ONLINE FEEDBACK

Below are edited comments posted by online readers to yesterday's lead story quoting former deputy commissioner of police Mark Shields as saying the establishment of a DNA database was "key" to solving crime.

Crime obstacles

Mr Shields, I would kiss the very ground you walk on for comments like these. Clearly you are not a Jamerican or Jamenglish who constantly advocates for the police to be a law to themselves and administer justice. You are a professional with clear and rational thinking.

The biggest obstacle to crime-fighting in Jamaica is those people who sit in Gordon House claiming to be members of Parliament with no answer to the crisis currently plaguing our beautiful country. How can one use 19th-century law to fight 21st-century crime?

- Rose Archer

Why lecture us?

Why is a foreigner lecturing us on our laws? Shouldn't he be looking at the short-comings in his own country?

- Mikalis

Target all garrisons

DNA is the key? Absolutely, Mr Shields. But if we can't fix roads and provide drinking water during a short drought, where's the money to come from to set up such a data-base? The immediate solution is to bolster the armed forces and have a full-scale all-out assault on the high-crime garrison communities.

You can't plant produce among weeds. There will be no growth. It's that simple.

- N. Henry

Jobs, not DNA database

The real key to Jamaica's future is the creation of jobs and working at being an industrialised nation. Most of these people only see things in their field that will make them an even bigger bag of money. What's in the interest of the people is never in the hearts of the lawmakers and, law pushers. Government's most important task should be making it so that people can live better, not more penitentiaries; and we need more schools.

- Diamond