Editorial | SOE lobby lacks robust, intellectual defence

No one will be surprised by Thursday’s ­imposition by the Government of a state of public emergency in the parishes of Clarendon and St Catherine, following the one that has been in place in the western arc of St James, Hanover, and Westmoreland for the last four months.

They, obviously, have become the Holness administration’s default policy and tactical and operational response to Jamaica’s crime problem, which the prime minister declared could be the case for up to seven years. Further, both the political executive and the security forces insist that they are effective in reducing crime, especially homicides.

Moreover, the police commissioner, former army general Antony Anderson, may have foreshadowed the latest declaration in a speech on Wednesday in which he touted the efficacy of an early imposition in St James, lasting more than a year, during which time murders in the parish declined by more than 70 per cent, from 342 in 2017 to 102 in 2018.

“As soon as it stopped the last time, the numbers went up again,” General Anderson said. According to the police chief, homicides in the parish have moderated since police and soldiers were again given emergency powers at the end of April. Clearly, he, and the Government expect the same to happen in Clarendon and St Catherine, where murders, so far this year, are 66 and 91, respectively.

It is on the back of such assumptions that Mr Holness proposes the use of these special powers as the tripwire against crime over the longer term in the hope of suppressing homicides to the regional average of 16 per 100,000, or 500 murders.

The prime minister may well be right, as may be General Anderson in his declaration on Wednesday that “all numbers say that the SOE is effective”. What neither has offered, nor have the other ­champions of this use of this policy or strategy, is a deep, full-throated analysis of what elements of states of ­emergency are effective and how they are deployed.

Indeed, what the public mostly sees and associates with declarations of states of emergency is the heavy concentration of police and soldiers in communities. That makes residents feel safe. Moreover, it is likely to be a deterrent to crime, given the fact that the proximity of law officers increases the likelihood, or perception thereof, that persons who commit crime will be caught.

However, it doesn’t need the declaration of a state of emergency, and the engagement of this constitutional instrument, for the police chief, if he so wished, to concentrate the 12,000 members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force on a single street corner. That would be an operational decision of which, by law, he is in sole charge.

BREACH OF RIGHTS

However, there is another, and more critical, element of emergency powers. That is, the authority it affords to infringe on some of the fundamental, constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms of citizens during periods of public emergency. These include protection from arbitrary search of person and property, freedom of communication, and the right to be taken before a court forthwith in the event of arrest.

During states of public emergency, persons can, and often are, detained for extended periods. These rights are the fundamental tenets of democracy. Their abrogation, when contemplated, should be in the most extreme of circumstances, and only to the point “reasonably justified” to deal with the situation and for the preservation of a democratic society.

That is why this newspaper is concerned that there has been no periodic offer and disaggregation of data on the number of persons arrested and/or detained under the states of emergency, for how long, and for what offence, as well as the specific effect these detentions have on crime, and how/why. This analysis should be contrasted against, as well as in ­conjunction with, the deterrent effect of having boots on the ground. The point we have looked for, and not heard, is a robust, intellectual defence of the use of these states of emergency as Jamaica’s prime crime-­fighting policy.