Ian Boyne, Contributor
OUR FAILURE to master some elementary rules of reasoning and argumentation shows up most painfully in the current discussions on tackling crime. People seem trapped in the either-or thinking which stultifies their thought process, with the result being that we the law-abiding citizens are bitterly divided, while the criminals and terrorists are establishing their one order.
I am annoyed when, in the face of our galloping murder rate and profound security crisis, people keep talking largely in terms of long-term solutions. As a progressive, I have constantly pointed to the limitations of capitalist development per se to solve our underlying problems of poverty, inequality and underdevelopment, which provide the feeding ground for crime. No journalist has stressed values and attitudes more than I have.
So nobody needs to lecture me about the fact that tough policing in itself, or used as the major strategy for fighting crime, will be a colossal failure. If we don't deal with some of the critical underlying problems of crime - weak family life structures and unhealthy socialisation, high unemployment, poor schooling, gnawing inequality, political tribalism and victimisation as well as a crude consumerist, hedonistic philosophy - we will never manageably contain crime. If we shoot down or lock up all the dons and young 'shottas' today and produce the largest number of tough cops in the world, our inequitable social conditions would breed more criminals tomorrow. No one needs to tell me that.
WE NEED SOLUTIONS
But what the ostriches who are on the air and in the press need to realise is that we need some solutions today, not tomorrow, next week or next year, when we have enough money to put in place the social and economic projects which will ameliorate the crime-breeding conditions. We don't have time for all the churches and do-good organisations to reach all the people to instil in them proper values and attitudes. There are things which need to be done today, right now, this minute.
Of course, we must not panic and take actions which can worsen the situation. Of course not. But, nor are we likely to get rid of all the corrupt politicians and corrupt cops right away and be able to replace them with sanitised, born-again, Jesus-loving cops. There is no utopia which is at hand so we have to do the best with what we have - and now.
What must be done now? Take Spanish Town. You really mean to tell me that the police force doesn't know who the main perpetrators of the crime are?
I am neither a police officer nor do I live in the area, but I can give you the names, except for the restrictive laws of libel (and some might say common sense!)
One big problem the police face is that even if they take in the criminals behind the terrorist attacks, they will be forced to let them go after a couple of days, for which fool is going to be witnesses against them and continue to live in Jamaica? Remember, too, that you can't even go to the United States, Britain or other places in the world for these criminals have their international connections and you will be 'dusted' just the same.
The police face some serious challenges. First, if they attempt to rush any of these perpetrators in their homes, or any of the homes of their multiple concubines, the community will be in uproar about 'injustice' and 'police brutality' and CVM and TVJ will be salivating over the hot news, giving the limelight to the three-quarter naked women and loud-mouths yelling for justice.
HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS
If the criminals fire on the police and the police take them out, then the human rights groups will be issuing statements condemning the rise in the numbers of police killings, and the Police Commissioner will dutifully remove them from front-line duty and imprison them to shuffle papers at the office.
But, if the police even take in the perpetrators, they are well-heeled enough to hire the finest lawyers who will be able to get them off easily, perhaps with you and me as taxpayers paying them for 'false arrests'.
And they don't even have to pay the well-known lawyers, for if they are ruthless and dog-heart enough their record of terror will speak eloquently and will be enough to ensure that no one dare come forward to give evidence. This is not a call for executions, but a highlighting of the real challenges of policing in Jamaica.
INCOMPETENT POLICE
I am not letting the police off the hook. Many in the police force strike me as criminally incompetent. Listen to them speak on the talk shows after a horrifying murder or set of murders. They seem to know not one striking thing about the situation or what could have led to it. They are most of the times clueless. How can you be a police officer in a small society like this where people can't keep their mouths shut and you don't know what the hell is happening in your police division? There should be regulations requiring the firing of police officers who display unwarranted ignorance about happenings in their division.
When I hear them on the radio I am not surprised that the clear-up rate of murders is so atrociously low. There are criminals walking about in various inner cities in Jamaica with big guns like umbrellas, while there are droves of policemen uptown harassing citizens about insurance papers and seat belts. Are we serious or what? We know where the hot spots are, so why can't they be adequately patrolled?
The criminals in the inner cities have come to understand that the police force has become soft. In any shoot-out with criminals it is the police who are going to be under trial and suspicion, not the criminals. In fact, if they were smart they would provoke more encounters with the tough cops so those cops could be removed from front-line duty. But then, some of them are really smart and calculate they might not live to tell the tale!
Opening up factories, community centres, and having more social intervention programmes will not stop the violence right now in Spanish Town, Jungle, Tower Hill, and Waltham Park. Yes, those things are needed but I want to hear more discussion about what we do now, today, this minute. The high-flown discussions on the talk-shows are all fine and good. But why not throw in some discussions about what should be done now, while we are waiting for the jobs, the implementation of the education task force report, justice reform, detribalisation and the social advancement of the oppressed?
Tough policing is not a panacea. But there are some warlords and 'shottas' in Jamaica who only understand the language of force and fear, and these must be utilised. There is the foolish rejoinder that 'tough policing has never worked'. Of course, it has never worked because it has never been combined with the fundamental reforms which are needed to accompany tough policing. Force has been used indiscriminately and recklessly against innocent people, with the result that most inner-city communities are alienated from the police.
CORRUPT COPS
There are a number of men who should be kicked out of the police force for their indiscipline, poor anger management and corruption. Too many are both incompetent and corrupt. They harass innocent youth and assume every poor young person is a criminal. Some of these fools have drained the credibility of the police force and have made it so difficult to gain the confidence and respect of communities, without which it is impossible to fight crime.
The problem with the bleeding-heart liberals is that they are so one-dimensional and have this one-size-fits-all thinking. They generally don't exhibit the kind of nuanced thinking which is called for when discussing dilemmas. So they pit one thing against the other. And they are contradictory. One the one hand, they say tough policing doesn't work and give statistics to prove that, and on the other they admit that the crime problem has been worsening over the last couple of years, the same time that the tolerance for tough policing has declined.
THE USA EXPERIENCE
The United States' experience of containing crime is very instructive. Many of the liberals talk about the dramatic reduction in crime in New York and other large cities in the U.S. but don't know what's behind that. I have just finished reading Henry Ruth and Kevin Reitz's The Challenge of Crime: Rethinking Our Response (Harvard University Press, 2003). I recommend it to every bleeding-heart. The book demonstrates empirically that crime rates soared up to the mid-1970s when liberal views prevailed and have been coming down with the conservative backlash which has emphasised a tougher approach to criminals and greater victim rights.
ZERO-TOLERANCE POLICING
In 1997 the University of Maryland published a report commissioned by the National Institute of Justice titled Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, and What's Promising. Two things which were identified as working were: "Increased police patrols in 'hot spot' neighbourhoods and some zero-tolerance policing techniques, including proactive arrests of known serious offenders."
The book points out that "the crime wave of the 1960s and early 1970s overlapped with an extraordinary period in which punishments for crime were lightening - numerous laws and court decisions were reining in the authority of police officers, creating new rights for criminal suspects. As society was becoming more lenient in its attitudes, serious criminality was escalating disturbingly." The American society got fed up and fought back the liberal agenda.
Since the mid-1970s there has been "a relaxing of the legal regulation of policing which has allowed police more latitude in stopping and searching citizens, in making formal arrests, in interrogating suspects and the enactment by Congress and state legislatures nationwide of numerous laws increasing the severity of criminal punishments." The problem of fighting crime in Jamaica is not just a matter of resources and equipment.
It is a problem of the will to go against the bleeding-heart liberal agenda which is dominant in the media. I am relieved to see that my esteemed colleague Claude Robinson agrees at least that "In too many instances, noisy complaints of police abuse are reported without the scepticism that journalists are supposed to have about all news sources," as he says in an otherwise unbalanced article in the Sunday Observer last week.
America's most noted conservative criminologist, Harvard University's James Q. Wilson, wrote in his book Thinking about Crime: "Wicked people exist. Many people ponder our reaction to wickedness as a cue as to what they might profitably do. We have trifled with the wicked, made sport of the innocent and encouraged the calculators. Justice suffers and so do we all."
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can send your comments ianboyne1@yahoo.com or infocus@gleanerjm.com.
