EDITORIAL - Don't lose the gains on crime

There is no human right that is more fundamental than the right to life. Yet, of all the rights guaranteed by the Jamaican Constitution, none, on the evidence, is more tenuous than this one.

Indeed, each year, 1,600 people are murdered in Jamaica, for a homicide rate of around 65 per 100,000, among the world's highest.

Last week, the police released their crime statistics for the month of June, showing a decline in all categories, including, critically, murders, and suggesting the possibility for the situation to be reversed. There were 84 murders in July, a decline of approximately 48 per cent on the same month in 2009.

Additionally, the number of homicides in July were seven or eight per cent less than the 91 in June. But the number of homicides in June represented a drop of 24 per cent on a year earlier, and 49 per cent on May when criminals snuffed out the lives of 178 persons. Baldly, the trend in homicides dipped sharply between the months of May and July.

What has caused the difference?

Despite those who are eager to remind that correlation does not equate to causation, what was different in those two months was the state of emergency, declared when irregulars, loyal to alleged drug baron, Christopher Coke, challenged the State to prevent his arrest and extradition to the United States. The administration agreed to Coke's extradition only when Prime Minister Bruce Golding could no longer contain public anger over the issue when it was discovered that he had lied about personal involvement in the affair.

Political contrivance

The state of emergency collapsed on what appears to us to have been political contrivance of the base and partisan kind. The Golding administration, however, never appeared comfortable with the state of emergency, apparently concerned about the backlash from the incursion into Mr Coke's redoubt, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) stronghold of Tivoli Gardens, as well as fears over its potential impact in other JLP communities.

The Government sought to spin the offensive as a broader fight against crime, but there was never the sense that Mr Golding had grabbed ownership of the initiative for which he would aggressively mobilise national support.

At the same time, the People's National Party (PNP) seemed fearful that despite the Government having faltered so badly in the Coke affair, it was inadvertently appropriating the gains of the state of emergency. With human rights as the spurious shield, the Opposition initially declined to support the extension of the state of emergency to a third month. They did offer the government a 15-day lifeline when it was clear that the admi-nistration did not have the parliamentary votes to carry the motion and that the PNP would be blamed for the collapse.

Curiously, Mr Golding did not accept this compromise. A recent spate of murders suggests that the criminals may be regaining confidence in the aftermath of the emergency. That must not be allowed to happen.

The formulating of a national strategy on crime insists that the issue must be removed from the realm of party partisanship and be opened to discussion in a forum of serious dialogue. We, in that regard, repeat our call for a standing parliamentary committee on crime and security where heads of the security forces, and others, can testify about policies and strategies.

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