Editorial | Wanting more from Mr Shields

There is much to agree with in Mark Shields' analysis of the state of crime in Jamaica and how the problem can be fixed, including the need for a radical reform of what he deems to be a highly corrupt police force that is deeply resistant to efforts at its professionalisation.

In this regard, the Englishman, who has served as a deputy commissioner of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), highlighted the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), now the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), which had many of the problems of the JCF, as an example of what is possible. Strong oversight of the constabulary, Mr Shields believes, is important.

"There is an urgent need to capture a more progressive and robust approach to police accountability and governance issues, and focus on the enhancement of the role of a police authority to make policing more accountable to local communities," Mr Shields told his audience in his recent CIN Caribbean Lecture in New York City. That's a position often advocated by this newspaper.

There are, however, issues arising from Mr Shields' presentation that are in need of more robust analysis, including his strong support for declarations of states of public emergency in three regions of Jamaica - the parish of St James, the St Catherine North Police Division, and segments of Kingston and St Andrew - as part of the strategy to confront crime.

HOMICIDE RATES

These impositions have, at a cursory analysis, been enormously successful. For the first 234 days of this year, up to September 27, there were 953 homicides in Jamaica, a decline of 237, or 20 per cent, when compared with the corresponding period in 2017. In St James, murders dropped by two-thirds, to 73.

In the face of these numbers, it is understandable that states of emergency are very popular, making it difficult for anyone to be even mildly critical of the initiative, lest they be accused of being in favour of criminals and criminality, and against law and order.

We fear that many people - perhaps even Mr Shields - may well be conflating cause and effect to the longer-term detriment of civil liberties and the concept of policing by consent.

A declaration of a state of public emergency isn't, and ought not to be treated as, a trifling affair. It allows, during its period of enforcement, a diminution of rights and freedoms that individuals understand to be the core of liberal democracies, including the right of arrest and detention, without the need to immediately bring the detained persons before the court.

Indeed, it is not without good reason that the Constitution vests its declaration in the head of state for a limited period in the first instance and requiring special majorities in Parliament for its extension.

SUPPRESSION OF CRIMES ACT

There are no reports of a jackbooted use of these powers by the police, but we understand too well the dangers of the accretive development of culture in an enabling environment. The Suppression of Crimes Act was to have addressed an immediate crisis, but a generation and a half later, it defined the approach to policing in Jamaica. In the context of its use in an anti-crime initiative, you might have expected the state of emergency to be driven by intelligence, and quickly and surgically removing key figures in crime.

In the 10 months since the first state of emergency was declared, more than 4,000 persons have been detained, with apparently only a handful charged for serious crimes. There has not been a detailed disaggregation of this data. In these situations, the detainees tend to fit a specific profile.

A critical element of the operations under the states of emergency has been the massing of security forces in the affected communities. But allocating additional police and soldiers to a particular community is an administrative decision that requires no special powers that limit individual rights and freedoms. Against this backdrop, a useful analysis from the authorities would show the correlation with, and/or causation between, the states of emergency and drop in homicides as against the increased numbers of security forces in the areas where crime has fallen.

Perhaps the real lesson from this initiative is that given the size of Jamaica's constabulary, it is impossible to sustain in communities the number of police officers required to contain crime.