Charge or re­lease them and apol­o­gise! This was the call made yes­ter­day by an at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als de­tained un­der the State of Emer­gency (SoE), who ques­tioned its ef­fec­tive­ness as it is set to ex­pire on Jan­u­ary 31.

As the State of Emer­gency (SoE) comes to an end on Jan­u­ary 31, sev­er­al de­tainees who have been held for months un­der de­ten­tion or­ders with­out charge are anx­ious­ly await­ing their free­dom.

With the State of Emer­gency (SoE) ex­pect­ed to come to an end in the com­ing weeks, the Gov­ern­ment is turn­ing its at­ten­tion to tar­get­ed crime-fight­ing mea­sures in hotspots. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie re­vealed on Wednes­day that Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) will be in­tro­duced, pro­vid­ing law en­force­ment with ex­pand­ed le­gal au­thor­i­ty to ad­dress crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in hotspot com­mu­ni­ties, sim­i­lar to a mod­el used in Ja­maica.

Even be­fore Par­lia­ment con­venes to de­bate the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al to es­tab­lish Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) as a crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy, a crim­i­nol­o­gist is warn­ing the ap­proach will fail to ad­dress the roots of vi­o­lent crime.