Gordon Robinson, Contributor

Don Robotham's latest prescription from afar to cure the ills he helped to breed has overstepped incredulity and entered the bounds of lunacy. Last Sunday's piece, misleadingly headlined 'Security and human rights', instead contained recipes for totalitarianism, insecurity, arbitrary and widespread abuse of human rights, panic and chaos. He must have been drunk.

If the article had been written by someone born in the 1980s, or by someone who was an adult in the 1970s but an illiterate spectator, I might be prepared to be more understanding. But this is written by one of the chief architects of the Gun Court; The Suppression of Crimes Act; The State of Emergency; and, last but by no means least, the attempt to legalise indefinite detention.

New, different crime wave

Why is it that so-called educated persons believe that we can repeat the same nonsense and somehow get better results? Is it because this crime wave is 'new' and 'different'? Or is it that Don Robotham is so blinkered by his own involvement in the 1970s that he just cannot absorb the lessons of that time?

To begin with, his passage above does not even go near to identifying the problem, much less giving a solution. The 'problem' that he thinks he has addressed is not one of crime prevention, it is a problem of crime-solving. And, if we had a professional and honest police force, we would not have the problem.

Corrupt police force

Only our unprofessional and corrupt police force arrest persons BEFORE the case has beenthoroughly investigated and they are ready to go to trial. Elsewhere, when one is arrested, it is because there is already enough evidence to lay a charge and the police ought to need no more than, say a day or two (the legal limit is 48 hours, not 12), to try and tie up the case in a neat package with a confession. If the case takes a year to investigate, no one should be arrested in the first year.

In any event, you will not prevent crime by sweeping up 'the usual suspects' after a crime wave is already upon us. It's time we MUST understand and learn that violence begets violence and thus cannot be a tool of crime prevention. This is why this police commissioner's initiative to reduce the police's firepower is a welcome move. A citizenry whose human rights are intruded upon becomes a sullen, resentful, hostile, angry mob unlikely to work with the police. This is a certain recipe for increased crime, not reduced crime.

Programmes

Surely, there is a politician somewhere prepared to admit that our crime problem cannot be solved during the term of the current government, but programmes can be put in place to ensure that it does not continue forever.

What we are doing now, including Mr Robotham's endorsement of the inane policy of intrusion on fundamental human rights, is ensuring that the problem will never get any better.

Can any of us imagine what a police force capable of the Braeton Massacre will do with the power to (in Mr Robotham's words) "remove ... persons from the communities for a while ... by administrative purposes ..." Would that include the handing out of blank detention orders to police by the minister of national security so that policemen could arbitrarily fill in the names of their competition for ladies' favours? Or persons who irritate them for any reason? I wonder if Robotham would be happy with his children being detained 'preventatively' without rights, simply for being at a noisy paid party one Friday night?

US ruling

But it gets worse. From his perch of peace and safety from whence the United States Supreme Court has just ruled that even alleged terrorists are entitled to the fundamental right of habeas corpus, Robotham relieves himself of this fetid argument: "There can be no doubt that preventive detention is a breach of human rights. This needs to be openly and clearly admitted up front. The issue is whether you are willing to give up some habeas corpus rights in order to protect the very foundation of the rule of law in Jamaica. In every country, the rule of law in the final analysis rests on the monopoly of the use of force by the state."

This has to be the product of a diseased mind. This is why I say, out of deference to Robotham's eminence and education, that he must have been drunk when he wrote this. My Dear Mr Robotham, there is NO MORE BASIC FOUNDATION OF THE RULE OF LAW than habeas corpus rights!

Argument brainless

The argument that this must be given up by anyone is so bankrupt, so completely without merit, so empty of logic, reasoning, or common sense, so brainless that it must come from the perspective that totalitarianism is the way to go. And that would be Robotham's prescription for us in Jamaica while he remains safely ensconced in the 'land of the free and the home of the brave'? Good grief!

Since everybody in the country, from the prime minister, through to the leader of the Opposition, down through Don Robotham to our media and educators, seem to have taken leave of their senses, let me go through this one more time (I have written on the subject in the past ad nauseam) slowly:

(1) We must begin with the Sherlock Holmes Principle. Eliminate the impossible and what's left must be the solution.

(2) We have established, by our experiences in the 1970s with the Gun Court; Suppression of Crimes Act; Indefinite Detention, etc, that lessening citizens' rights in order to 'fight' crime does not work. This is impossible as a solution, so be like Holmes and just have the courage to throw it out.

(3) Fighting violence with violence does not work. We have proven that too. Decades of 'cowboy' policing, as exemplified by the great Joe Williams, 'Trinity' (in his first incarnation); 'Bigga' Ford, Reneto Adams and many others have left us with a worse crime situation than when they began their individual and collective efforts.

Christian response

We say we are a Christian country, but are we really? When the chips are down will we believe Jesus who teaches that love is the answer? Of course not!

If we can send Reneto out to curb crime at the point of an M-16 rifle, who the heck needs Jesus? Let's follow that modern guru of peacekeeping, George W. Bush, who has a plan to bring peace and democracy to the Middle East by bombing Iraq, Afghanistan and whoever else will not agree with him until they all decide to live in peace and harmony with each other and, most important, America.

Stop, look, listen and learn. Violence will not solve the crime problem. That's another in the 'impossible' column - throw it out.

(4) So, what's left. Well, there's always education. Yes, if we address that problem comprehensively, it might take a generation or two to have a meaningful effect, but it will have a meaningful effect one day. So why not divert some of the money used to build and fund armies to education instead? Or why not use some borrowed funds seriously to transform education?

(5) Hey, look here, there's social intervention. Not the type Robotham is talking about whereby you first storm the community and sweep up people's children for indefinite detention and then come in with your social services while the relatives and friends of the detained are jumping up and down in front of the TV cameras screaming "WE WANT JUSTICE!"

Social intervention

Not that type. I'm talking about the unconditional type - the type of social intervention that can be seen as an alternative to the dons. I'm talking about improved infrastructure (not just toilets), including community centres in which the citizens can take pride; a concentration on skills training followed by easy-to-get small business loans at single-digit interest rates (subsidised, if necessary, to woo the law-abiding inclined away from the stranglehold of the dons); and, of course, first-class educational prospects available everywhere based on genuine skills assessments (not GSAT) so that everyone benefits not just the academically inclined.

(6) Then there's the modernising and cleaning-up of the police force. Let's talk priorities here.

Computerisation

We will never have a police force worth having until it is totally computerised. The police must have the ability to investigate crimes without having to beg community members to be informers.

Computerisation is the answer. In every crime, if you can follow the money, you can solve the crime.

Every gun has an origin; every criminal spends money somewhere along the line of his criminal intent. We must have the computerised ability to track crime; to track financing of crime; to utilise modern forensics and to properly categorise and analyse crime. We must spend the money and install closed-circuit TV on public thoroughfares and intersections. This constant begging for 'informers' is passe. Still, every beat cop will have his 'stoolies', but that will be between the cop and the stoolie and not be the subject of a public campaign of begging for persons to inform.

(7) Finally, there's the issue of EXAMPLE. Leaders must lead by example. If we are saying we want a violence-free Jamaica, we must be prepared to lead the way by giving up our guns. We must disarm the citizenry, thus eliminating one potential source of violence, and the first to voluntarily give up their guns must be our political leaders.

We must put a stop to this stupid licensing of firearms by corrupt cops, as it only opens up two more avenues for criminals to get guns. One being from the licensing authority itself and the other by relieving law-abiding licensed firearm holders of their guns.

(8) On the subject of example, we must dismantle the garrisons. How? Elementary, my dear Watson. Politicians must lose elections rather than have any dealings with known dons. We must insist on a constitutional amendment to force members of Parliament to live in their constituencies. Housing allocations and contract awards must be undertaken by independent commissions in the same way that one was created to clean up the electoral system.

No quick fix

So, there you have it - a simple prescription for the reduction of crime in the next 25-50 years or so if we start now. There is no quick fix.

My deepest wish is that our leaders (including scholarly leaders like Don Robotham) immediately cease this pretence that we can quell crime this year. The elements we must embrace to reduce crime this century are education; social intervention; police upgrade and modernisation; and example.

The elements we must exclude from the mix are abuse of human rights, violence and expediency. Those latter elements will ensure that our grandchildren will still be having this identical conversation 100 years from today.

Who will lead the way? Will our political leaders stop asking us to embrace ill-conceived inconveniences while they suffer none, or will they stand up and agree to be the first to be inconvenienced? Or, as usual, will we continue to run around in ever-decreasing circles until we disappear up our own behinds?

'Round and round the cobbler's bench

The monkey chased the weasel,

The monkey thought, 'twas all in fun

Pop! Goes the weasel.'

Which do we want to be? Monkey? Weasel? Or cobbler? Think on it and instruct your member of Parliament accordingly.

Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law.