EDITORIAL - Tough sentences alone won't do

MOST PEOPLE, we expect, will welcome the harsher penalties as well as the new offences introduced into the law against human trafficking.

For our Government, this week's approval by the House of Representatives of the amendments is a signal to the United States that we are serious about the issue. We will, hopefully, now be rewarded by Washington with Jamaica, if not being completely removed, being placed in a lower-grade watch list of countries deemed not to be doing enough about the problem.

Broadly, we have no problem with the changes to the law, especially elements such as those that make it an offence to force children to be on the streets, as well as make it a higher order of crime when human trafficking is accompanied by violence with weapons, and if the victims suffer from physical or mental disabilities.

Our concern, in so far as there are any, is that Peter Bunting, the minister of national security, and the Jamaican Government do not confuse form and substance.

Application of penalties

In other words, in seeking to appear tough on human trafficking, they ought not to mistake the possibility of sentences of 20 and 30 years for offences under the law for the actual application of these penalties. For, having laws is one thing; their application is another. Jamaica tends to be good at the former; we suck at the latter.

What Bunting did not do in his parliamentary presentation - and the data is not readily available anywhere - was to provide statistics on the application of the human-trafficking law since its introduction. How many individuals have been rescued from human traffickers? How many persons have been prosecuted for offences under the law? What have been the rates of conviction and the categories in which these cases fell?

Should we be asked to guess, based on the performance of our law-enforcement agencies with crime generally, and murders in particular, we would assume there has been a wide gap between the rhetoric about action and the actual outcomes.

'Clear-up' rate

Indeed, the police generally 'clear up' about a third of the cases they are asked to investigate, in that they might identify a suspect. No one knows what proportion of these cases actually reach the courts. But it would be safe to presume, we believe, that the figure would be substantially lower than the 'clear-up' rate.

Further, as last week's report from the director of public prosecutions (DPP) revealed, of the gun-crime cases that reached the Corporate Area Gun Court in 2011, only 27 per cent ended in convictions. Forty per cent of the cases ended in acquittals or were thrown out for want of conviction. Others will likely follow this route.

Our point is that talking tough on crime and being tough are two different things. The latter is not about wearing jackboots but having effective investigation and prosecution of cases.

That starts with having skilled and professional law-enforcement agencies, supported by an effective prosecutorial service. In the absence of these, the amendments passed by the House will, in effect, be merely words on paper. Or, worse, translate to more unsolved cases.

A significant part of Bunting's and the Government's attention, therefore, should be on ensuring that the police and the DPP have greater success in their respective areas. Otherwise, criminals will continue to act with impunity in Jamaica.

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.