But, if officials are allowed to be so ineffectual in respect to citizens' main concern for the past 20 years, it is partly because citizens themselves want quick fixes, even when such measures fix nothing.
In his usual inimitable style, Chief Justice Ivor Archie raised some serious and pertinent issues in his speech at last Wednesday's opening of the 2015-2016 law term.
"What we need is a little common sense here," he repeated in different ways throughout his address–the clear implication being that both high officials and ordinary citizens were not using this criterion, particularly in respect to fighting crime.
On that basis alone, the arguments made by the CJ are hardly likely to win him friends and influence people, precisely because he highlighted those key defects in both our legal system and socio-political beliefs which allow crime to flourish.
Noting that people should stop blaming the judiciary for those aspects of the legal system not under their purview, Mr Archie listed low detection rates, inadequate evidence-gathering, slow forensic analysis, a shortage of criminal attorneys and even late arrivals of prisoners as some of the factors which made justice slow in T&T.
Blame for these particular shortcomings falls in the unfenced gardens of the Cabinet and the Police Service. In the first instance, it is policy decisions–or the lack thereof–which have led to inadequate forensic capacity and even, indirectly, the shortage of attorneys. After all, if such a lacuna exists, then the government should consider offering incentives so more lawyers train in criminal practice.
The other matters raised by the CJ–low detection rates and inadequate evidence gathering–exist within that nexus of poor policy from politicians and bad management from senior police officers.
But, if officials are allowed to be so ineffectual in respect to citizens' main concern for the past 20 years, it is partly because citizens themselves want quick fixes, even when such measures fix nothing. The Chief Justice alluded to the two most popular measures when he spoke about incarceration rates and the death penalty.
"Common sense tells us that we cannot incarcerate our way out of our social problems and crime in general," he asserted, "because many studies internationally show a positive correlation between longer sentences and higher rates of recidivism as well as between higher overall rates of incarceration per capita and higher rates of recidivism."
Nonetheless, a significant number of citizens continually proffer versions of "Lock them up and throw away the key" as a solution to crime. And even more people regularly call for the resumption of hangings, on which issue the CJ argued: "Apart from the dubiousness of its value as a deterrent, do we really believe...that we will be able to hang several hundred people or that, if we tried, we could stomach it?"
Given that some people have called for public hangings in Woodford Square, Chief Justice Archie may be too sanguine about the civilised traits of the man in the T&T street. Be that as it may, he emphasised that the issue of the death penalty was a matter for the legislature and citizens. Yet even people who support capital punishment would agree that the mandatory penalty which now exists is, at the very least, counter-productive.
When in Opposition, however, the PNM blocked an attempt to change the law to have degrees of murder charges. Yet the now-ruling party must re-visit this issue, as well as all the others raised by the CJ, now that they are in office.
Mr Archie's speech has provided much food for thought. Unfortunately, ours is not a society where most people consider themselves mentally hungry, especially those people who are starving for intellectual nourishment. Or to summarise in popular idiom the CJ's core message: common sense is not common.