Earlier this month, the country was treated to the frightening spectacle, in Gravel Heights, St Catherine, of police assisting citizens in moving from their community from which they had been evicted by criminal gunmen.

The Officer in charge of the Division subsequently apologised for the 'poor police tactics' but still the people left, giving silent testimony to their belief that their Government could not or would not protect them.

This whole episode highlights once again the grave dangers that Jamaica faces in relation to our nation's security. Gravel Heights was not the first occasion in which communities of ordinary Jamaicans have been forced to flee their homes by rampaging criminals. Even as the Gravel Heights citizens were packing up and fleeing, five houses in Hope Flats in East Rural St Andrew were firebombed and numerous families forced to flee in the face of criminal terrorists. And we have seen similar events before countless times in Mountain View, in Western Kingston, in St James, and many other communities too numerous to mention.

Moving the boundaries

Some communities have been even more visibly and palpably fallen under the control of criminal organisations repelling with gunfire, efforts of the security forces to enter and enforce the laws of the Jamaican state. More recently we have been treated to the spectacle of criminal gangs issuing news releases and indicating for example, as happened in Spanish Town, that they had given no instructions for businesses to close. What we are witnessing here is the gradual, almost imperceptible moving of the boundaries of the State. In effect by the very act of publicly acknowledging their existence and underscoring their sense of their own power, these criminal organisations are demanding acceptance from the 'body politic' of their place in Jamaican society.

We have all become inured and complacent in the face of this criminal onslaught and the apparent ineluctable dismemberment of the Jamaican state. Thirty years ago, the country was appalled and outraged at the prospect of 500 murders in a year. Eight years ago we broke the barrier of l,000 per year. Now, again for the second year in succession we will surpass 1,500 murders per year, our collective resistance and outrage clearly sapped.

What are we to do? There is no apparent consensus uniting the society, including political parties, citizens groups, security forces etc., as to the way forward. It is true that a consensus has emerged between the political parties to accept the Report of the Strategic Review Panel on the way forward in Transforming the Jamaican Constabulary Force. Some useful and far-reaching proposals have been made which, if implemented, should go a far way to creating a more effective and respected constabulary force. Of necessity however, implementation of the review will be costly and complex and can only take place in the medium term. It is important that the Government and the country sustain their commitment to the implementation of the recommendations of the Strategic Review.

Also, we must continue to adhere to the fundamental principles of political non-interference, bipartisanship and transparency in the administration of the security forces which have guided reform efforts since the early 1990s.

The fact is, however, that these reform efforts and those involved in the equally important Justice Reform Programme will not put a halt to the current rampage of criminal marauders such as those in Gravel Heights and Hope Flats and elsewhere. The task facing Jamaica now is one which every small farmer understands; namely, if you slip off a track and start to tumble down the hill the first thing you have to do is stop tumbling. We need to stop the rampage and we need to stop treating our current predicament as if it is a normal situation to be dealt with by the standard law enforcement mechanisms of normal societies. We may not have reached the level of state failure of Somalia, or Haiti, but if we do not stop the current slide, it will be only a matter of time before we reach that point.

State of emergency syndrome

It is in this context that the country needs to examine the issue of the emergency powers provided for in the Constitution. It is quite apparent that the levels of distrust in Jamaica between Government and Opposition, between the people and the security forces and between the citizens and their leaders would make the utilisation of emergency powers a very difficult if not impossible proposition. To some extent, much as the United States was affected by a "Vietnam Syndrome" in which fears of repeating past errors prevented the external deployment of US Armed Forces overseas after their Vietnam debacle, we in Jamaica suffer from a "State of Emergency Syndrome" whereby memories of 1976 and the political animosities of the period, make us unwilling even to contemplate the utilisation of the emergency powers provided for in the Constitution.

Far from being a call for the declaration of a state of emergency, I am suggesting that the country would benefit from a discussion of the circumstances, and conditions which would warrant such a declaration. We would also benefit from a sober consideration of the administrative arrangements that would need to be put in place to ensure that abuses are minimised and widespread public support secured in the event that the use of Emergency powers is deemed to be necessary and appropriate.

Most of all, there can be no justification for covering our eyes and burying our heads in the sand. Moreover, it might well be better to use our emergency powers on a short-term basis and with limited geographical scope than to contrive legislative changes which over the long term might have a more detrimental effect on the basic civil rights of the population.

Emergency powers are designed for abnormal situations of extreme urgency. We need to determine when we have collectively reached that point. It should be equally clear however that emergency powers will not deal with the longer term issue of violence and disorder in Jamaica. Indeed, it is time we accept fully that the solution to violence in Jamaica is much more than a "policing problem", to be solved by the Constabulary.

There are two senses in which this is so. First, is the simple fact that the sheer extent of violent criminal activity is such that the existing security forces cannot solve the problem. Thus far, taking murder, shooting, rapes and robberies, almost 7,000 violent crimes have been committed. That is almost 280 violent crimes per hundred thousand of the population. This is phenomenal by international standards.

If one assumes that not all crimes are reported and that each perpetrator is operating as part of a like-minded group of people inclined similarly to violent behaviour, it becomes immediately apparent that we have in excess of 50,000 persons regularly inclined to violent behaviour. It is not possible for a force of 8,000 or even 12,000 to police them effectively and meet all its other responsibilities for maintaining order, especially given the extent of arms, organisation and social support available to the violent. At minimum, this will require the mobilisation among the law abiding to provide continuous support and assistance to the police and other security forces.

Brutal force

There is, however, another sense in which the problem of violence defies a simple policing solution. As we would do well to recall the 167th anniversary of the so-called Christmas Rebellion led by Sam Sharpe which effectively overturned the institution of slavery in Jamaica and the other British-ruled slave colonies, violence has had a long and tortured history in Jamaica's social reality. Slavery itself was an institution predicated on the sustained and arbitrary application of brutal force on the enslaved that constituted the majority of the population. That and the brutality surrounding the suppression of recurrent slave rebellions served to consolidate a deep sense of victimhood and injustice in what the famed psychologist Carl Jung called "collective unconscious" of the Jamaican people.

The abolition of slavery and subsequent developments relieved that situation somewhat, but not enough. Violence continued to permeate all our institutions and remained the main instrument of social control. Violence permeated the family, the schoolroom and the community; oftentimes women and children being regularly subjected to physical punishment. The resolution of disputes among ordinary people was marked more often than not by the easy resort to violence. Moreover, the casual resort to violence continued to be re-enforced by a stifling sense of injustice felt by most people who continued to experience violence in their daily lives and who in addition had to suffer in conditions of economic misery, voiceless and ignored by most institutions of state and society.

All this would suggest that the longer term solution to our problem of violent behaviour will require, in addition to police and judicial reform, a willingness to confront and transform our basic social institutions and cultural patterns. It will require a transformation in family relations, our educational system, our economic structures and our politics. This goes beyond simple social intervention programmes.

The truth is that crime and violence is both symptom and cause of a deep social crisis that besets us. The sooner we wake up to this fact the better off we will be.

Peter D. Phillips is an Opposition Member of Parliament and former minister of national security.

Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer
A resident of Gravel Heights, St Catherine moving out furniture under the watchful eyes of a policeman after receiving threats from gunmen to leave the area before the end of the day on Sunday, December 7.