders in many of the communities in which the PMI operates. These include Rema and Rose Town, Greenwich Town, Whitfield Town and other communities that were rocked by gang violence up to late last year.
"I think we (PMI) contributed a bit. I'm not saying PMI has been the main contributor, I think the police work has been the principal contributor," he says. He credits the police with cracking down on the influence of a number of these gangs through effective community policing.
While the PMI's intervention has caused a downward trend in violence in many communities, murder is still high in some of these areas. There have been repeated calls from Bishop Blair, for a strategy to rid the communities of guns. More recently, the ideas of a gun amnesty and a truth and reconciliation commission have been thrown into the ring.
GUN BUY-BACK
"If PMI has been a failure in anything, I think we have been a failure in not addressing the situation (disarmament) directly because I believe in disarmament," Bishop Blair says.
He says a gun buy-back has to be looked at in a more meaningful way. If the idea is to work, he says, then all communities need to be disarmed. If that is not done then some communities will be left vulnerable.
"When you ask them to give up all their guns, you are saying to the PNP side or the JLP side in August Town that have their guns, 'Hey! Mountain View has given up all their guns, so why don't you go over there and control the gunless?'," he adds.
In supporting a gun amnesty, the PMI head argues, "If you get in a .38 (revolver gun) you can save six lives." He proposes that the guns be bought at higher prices than what they were originally bought for, and the gunman encouraged to use the money to establish a more legitimate livelihood.
But the deputy chairman had a slightly different view. She notes that buying back guns from criminals might not be as effective if money were given in exchange for a firearm. Instead, she says, people should be given positive and sustainable opportunities from which they can earn money.
Horace Levy says unless people feel the justice system can adequately protect them, a gun amnesty might not work. He supports Ms. Parchment's view that they should be provided with alternative resources to make a living.
"You set him up and he turns in the gun," he says.
However, none of these three PMI officials believes a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) can work in Jamaica, especially at a community level. TRCs have been set up in other countries across the world, such as South Africa and some other African states where political oppression and civil wars have been rife. Ms. Parchment argues that Jamaica's situation is different from these countries because of its size and the nature of murders committed here.
"We operate in 'If you can't catch qwaako, catch him shut' syndrome, and I'm not so sure we are going to be able to do what is required to move less than a million people (to where is it that we want be)."
