TAMING THE CRIME MONSTER

Ian Boyne, Contributor

There are few areas in which our schizophrenia is more poignantly pronounced than in our response to crime. Every so often we go into a frenzy over crime, especially when some high-profile person gets murdered or if children and whole families are slaughtered, or some persons are killed gruesomely.

Then we are vociferously yelling for the Government to 'do something about crime now'; bellowing for something to be done to 'stop these vicious, senseless murders' and screaming that we should 'kill the crime monster before it kills all of us'. But we are the same people who don't trust the police with additional powers because of their 'tendency towards human-rights abuses'. We don't want tougher laws because they interfere with human rights. We don't want more curfews and police searches because they jeopardise individual liberties. We certainly would not want to support any emergency measures, even in the short term.

The same talk-show hosts, journalists and editorial writers who are wringing their hands over our out-of-control crime situation are raising alarm about the proposed anti-gang legislation and every piece of legislation or suggestion to strengthen crime control. For them, if you are not talking about what Professor Anthony Harriott calls the 'social-justice model'; if you are not talking about social intervention, poverty reduction, increased educational opportunity and employment and community empowerment, you are saying nothing. They keep telling us that hard policing has failed and that you can't fight force with force. They keep reminding us about the root causes of crime. I agree, but hear my issue.

We need to clean up corruption in the force, and significantly improve the efficiency with which we conduct police investigations. We need to vastly ramp up our intelligence gathering. We need to have a more technology-driven approach to fighting crime. We need to have a well-run, well-oiled, first-class justice system which delivers justice speedily so that those who commit crime know they are very likely to be caught, and quickly.

HAVE TO FIND A WAY

Much more needs to be done. But when you have marauding gunmen preying on communities, wreaking vengeance on enemies and creating panic; when criminals control communities and have people under bondage so they can rape little girls by edict; when multiple murders are being committed daily, you have to find a way - a speedy way - to stop those criminals today, not in the next few years when you get everything right and have an angelic police force. At least be sensible and stop making vehement calls for the State to do something now. Acknowledge that by your social-justice model, fighting crime is a medium- to long- term matter, and we will just have to allow a few more thousand murders by these criminals before we can create the social utopia to solve crime.

You can't eat you your cake and have it. Yes, the crime control, hard policing model has severe limitations, which were graphically and insightfully detailed by Professor Harriott in his 2009 GraceKennedy Foundation lecture. I suggest to journalists, opinion writers and people in civil society that they get this lecture and read it very carefully. Nobody should speak on crime on any platform before reading Harriott's work. He delivers a powerful critique of the hard policing, crime control model. (Actually, my approach is what he would properly call the integrated model, for it does include values and attitudes reformation, resocialisation and the creation of a just society).

But I have a serious problem with those who downplay crime-control strategies. Dealing with social ills won't stop vicious, dog-heart murderers tonight. I am concerned about short term for, as Keynes said, in the long run we are all dead! Harriott said of the social-justice model favoured by most of my media colleagues and the chattering classes: "The big challenge for this model in the present context would be to demonstrate its relevance and power for dealing with the contemporary challenges of organised crime and the subculture of violence. In this regard, it must be understood that the roots of the problem are not just social marginalisation and lack of legitimate opportunities, but the existence of an elaborate illegitimate opportunity structure and the emergence of a subculture of violence."

The learned professor went on: "The latter means that even if the socio-economic problems are addressed, high rates of violence are likely to continue for some time. Attending to the root socio-economic causes is unlikely to yield much short to medium-term effects on the homicide rate."

Now, this is the kind of reasoned approach which impresses me. Harriott is no reactionary or advocate of the crime control model. But he knows both the scholarship and the streets.

SMASH THE GANGS

The gangs have to be smashed and dismantled, and social-intervention programmes are not going to do that in the short term. You have to use intelligence and a range of crime-control strategies (including force) to do that. Some of these brutal murderers are going to get killed, as some were last week. Yes, more will take their place. That is why the crime control model is not adequate and we have to take an integrated approach. I am not a fool to think that merely dismantling contemporary gangs and taking out their leadership is the solution. We have to get to root causes to stop the reproduction. But we have to stop the bleeding now.

I don't want to hear my colleagues in media catastrophising over crime when they are prepared to ignore solutions which can be applied today and this week, before more of our fellow Jamaicans are killed.

Hear the expert Anthony Harriott: "Where there is a serious problem of exclusion and marginalisation and systems of law enforcement are weak, tough measures may result in increased disregard for the system, resistance in many forms, and this to even greater ineffectiveness. However, it must be conceded that where these systems are strong, the crime control model and even crime fighting may yield short-and medium-term control gains."

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and ianboyne1@yahoo.com.