Editorial | CMOC’s role in crime consensus

It would be useful if Prime Minister Andrew Holness explained his administration’s definition of consensus, and where and how he believes the political Opposition, and others, are, in this respect, falling short in responding to crime.

That clarity would help citizens to better pinpoint the Crime Monitoring and Oversight Committee (CMOC) and the National Commission on Violence Prevention (NCVP) in the Government’s anti-crime efforts, thereby establishing better measures for their achievements, and what more, or new, might be needed to fulfil Mr Holness’ wish. Or it could be that they conclude that what is expected of the entire enterprise is entirely unrealistic, and that the process is in need of recalibration. All Jamaicans who feel the effects of crime have a stake in this matter being honestly addressed.

Indeed, our crisis of criminal violence is well known. More than 1,400 people are murdered on the island annually, or around 50 killings per 100,000. That is one of the world’s worst homicide rates. More than 70 per cent of these murders are committed with guns, but many people who are shot do not die. Up to August 19, for example, in addition to 958 reported murders since January, there were 712 persons injured from 753 shooting incidents.

That is part of the backdrop for the long-standing calls for crime to be moved beyond political partisanship and, in 2020, the launch of the CMOC to oversee what was described as a crime consensus agreement, signed between the Government, the political Opposition, and a raft of private-sector and civil society organisations. Central to that agreement is a range of policy and operations undertakings to be implemented by the Government, and objectively measured by CMOC.

DIFFICULTY

But, in recent remarks at a session of the NCVP, Mr Holness noted the difficulty of governments in democracies to do things unilaterally, and lamented Jamaica’s failure to achieve “political consensus” on crime.

“We’re attempting to reach consensus,” the prime minister said. “We have a framework in place; we have CMOC. But we haven’t reached genuine consensus on how to tackle crime.”

Mr Holness did not say what, from his government’s perspective, are the bottlenecks and barriers to consensus. He, however, hoped that once the NCVP does its work and the “political class” is “confronted with this factual set of data, recommendations and conclusions”, then they will come to “a reasonable understanding as to what we need to implement”.

The publicly known major disagreement between the Government and the political Opposition, and human-rights campaigners, has been the emergence, since 2018, of states of emergency (SOEs) as the administration’s preferred crime-fighting tool. But the SOEs, which allowed for infringement of constitutionally guaranteed rights, did not have sustained backing from the Opposition, which withdrew parliamentary support of the measures. Moreover, the Opposition supported constitutional challenges – which the Government lost twice – to how the SOEs were regulated.

It is unclear how the philosophical divide between the two sides on SOEs can be closed by the work of the NCVP, or if the issue was being referred to by Mr Holness in his speech. Indeed, it is expected that a significant part of the commission’s work will be reviewing social intervention projects implemented by the Government and NGOs to determine what worked and which were duds.

An analysis released this year by the Caribbean Policy Research Institute concluded that the Jamaican governments had over the previous decade spent J$387 billion on social interventions, with no evidence to indicate that they had worked. The initiatives were not subject to ongoing reviews or post-project assessments of their efficacy.

DELINEATE ROLES

The Government, in elucidating its crime strategy, and what consensus looks like in that context, should also delineate the roles of the NCVP and CMOC and how they might be expected to evolve.

That question, especially with respect to the CMOC, is significant, given the administration’s earlier signal – from which it retreated – that the committee had moved beyond its mandate and usefulness, as well as the prime minister’s remark about the absence of consensus. For, on the face of it, the CMOC, if appropriately engaged, is a good forum to govern the breadth of its membership for honest discussion of the issue raised by the prime minister.

Put another way, the CMOC has the capacity to be an honest broker between the Government and the Opposition, or the starting place for discussions beyond the very important scorekeeping of the things the parties have undertaken to do. The point is, inherent in the CMOC’s structure is flexibility. It can pivot to a variety of issues without impeding its top-of-the-line mandate. Which is what we assume the national security minister, Horace Chang, was whingeing about when he spoke of the CMOC “adopting their own policy”.

That evolution ought to be welcomed. It can be especially useful in the current circumstances. The committee, if it so chooses – which it should – can invite people with specific skills and experience to help in the proposed engagements. In this instance, we might consider former politicians who are over partisan hustings, but might retain influence with their respective parties. Perhaps the former prime ministers, P.J. Patterson and Bruce Golding, whose recent conversations suggested a search for common ground, are worthy of consideration.