Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter, Mia Mot­t­ley, Mon­day called for con­crete rec­om­men­da­tions to be adopt­ed at the end of a two-day re­gion­al sym­po­sium on vi­o­lence that Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) lead­ers re­gard as a pub­lic health is­sue.

“I re­al­ly be­lieve we would do our­selves an in­jus­tice,” she said if the del­e­gates left here with­out adopt­ing de­ci­sions to be im­ple­ment­ed across the re­gion.

“We need the CARI­COM ar­rest war­rant, we need to have the ex­change and ro­ta­tion of judges…we need to have an en­large­ment of the ju­ris­dic­tion of mag­is­trates, we need co­op­er­a­tion on foren­sics and we need to….de­con­struct all the rules in our po­lice ser­vice and re­con­struct them,” Mot­t­ley told a pan­el dis­cus­sion of re­gion­al lead­ers.

Mot­t­ley, an at­tor­ney, not­ed that many years ago “peo­ple did not get bail for mur­der.

“Now when I look at the stats, not just out of the Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos and all through the re­gion, the peo­ple who are caus­ing the great­est prob­lems are charged with two, three, four mur­ders. Some­thing is fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong.

“So I ask my­self two ba­sic ques­tions. How are we go­ing to de­con­struct and re­con­struct to meet the re­al­i­ty of this ju­rispru­den­tial de­vel­op­ment that is un­der­min­ing the rule of law in our coun­tries and we are go­ing to have to find ways of co­op­er­at­ing from the lev­el of the po­lice to the lev­el of the courts, but in par­tic­u­lar, foren­sics.

“If we can get peo­ple to court with­in nine to 12 months, you have a good chance of a per­son not be­ing giv­en bail. Be­yond 12 months, any num­ber can start to play,” Mot­t­ley said, ques­tion­ing why coun­tries have been es­tab­lish­ing foren­sic labs in­di­vid­u­al­ly.

She al­so ques­tioned why the re­gion is not in­volved in “proac­tive pros­e­cu­tions rather than re­ac­tive pros­e­cu­tions ,” not­ing that 90 per cent of the pros­e­cu­tions in the Caribbean are as a re­sult of a crime per­ceived of hav­ing be­ing com­mit­ted as op­posed “to peo­ple sys­tem­i­cal­ly go­ing af­ter peo­ple in a struc­tured way”.

Mot­t­ley said re­gion­al coun­tries hav­ing agreed that se­cu­ri­ty would be the new pil­lar for the so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion over the last 20 years “we have not fol­lowed through on the func­tion­al day to day co­op­er­a­tion that can make the dif­fer­ence there.

In her con­tri­bu­tion, Mot­t­ley agreed with sen­ti­ments that the Unit­ed States had “no moral au­thor­i­ty” to speak out on gun-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence.

Ear­li­er Ja­maica’s Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness said that the re­gion as a col­lec­tive group must agree that greater re­sources must be placed on in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in the po­lice ser­vices “in­to our abil­i­ty to gath­er in­tel­li­gence and in­ter­dict and pros­e­cute.

“But we must al­so con­sol­i­date our ef­forts to lob­by par­tic­u­lar­ly the Unit­ed States to as­sist us as we have as­sist­ed them in the war on drugs. They must as­sist us in the war on guns,” Hol­ness said, de­scrib­ing the present sit­u­a­tion as “the great­est un­fair­ness that we have di­vert­ed re­sources from oth­er ar­eas in which we could have spent it to fund and sup­port a war on drugs…

“There seems to be no in­ter­est in stop­ping the oth­er part of the trade, which are the guns. The guns fu­el crime, they are an ac­cel­er­ant, they are need­ed to pro­tect drugs that are trans­shipped to our bor­ders. They are then turned to deal with oth­er forms of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty”.

Hol­ness said in the case of Ja­maica, the weapon of choice is no longer the Russ­ian made AK-47 , but the AR-15 and the glock, which are guns man­u­fac­tured in North Amer­i­ca.

“So col­lec­tive­ly as the lead­ers of CARI­COM we must raise our voice on this. We must ap­peal to our friends in the North to in­crease their ef­forts to pre­vent the flow of guns in­to the re­gion,” Hol­ness said, adding” we can­not negate our own re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in pro­tect­ing our own ports of en­try.

“We must al­so in­crease in a con­sum­mate way our own spend­ing on se­cur­ing our ports, air­ports and our points of en­try and in­crease our abil­i­ty to de­tect the en­try of il­le­gal weapons and we must al­so change our laws so that they align with the new and so­phis­ti­cat­ed crimes that are be­ing com­mit­ted and the flow of weapons in­to our coun­try”,

Hol­ness said the is­sue of crime and vi­o­lence al­so has to be treat­ed from the pub­lic health stand­point not­ing that Ja­maica has es­tab­lished a na­tion­al com­mis­sion on the pre­ven­tion of crime.

“We feel in our coun­try that the propen­si­ty to use vi­o­lence and force to solve con­flict is al­most cul­tur­al. It has be­come a so­ci­etal re­sponse and it is there­fore not mere­ly a polic­ing prob­lem, not mere­ly a law and or­der prob­lem,, its about the so­cial, emo­tion­al of our cit­i­zens to reg­u­late them­selves. Its about the men­tal health of our so­ci­ety”.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Apr 17, CMC