The best way to in­di­cate how bad things are is to tell of a sto­ry told to me by a con­trac­tor. It is said that af­ter the strin­gent process of get­ting qual­i­fied for gov­ern­ment projects, this con­trac­tor even­tu­al­ly got a con­tract. Anx­ious to ful­fil his oblig­a­tions but scared that his pric­ing may not be ad­e­quate, he rushed to the site to ex­e­cute his project.

Up­on ar­rival, he was im­me­di­ate­ly greet­ed by "bad­boys" who with guns drawn in­di­cat­ed that he must pay a large sum to them if he want­ed to work there. Ini­tial­ly he ig­nored their threats but soon af­ter, he re­alised that these men all had pre­vi­ous run-ins with the law, some had al­leged­ly com­mit­ted mur­der and they were some­how pro­tect­ed.

These were the guys who fill max­is for po­lit­i­cal meet­ings and who live off a sys­tem of pro­tec­tion tax­es that not on­ly en­sures con­struc­tion work is per­formed un­der their pro­tec­tion but busi­ness­es in the area as well. They have con­nec­tions in law en­force­ment and pol­i­tics; they are un­touch­able.

They are wide­spread and they con­tin­ue to grow, claim­ing com­mu­ni­ties as their ter­ri­to­ry and de­stroy­ing the so­ci­ety like ter­mites. Even­tu­al­ly, in or­der to en­sure that he did not for­feit his bond and his rep­u­ta­tion as a con­trac­tor, he ac­ced­ed to the de­mands of the bad­boys.

That sto­ry, whether true or not, re­flects the sta­tus of our na­tion to­day. Crime is not a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball. It is se­ri­ous and it de­stroys com­mu­ni­ties, fam­i­lies and even­tu­al­ly, a na­tion. Crim­i­nals can­not be paid off to stop or con­tain their ac­tiv­i­ties. Pay­ing and/or fa­cil­i­tat­ing crim­i­nals lead to their growth and de­vel­op­ment. No amount of po­lice knee-jerk ac­tion will af­fect these bad­boys. If this or any gov­ern­ment is re­al­ly se­ri­ous about crime, they must take strong de­ci­sive ac­tion.

Any­thing less is not on­ly old talk but is a con­tin­u­ous road to the fail­ure of a na­tion. Many Cen­tral Amer­i­can na­tions have de­te­ri­o­rat­ed to the point where ed­u­ca­tion is no longer a pri­or­i­ty as bad­ness pays more than a job and the mid­dle class has to pay pro­tec­tion to al­low their chil­dren to trav­el safe­ly to and from school. Un­less we take ac­tion now, we are head­ing down that road.

Per­haps the au­thor­i­ties can ex­plain why (since we know crime is com­mit­ted main­ly by ca­reer crim­i­nals and re­peat of­fend­ers) is there no ef­fort to in­tro­duce a re­peat of­fend­er's bill that en­sures that any­one with two or more pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions is man­dat­ed to a min­i­mum of ten years' im­pris­on­ment?

If such a law was im­ple­ment­ed to­day, as it was in many na­tions with high crime, it may have sim­i­lar ef­fects. In Cal­i­for­nia, USA, se­ri­ous crime dropped more than 40 per cent af­ter the three-strikes law. The DPTT's ten-point crime plan pub­lished since 2007 called for:

1. Struc­tured po­lice pa­trols: Us­ing po­lice ve­hi­cles for pa­trols rather than run­ning er­rands.

2. Stiffer penal­ties for re­peat of­fend­ers: A three strikes law or sim­i­lar.

3. Up­dat­ed traf­fic laws-Use of radar guns and elec­tron­ic record­ings.

4. Spe­cial man­u­fac­tured li­cense plates: Spe­cial mould­ed plates that can­not be copied.

5. Present a vi­able al­ter­na­tive to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty: en­gage in long-term eco­nom­ic projects not CEPEP and URP type projects.

6. Up­grade po­lice in­fra­struc­ture: Mod­ern cars with cam­eras and com­put­ers, a mod­ern emer­gence re­sponse sys­tem.

7. Up­dat­ed leg­is­la­tion: New leg­is­la­tion to al­low use of elec­tron­ic record­ing de­vices to be used for ev­i­dence, plea bar­gain­ing to re­duce court time and use of DNA-type ev­i­dence in courts.

8. Gun amnesty and re­vised gun laws: There should be a gun amnesty where crim­i­nal are en­cour­aged to turn in their guns, no ques­tions asked. Very strict gun laws must be en­act­ed to de­ter il­le­gal gun own­ers from even con­sid­er­ing own­ing an il­le­gal firearm.

A manda­to­ry min­i­mum of five to 20-year sen­tence for the il­le­gal pos­ses­sion of a firearm.

9. Al­low cit­i­zens to get le­gal firearms: Re­vise the law to take away the op­tion of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to de­ter­mine who gets a firearm. As long as a cit­i­zen qual­i­fies for a firearm he or she should get one.

10. Get a re­li­able Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty: This is a po­si­tion where in­tegri­ty, man­age­ment skills and a de­ter­mi­na­tion to re­duce crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty is crit­i­cal.

I am ask­ing now, as I did un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, how many more must die be­fore we se­ri­ous­ly start look­ing at the afore­men­tioned crime plan. The fact that it has been ig­nored by two ad­min­is­tra­tions may lead one to con­clude that it is im­prac­ti­cal or non­sen­si­cal. So I am ask­ing please let us know what is wrong with the DPTT crime plan? I am sure the DPTT is not look­ing for any mileage from this plan, so if it is good the gov­ern­ment can call it the PP's plan. Who cares? All the na­tion wants is for crime to be ad­dressed se­ri­ous­ly.

Steve Al­varez

Via e-mail