John Spencer (centre), manager at Alumina Partners Jamaica Limited, accepts his Gleaner Silver Pen Award from Jenni Campbell, managing editor at The Gleaner Company. Looking on is Garfield Grandison, The Gleaner's editor-in-chief. The presentation ceremony was held yesterday at the newspaper's central Kingston offices. - Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer

John Spencer, Gleaner Silver Pen awardee for the month of June, wants all persons over the age of 18 fingerprinted, in an effort to fast-track the national DNA and fingerprinting database and improve detection.

Spencer, who penned a letter to the editor in June titled 'Jamaica has been hijacked, we must take it back!', said this could be one of the solutions to the country's growing crime problem.

"If I know that I am going to be caught, it would deter me from going out and committing a crime," Spencer told The Gleaner.

While conceding in his letter that fingerprinting every Jamaican could be a serious human-rights breach, Spencer said "we are already virtual hostages in our own homes with curfews that have been imposed by the criminal elements among us".

Inconvenienced

He added: "We must be prepared to be inconvenienced if we are to redeem this country and return it to its rightful and deserving owners."

Spencer, who is a manager at Alumina Partners of Jamaica Limited, said the nation needs to recognise that it cannot be business as usual and urged the authorities to move speedily to implement measures that will curb the crime problem.

"We must begin to accept that our country has been hijacked and we must, therefore, endeavour to take it back," he said in his letter.

Spencer continued: "We must get to the point where we acknowledge that much of our rights and freedoms have been taken from us by the lawless factions among us, and that to recover these rights and freedoms we must devise strategies that might, in the short term, make us uncomfortable."

The Silver Pen Award is presented each month to the writer whose letter to the editor is ascribed the 'Letter of the Day'. All such letters are rated and the top scorer wins the Silver Pen Award.