Lewin

IMAGINE St William Grant Park, downtown Kingston, being transformed into a massive courtroom where politicians were called to plead guilty and cleanse their conscience; where they unreservedly bared their souls on the role they might have played in Jamaica's crime woes.

Commissioner of Police Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin thinks this would go a far way in helping to solve Jamaica's crime problems.

"We need to unburden ourselves of whatever part we have played historically, or may still be playing, that keeps these connectivities alive," Lewin said recently.

The commissioner was making specific reference to the historically troubled relationship between politics and crime.

Experts are, however, generally of the view that such exchanges would amount to a grand exercise in public relations.

"I don't think a truth commission would be the mechanism for politicians to talk about their primary or secondary role in creating the kind of political culture that fosters crime," Dr Jermaine McCalpin, lecturer in political science at the University of the West Indies (UWI), and expert in the field of truth commissions, told The Sunday Gleaner.

find other means

"We have to deal with the past and we have to know what happened, but I don't think the quality of information would be as rich if we expect politicians to come and bare their souls and then we collectively forgive or choose not to forgive," Dr McCalpin said.

Similarly, Anthony Harriot, senior lecturer in political institutions and methodology at the University of the West Indies, asserts there is no incentive for the politicians to do it.

"Criminals have been mixed up in our political system, but it is unlike in South Africa and other places where truth and reconciliation has worked. Where such a commission works is when people harbour real fear that they would be convicted in a court of law for murder, gun-trafficking and so on, and, therefore, have an incentive to tell the truth, which is quite unlikely here. I think we have to find other solutions to fight crime," Harriot told The Sunday Gleaner.

Commissioner Lewin had suggested that the link between politics and crime remained very strong and charged that that was one of the reasons the police had been experiencing difficulties in toppling organised crime.

"The kind of things necessary to deal with organised criminal networks and all their linkages requires cleansing on every side - unburdening oneself of the baggage we carry," Lewin told journalists recently.

In July, East Portland Member of Parliament, Dr Donald Rhodd, told Parliament that it should consider giving special privileges to persons who participated in any unburdening discussions.