The devastating news that young Nadia Simms had been found assaulted and brutally murdered one week after she went missing once again brought to light the serious shortcomings and lackadaisical manner in which reports on missing people are dealt with.
Why was Nadia's mother unable to get through to the police station that dreadful night? Why was it left to her to mount her own search with family and friends for her only daughter? Why was she, and not the authorities, investigating her daughter's disappearance?
How many more have to die before the Government realises that violent crime is the national plague. It has put the recession, the collapse of the energy sector, worsening joblessness and other important issues on the back-burner. Our people are paralysed by fear and dread as to who next will feel the blade or bullet of the brazen killer. Our women in particular are terrified, as it has become almost a societal norm for them to be abused by sexual predators or lured to their death later to be discovered in shallow graves.
Honourable leaders, the battle against crime is multifaceted and involves many institutions most of which are now collapsing as a result of apparent incompetence, waste, and mismanagement in our country.
The first encounter with the criminal and the law is the police. While there are several hundreds, maybe thousands, of policemen who are honest, hard working, dedicated and conscientious, there are several who are perceived as corrupt, criminals themselves, or are in league with the criminals. Having sown the wind we must now reap the whirlwind.
If, perchance, the offender is arrested and charged he/she is taken to court where the administration of justice is so delayed, tedious, expensive, and frustrating that respect for the law is soon lost. I am of the humble view that the rapidly increasing spate of personal incidences where people take the law into their own hands instead of seeking redress in the courts is because of loss of confidence in the courts.
Further, if, by an unexpected stretch of the imagination, the court passes a sentence of imprisonment on a convicted person, the prison system is archaic and outdated without any concept or programme of reform or rehabilitation designed to prevent reoffending.
And then there is the forever acting Commissioner of Police who keeps assuring us that things are not too bad, while the service that he has command and superintendence of has a 15 per cent detection rate when it comes to murders, substantially less than that of the Jamaican Police Service, in a country that has not enjoyed the economic boom enjoyed by the PNM and PP governments of the last three decades and has also suffered from violent crime.
The fact of the matter is that since the illegal removal of the original UNC government in 2001, crime has gone out of control. While oil fetched over US$100 a barrel during the post-2001 PNM and PP governments (unlike when it sold for a fraction of that during the 1995 to 2001 UNC era), the criminal justice system collapsed and the Police Service became increasingly ineffective, notwithstanding the billions spent on them.
The Ministry of National Security gets more money in every budget than any other ministry, including critical ones like Health and Education. Legislative reforms to the Police Service achieved nothing and to date, we cannot appoint a permanent Commissioner of Police or improve the delivery of criminal justice.
As happens when citizens believe that society is in collapse, the calls are coming fast and furious for draconian measures, like the quick resumption of hanging, even though absent a proper plan by the Attorney General to meet the Pratt v Morgan timelines, that can never happen.
Further, in a country where it is obvious that guns must be taken out of everyone's hands (except the protective services) the Leader of the Opposition called for more guns... So the criminals and the victims can stage shootouts like in the Wild West?
Similarly, we need to be cautious with the call for another "limited" State of Emergency which on the last occasion was oppressively used by the PP government to detain people who were perceived to be the undesirable elements in society only to release them because of no evidence–an abuse of the Constitution, to give the impression that crime was in check. It is important to remind ourselves that willingness to give up rights for the sake of safety while understandable, is the slippery slope to dictatorship.
But that is not to say that the State must not be strong and robust in its attack against crime. Something needs to be done now! Those in authority need to do the jobs they have been entrusted by the people to do. We need to hear from our leaders, we need to lawfully wage war on crime. We all need to put country before self.
?Mickela Panday