The first du­ty of any gov­ern­ment is to en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of its cit­i­zens. Main­tain­ing law and or­der, re­duc­ing crime, and en­sur­ing the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the cit­i­zen­ry are crit­i­cal pri­or­i­ties as a high crime rate im­pacts cit­i­zens’ lives and liveli­hoods, for­eign and do­mes­tic in­vest­ment, and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and un­der­mines con­fi­dence. Last week it seemed that there was rain, mur­der, and vi­o­lent crime every­where and that the Gov­ern­ment had no an­swer to the sit­u­a­tion.

The very ex­is­tence of the State rests on its abil­i­ty to de­fend it­self and fel­low cit­i­zens from in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal threats. The Gov­ern­ment spends bil­lions every year on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and uni­formed ser­vices, procur­ing sur­veil­lance craft and equip­ment, and weapons in dis­charg­ing this du­ty. But the coun­try needs a big­ger bang from this ex­pen­di­ture. It needs more ef­fec­tive man­age­ment. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the task of se­cur­ing the coun­try and re­duc­ing crime falls on the ex­ec­u­tive. The Ex­ec­u­tive is both ac­count­able and re­spon­si­ble.

The ex­ec­u­tive re­lies on the col­lab­o­ra­tion of sev­er­al agen­cies which it co­or­di­nates through the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, which is chaired by the Prime Min­is­ter. This is ap­pro­pri­ate as fail­ure has po­lit­i­cal con­se­quences. The se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies de­rive their pow­er from the Con­sti­tu­tion and while each has its man­date, re­port­ing struc­tures, or­gan­i­sa­tion­al pri­or­i­ties, and ob­jec­tives, they do not stand alone. The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil places the ex­ec­u­tive in a po­si­tion to di­rect and co­or­di­nate the dif­fer­ent branch­es of the state’s se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus.

We are in a cri­sis and the cit­i­zen­ry holds the Gov­ern­ment ac­count­able for solv­ing the prob­lem and re­duc­ing crime, as it should. But politi­cians of both sides are re­luc­tant to ac­cept this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as it is a poi­soned chal­ice. They recog­nise that fail­ure to ad­dress ris­ing crime has been the Achilles heel of many ad­min­is­tra­tions and af­fect­ed their elec­toral suc­cess. Con­se­quent­ly, a po­lit­i­cal rather than a re­spon­si­ble or prag­mat­ic ap­proach is usu­al­ly adopt­ed.

This po­lit­i­cal ap­proach is to politi­cise the crime is­sue by pre­sent­ing pub­lic re­la­tions ex­er­cis­es as so­lu­tions and quick fix­es, or iden­ti­fy­ing an in­di­vid­ual or or­gan­i­sa­tion­al scape­goat(s) to blame. This ap­proach is de­signed to de­flect crit­i­cism by lim­it­ing min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­vid­ing re­sources, bring­ing leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment and mat­ters of pol­i­cy. It has be­come the norm for lead­ers to blame the Op­po­si­tion, fel­low politi­cians, re­li­gious lead­ers, par­ents, com­mu­ni­ties, gangs, fail­ings of the DPP’s of­fice or the Ju­di­cia­ry and prison ser­vice for in­creased crime and min­imise their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Even USA gun man­u­fac­tur­ers stand ac­cused.

This ap­proach does lit­tle to solve the is­sue or achieve the na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty of a safe, se­cure state and cit­i­zen­ry. It mud­dles the is­sues, cre­at­ing con­fu­sion and di­vi­sion. Mean­while, the crim­i­nal el­e­ment is pro­ceed­ing with busi­ness as usu­al un­con­cerned about a crime plan or per­haps se­cure in the knowl­edge that what­ev­er ac­tion is tak­en, it will not be enough.

The Cab­i­net and the col­lec­tion of agen­cies it di­rects which we col­lec­tive­ly call “the Gov­ern­ment” are ul­ti­mate­ly re­spon­si­ble for achiev­ing the na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties of main­tain­ing law and or­der, re­duc­ing crime, and de­fend­ing the State. The var­i­ous agency heads (CJ, DPP, COP, Head of Pris­ons, Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms) are re­spon­si­ble for the per­for­mance, ef­fi­ca­cy, and ef­fec­tive­ness of their or­gan­i­sa­tions and the achieve­ment of their or­ga­ni­a­tion­al ob­jec­tives. In oth­er words, the man­agers must en­sure their re­spec­tive or­gan­i­sa­tions are func­tion­ing prop­er­ly and they must be ad­e­quate­ly re­sourced to do so.

This can­not hap­pen by it­self. The Cab­i­net’s task, its du­ty, there­fore, is to har­ness the state se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus and en­sure that it is aligned and work­ing har­mo­nious­ly for the achieve­ment of the over­all, big-pic­ture ob­jec­tive of main­tain­ing law and or­der. What is miss­ing is po­lit­i­cal will.