No place for gang talks

Countless recommendations have been place on the table over the past few decades as Jamaica struggles to find a lasting solution to its crime problem. One of the latest, which thankfuly has been withdrawn, is the suggestion for a summit between gangsters and the police. We endorse the policy position, enunciated last week by the National Security Minister, Horace Chang, against the Government, including the police, negotiating with criminals. 

Appeasing gangs suggests failed State

15 Jun 2022

THERE IS a place for diversion programmes to steer vulnerable young people away from, or out of, criminal gangs. Such projects have had success in several countries.

But that is different from asking key institutions of the State, especially its law-enforcement agencies, to negotiate peace deals with gang bosses, or to act as interlocutors between rival groups, to broker truces. That is tantamount, almost, to the State’s formal surrender of its obligations as guarantor of law and order and its acceptance of gangs as co-equals in the administration of national security. Or, stated in its extreme, it would be an acknowledgement of Jamaica’s failure as a State, or its march thereto.

Which is why eight years ago we balked at a gathering of scores of suspected and confessed rival gang members at the Central Police Station, at the invitation of the area’s then police chief, Superintendent Victor Hamilton. He, ostensibly, was facilitating peace talks.

Before that, in 2008, we similarly warned against the State finding itself ensnared in an August Town, St Andrew peace deal between rival gangs, which was brokered by anti-violence and community development campaigners.

We were similarly reticent last year about a renewed attempt to involve agencies of government in negotiations with gangs.

FLAWED STRATEGY

That is the backdrop against which we endorse this week’s policy position, enunciated last week by the National Security Minister, Horace Chang, against the Government, including the police, negotiating with criminals. The police had previously declared a similar position.

This issue of whether the police and the State should bargain for peace with violent criminals was revived recently with a suggestion to that effect – since retracted – by Homer Davis, a minister of state in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) and a former chairman of the St James Municipal Corporation, the local government for that north-western parish.

St James is a major crime hotspot. Although the problem has not reached the proportions of 2017, when the parish recorded 335 murders and a homicide rate of over 200 per 100,000, a one-third increase in killings so far this year – 104 murders up to June 6 – has, understandably, worried parish officials, including Mr Davis. They have been scurrying for solutions.

One of Mr Davis’ ideas was that the police negotiate with gangs. At a function for the new leadership of the St James police, he said: “I think if we can get the combatants, the leaders of these groups, gangs, together and put them in a space and say, ‘Listen, tell me now what are you fighting for. Tell me, what do you want, what do you need? What can we do to appease you?’”

Mr Davis likened his suggestion to what obtains when siblings in a home are at odds and their parents bring them together to work out their differences. He also felt that there was a need for a new approach to fighting crime in St James.

The minister now claims that his reference was not to hardened criminals, but to vulnerable youth who are susceptible to gang membership.

He is possibly right in calling for fresh ideas to address the crime problem. His other suggestion, which he now claims was either mischaracterised or misunderstood, was dead wrong. Appeasing criminals, wherever that suggestion came from, would be a fundamentally flawed strategy.

FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES TO THE JCF

Indeed, criminals may be appeased into quietude for a time – until they want, and demand, more from an already-quiescent State. But as Fitz Bailey, the deputy commission of police for crime, said: “Criminals must be brought to court and given their time to present their side of the story; and justice must triumph over criminal activity.”

However, if Mr Bailey’s strategy and the philosophy in which it is grounded are to have efficacy in a country with more than 1,400 homicides annually, there must be a professional and competent constabulary that enjoys public trust. That, unfortunately, is not the case with the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF). Jamaica’s police force remains burdened with a reputation for corruption and of being resistant to serious reform.

That must change. Technological innovations and improved processes are not by themselves sufficient. The human factor, which sustains the culture of corruption in Jamaica’s constabulary, has to be addressed with rigour.

Other institutions of the State, also, have to escape the grasp of corruption, or the powerful perception that they are snared by it. Meaningful change on this front will happen with an honest and transparent government.

In a country where people have faith in the institutions of governance and government, and where the law-enforcement and justice systems are deemed to be efficient and untainted by corruption, it is unlikely that there will be calls for the appeasement of gang bosses.

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