Chang: Police force upgrade would have squashed violent crimes

WESTERN BUREAU:

NATIONAL SECURITY Minister Dr Horace Chang is lamenting that Jamaica’s crime rate could have been far lower if half of the $387 billion spent on social-intervention programmes between 2007 and 2018 had been channelled into upgrading the police force instead.

Speaking to journalists on Friday, Chang referenced a 2021 Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI) study which noted the sum spent on such initiatives between financial years 2007-2008 and 2017-2018.

“ ... We keep saying, ‘Put more money there’,” he said of the social-intervention efforts, “but we cannot put money the same way because we got very little out of it. It was not just poor policing as that weak policing came because we neglected the police in that time,” said Chang.

“If the country had spent half that $380 billion on the police, we would have a less violent society. We bought the police some cars, and pulled them from Palisadoes to Twickenham Park, but otherwise, the police got zero funding. In fact, while we have given the police a lot of things. They have a lot more to get because they have been neglected for a long time,” Chang added.

He made the comments following the launch of the United Nations Development Programme’s Reducing Small Arms and Light Weapons in Jamaica Project in Norwood, St James. The $76-million project is geared towards reducing gun violence and promoting peaceful conflict resolution.

At the time of the CAPRI report last year, Dr Deanna Ashley, executive director of the Violence Prevention Alliance, had said it was unrealistic to expect that social- intervention programmes on their own should significantly impact violent crime in Jamaica.

Short prison sentences

Yesterday, Chang noted that in many situations, police officers have to contend with compiling evidence against persons who are tried for firearms offences, only for them to end up back on the street after serving short prison sentences.

“I understand sometimes it is very frustrating for the police to lock up somebody who killed somebody else. Based on their investigation and the forensic evidence, they can say that this man had this gun, so he is charged for illegal possession of firearm, and he gets two years,” said Chang.

“We have come a far way in bringing a new Firearms Act with prohibition, restriction and control or regulation of firearms. We are at the point where the Joint Select Committee is going to file amendments and there is a report to be done within the next two sittings … . I can assure the police officers that the next illegal gunrunner they find or the next man they find carrying around an AK-47, he is not going to come back to the street,” he said.

Days ago, Minister of Legal and Constitutional Affairs Marlene Malahoo Forte ignited a firestorm when she told the House of Representatives that among proposed amendments to the Bail Act was that persons charged with murder and firearms offences would not be allowed bail.

Critics have slammed the proposal as unconstitutional and a breach of defendants’ right to bail prior to trial.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com