EDITORIAL - Farm thieves get free rein

In a recent survey of crime in Jamaica, nearly 14 per cent of those who had been victimised over the past year were farmers who had had their crops stolen. But when measured over the lifetime of the victims, the sufferers from praedial larceny jumped to approximately 23 per cent. This is no small thing.

For, as a 2007 analysis by the island's agriculture ministry indicated, theft from farms was valued at around $5 billion, or six per cent of the country's agricultural output. That is more than the turnover of many of the major firms listed on the Jamaica Stock Exchange, which would be teeming with fraud squad officers if they suffered pilferage anything close to this magnitude.

But, despite all the talk for most of the past decade about protecting farmers from thieves, the authorities have done very little about what is clearly a crisis.

In 2003, the Government specifically mandated the Island Special Constabulary Force (ISCF) to police the sector and to arrest the thieves who plague farmers. It was supposed to have been a zero-tolerance approach.

In the 89 months between February 2003, when the scheme came into force, and June 2010, the ISCF arrested 482 persons for suspected praedial larceny, for an average of 54.4 arrests per month, or around 0.17 arrests per day. By comparison, between January and July of this year only, the police arrested and charged more than 15,000 persons, or nearly 2,143 a month.

Clearly, arresting and prosecuting praedial thieves, despite the laments and complaints from the farm sector, has not, up to now, been a priority of the police. Indeed, even the statistics already cited, as bad as they are, overstate the consistency of effort by the ISCF.

Poor protection for farmers

For example, approximately a third (or 154) of all their arrests of praedial thieves was in 2008, when the figure jumped 285 per cent from the previous year's 40. The arrests slumped 63 per cent the following year, to 57.

There is no clear explanation from the authorities for this poor and inconsistent performance in protecting farmers, except, perhaps that the police have a generally bad record against crime - and because of a lack of resources that is offered by some members of the ISCF.

Farm theft, those in the business say, is perhaps the biggest deterrent to agriculture, which has great potential for creating jobs and adding energy to the Jamaican economy. It cannot be allowed to continue.

Hopefully, the unit now established in the agriculture ministry to coordinate the effort against praedial larceny will have success. The police, however, have to be convinced that it is a serious problem.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.