GILLIAN LUCKY

We must be fair to this regime and ac­knowl­edge that it in­her­it­ed a crime sit­u­a­tion that was es­ca­lat­ing out of con­trol.Ear­ly in its ad­min­is­tra­tion, the Gov­ern­ment made fre­quent ref­er­ence to the need for all stops to be pulled out in or­der to bring an end to the crime cri­sis.No one should ex­pect that even with the best ef­forts, we will be rid of the crime plague overnight, but the fact that things ap­pear to be get­ting worse in terms of grue­some acts of vi­o­lence and low de­tec­tion rates must be an is­sue of se­ri­ous na­tion­al con­cern.

The phrase "let's take the pol­i­tics out of the fight against crime" has be­come a clich� be­cause the re­al­i­ty is that the fail­ure to bring crime un­der con­trol has been used by op­po­si­tion par­ties, past and present, as an im­por­tant weapon to at­tack the per­for­mance of regimes in pow­er.At no time, how­ev­er, should any­one rest in com­fort feel­ing that the mat­ter of crime is un­der con­trol, and whichev­er way the fig­ures are turned and twist­ed, the fact is that we need to im­ple­ment a holis­tic ap­proach in the fight against crime, at all lev­els and with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of all stake­hold­ers, if there is to be any sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in the near fu­ture.

Low de­tec­tion

A re­view of the sta­tis­tics for the last sev­en years re­veals a grad­ual de­cline in the de­tec­tion rates of all vi­o­lent and se­ri­ous crimes.The fig­ures show that even in times when the over­all num­ber of crimes was few, the de­tec­tion rate re­mained low.Log­ic would sug­gest that much more at­ten­tion has to be paid to up­grad­ing the tech­nol­o­gy used in in­ves­ti­gat­ing crime and im­prov­ing the in­ves­tiga­tive skills of those who are work­ing in the field gath­er­ing ev­i­dence and con­duct­ing en­quiries.We have to quick­ly come to terms with the harsh re­al­i­ty that the crim­i­nal minds and move­ments are leaps and bounds ahead of those who are re­spon­si­ble for bring­ing them to jus­tice and so all must be done, with­in the pa­ra­me­ters of the law, to change the rules of en­gage­ment in favour of those charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure law and or­der.

Com­par­ing notes

There are sev­er­al pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion shows and se­ries that deal with fight­ing crime.And while some tech­nolo­gies used in these pro­grammes do not ex­ist in the re­al world, the truth is that much can be learned from the sci­en­tif­ic and an­a­lyt­i­cal ap­proach used by the ac­tors as part of their script in the fight against crime.Many coun­tries have recog­nised that with the pro­lif­er­a­tion of gangs and mobs in or­gan­ised crime, the on­ly way to get the mas­ter­minds, king­pins and drug lords is by way of un­der­cov­er op­er­a­tions.

While that may be am­bi­tious and un­re­al­is­tic in a small coun­try in which "every­body knows every­body," it is im­por­tant that those who are in­volved in the low­er stra­ta of the crime pyra­mid, who are usu­al­ly the ones caught, are used as state wit­ness­es, if they are so pre­pared and meet the req­ui­site cri­te­ria, to bring their boss­es be­fore the law.We of­ten hear about the "big fish," yet none of them have ever been caught, even dur­ing the state of emer­gency.

Col­lat­er­al Mat­ters

This regime ought to be com­mend­ed for ac­knowl­edg­ing that there is a spate of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty that must be brought un­der con­trol if cit­i­zens are to feel any mea­sure of per­son­al com­fort and se­cu­ri­ty.But ac­cept­ing that we have a prob­lem with­out im­ple­ment­ing the nec­es­sary mea­sures to re­duce crime will not take us any­where near the win­ning line.The wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme has to be ful­ly op­er­a­tional and tri­als have to be heard in a faster time.The up­grade of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is a work in progress and the there must be a short time­frame set for its com­ple­tion.

As part of its leg­isla­tive agen­da, the Gov­ern­ment should ad­dress the plea-bar­gain leg­is­la­tion, which needs re­view and amend­ment in or­der to make it more ef­fec­tive. Once again, I call for the es­tab­lish­ment of a Na­tion­al Jus­tice Board (NJB) com­pris­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all the main stake­hold­ers in­volved in the crim­i­nal jus­tice process so that at any giv­en time, with­out com­pro­mis­ing their re­spec­tive in­de­pen­dent po­si­tions, all agen­cies in­volved in the fight against crime would be on the same page.

This NJB would not be a com­mit­tee dri­ven by a po­lit­i­cal agen­da and in fact, should not have any politi­cian on board. The NJB would not be an­oth­er talk shop be­cause its mem­bers would be the lead­ers or rep­re­sen­ta­tives of in­sti­tu­tions that are ac­tive­ly in­volved in crime de­tec­tion, pros­e­cu­tion or the ad­min­is­tra­tion of crim­i­nal jus­tice.The port­hole to take con­trol of the fight against crime is clos­ing on us, so it is hoped that good sense will pre­vail in the in­ter­est of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.