Letter of the Day | Tackling crime requires collective approach

T HE EDITOR, Madam:

In 2021, 1,463 people were murdered in our beloved country, Jamaica. The problem of homicide is one that People’s National Party and Jamaica Labour Party administrations have wrestled with for years. It is a challenge that has marred the reputation and image of Jamaica in international circles.

The Andrew Holness-led administration has tried to fight crime and stem the murder rate in the country by deploying soldiers in some volatile and murder-prone communities. It would suffice to say that it is not fair to blame political leaders alone for the high murder rate in this country.

The Jamaican population is culpable in that we have created a ‘culture of violence’ through gun-violence lyrics, intolerance, reprisal, and the tendency to fight it out rather than talk it out in the face of interpersonal conflicts. In some cases, parents tell their boys who are at an impressionable stage of life to “kill them before others make an attempt on you”. There is also the issue of hard drugs influencing people to commit murder.

From the foregoing, it is an indisputable fact that politicians and the police alone cannot solve the murder problem in Jamaica. We need to take a number of measures such as: a new social engineering that repudiates and denounces violence; compulsory participation of citizens in disputes resolution starting from early childhood; serious Christian evangelisation movement in our communities and schools; provision of employment opportunities for the youth, and total prohibition of gun lyrics. The Government should identify and deal with criminological factors in the society.

Some people are calling for Jamaica to cease being a liberal democracy and become a benevolent dictatorship as a way of eliminating violent crime. This, to me, may not deter some people from committing murder. Tackling crime and attempting to stem murder rates require a multi-sectoral approach.

EVANGELIST UGOCHUKWU DURUEKE

Justice of the Peace