'Anti-gang legislation won't work unless ... '

Instruments of peace in inner cities call for more social intervention

FOOT SOLDIERS of peace initiatives in some of Jamaica's toughest crime spots have cautioned the Government about its proposed anti-gang legislation.

At a recently held Gleaner Editors' Forum, stakeholders said the initiative as proposed by National Security Minister Dwight Nelson was doomed to fail if the justice system was not overhauled.

"We can make as many laws as we want, we can enact as many laws as we want, it does not make a difference, because the laws as they are are not being implemented. If we had a more effective police force, if they were to solve even 50 per cent of the crime in this country, where would you put all the criminals?" Prudence Gentles, executive director of Crime Stop, asked.

She added: "Until you have an effective justice system in this country, everything is semantics, because it is not going to go anywhere."

Justice Minister Dorothy Lightbourne has indicated that the case backlog in the Resident Magistrate's (RM) court amounts to more than 400,000 cases.

RM courts are the first point of contact on the judicial scale. Persons have argued that it would be difficult to push new cases through the courts unless the backlog is reduced.

But as Jamaica struggles to tame a runaway crime rate, Nelson has indicated that the Government will be moving to criminalise membership in gangs. He has argued that 80 per cent of Jamaica's homicide is gang related and that eliminating gangs would form a critical part of the assault on crime in the country.

But several persons have warned that care has to be taken in framing and implementing anti-gang legislation.

engage the people

Kenneth Wilson, who leads a peace initiative in the powder-keg community of August Town, told the forum that the intervention most important to breaking the back of crime is youth empowerment.

"I have seen youths who used to fire guns stop. I can bring several youths here. I can bring a youth who used to fire guns and he is now studying to be a pastor. That happened because they have been exposed to a different way of life. If you do not impact people, you could pass one million more crime bills and you still will not have enough caskets to bury people. What works is when you engage people," Wilson said.

Damian Hutchinson, a member of the Peace Management Initiative who works out of Mountain View, said anti-gang legislation would bring some level of "anxiety among gangs in the Corporate Area, but that is as far as it will go".

"These communities have been marginalised, maligned and excluded, and what you have in these communities are youths that are vulnerable. What you have in this country is a way of life. You don't need to spend millions of dollars to replace the guns but some money to replace their mindset, the culture in these communities, and that is what is really required if we are going to fix the problem," Hutchinson said.

Dr Carolyn Gomes, chairman of Jamaicans for Justice, said that depending on the specifics of the law, anti-gang legislation "may be counterproductive."

Gomes expressed concern about the framing of the legislation, noting that there "is real dispute about the police's analysis of gangs and the people on the ground's analysis of gangs, and that would affect what the legislation will look like and how likely it is to be effective".