EDITORIAL - Public-sector workers should face lie detectors

There has undoubtedly been, in recent years, greater effort and some gains by the Jamaican authorities to cure the problem of corruption in the island's constabulary and other sections of the country's security apparatus.

Indeed, the work of Mr Justin Felice, who heads the constabulary's Anti-Corruption Branch, is deserving of commendation. It is clear that Mr Felice has the support of the police commissioner, Mr Owen Ellington, who has continued, and built on, the programmes of his predecessor, Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin.

But while Jamaicans would have had a good sense of the dishonesty in the constabulary and elsewhere, few might have grasped just how pervasive a problem it is and the difficulty this poses for establishing systems to protect the country and its resources.

The WikiLeaks cables in which American diplomats in Jamaica report to their bosses in Washington, however, not only underline the depth of the problem, but should stiffen the resolve of the Government to deal decisively with the issue. The authorities, though, have to be honest with, and seek the support of, the Jamaican people for the necessary action.

One particular dispatch in January 2007 highlights the issue.

It disclosed that 70 per cent of police personnel selected for an Airport Interdiction Task Force, which was being pushed by the former national security minister, Dr Peter Phillips, failed lie-detector tests. The problem was the same with customs officers picked to join the team: only two of the initial seven who faced the polygraph machine were successful.

Polygraphs, of course, are not absolute in determining the truthfulness of an individual, but the tests are more than statistically reliable in discerning when people lie. It is for good reason that the process is used when persons are being vetted for sensitive positions.

In this regard, this newspaper believes that polygraph testing should be widely employed not only for persons seeking promotion in the security forces but across the public sector. And not only in cases where persons will occupy sensitive posts. It should be used as a matter of course, beginning at the entry level.

In our view, creating a culture of honesty, given Jamaica's special circumstances of high levels of real and perceived corruption, demands not merely an honour system. It must be underpinned by verifiable arrangements, of which lie-detector testing would be just one element.

There ought to be no tiptoeing around the issue.

Additionally, these arrangements must be supported by reforms that insist on greater accountability for public-sector employees, including managers.

For instance, as we have argued in the past, the police chief should have greater authority to fire senior officers on whom there may be credible intelligence of corruption, which is not provable in a court of law, or for the unchallenged retirement of such officers in the public interest.

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