http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080518/focus/focus4.html
Published: Sunday | May 18, 2008

The Tower Street Correctional Centre, downtown Kingston. More prisons are needed.

"United we stand, divided we fall" goes the old song. And past efforts to reduce our frightening murder rate have, too often, been undermined by public squabbling between entities that, in theory, have the common goal of making Jamaica safer for all.

But new national security minister, Colonel Trevor MacMillan and police commissioner, Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin are former military brothers in arms, and self-reportedly good friends. The security minister is also a charter member of Jamaicans For Justice. And, Colonel MacMillan says he will be consulting with Opposition security spokesman Dr Peter Phillips. So, the Jamaican body politic has a perhaps unprecedented opportunity to take a unified stance against crime.

The Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) 2006 'Roadmap to a Safe and Secure Jamaica' - aka the MacMillan crime plan - will surely be at the core of this effort.

The task force that produced this report was headed by the new security minister, was convened by the current prime minister, and thanked the present commissioner - then Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) head - for his contributions. If these three gents can't all sing together loudly, in unison, from the same hymn book they helped create, this country is in very deep trouble, indeed.

To quote one pertinent excerpt:

"Of the 33 recommendations in this report, 27 will require minimal or no extra funding. Therefore, we sincerely hope that on this occasion the Government and the Opposition - acting in concert - will find the political will to implement our recommendations."

Now Colonel MacMillan is no magician. Indeed, murder actually rose during his tenure as police commissioner. But, he is widely viewed as having tried hard to make the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) less corrupt, and more accountable to the citizenry it serves.

Now I have very good friends in the police force, men who are as honest and brave and dedicated as they come. And it's difficult not to feel sympathy for the Jamaican police, who are not only poorly paid but have one of the world's most dangerous professions.

But polls show that most of the public considers the JCF corrupt, indisciplined and inefficient. On the other hand the army is highly respected. And a great hope on the street is that "Colonel Macmillan and Admiral Lewin will bring some army discipline into the police!"

No doubt one of the colonel's and admiral's toughest tasks will be transforming the JCF into an organisation fully respected and trusted by the people, without at the same time demoralising the rank and file.

The huge pile of issues on the Colonel's plate also include social intervention, de-garrisonisation, judiciary reform, improving witness protection, forensic upgrading, DNA database implementation, and closed circuit tv monitoring. Considering all of these have to be tackled pretty much simultaneously, well it's clearly no easy road.

The Tower Street Correctional Centre, downtown Kingston. More prisons are needed. - file

One crucial problem that needs to be addressed immediately is repeat offenders. I still remember a September 4, 2006 STAR story : 'Crime as a career - Repeat offenders are 80 per cent of arrests, cops say'. This squares with what you hear regularly from policemen and security guards. It's the old 20/80 rule really. Just as in business 20 per cent of customers generate 80 per cent of sales, so too 20 per cent of criminals commit 80 per cent of crimes. So focus on that 20 per cent.

An April 17, 2008 article in the Economist "Inner-city crime: Back from the brink" showed how this worked in Baltimore, U.S.: "É the murder rate has fallen because the police are paying more attention to the most violent offenders. One helpful new tool is a registry for gun offendersÉ Like sex criminals, anyone who commits a crime using a gun must register his whereabouts with the police as soon as he is convicted or once released from jail. Failure to do so can get him imprisoned again for up to a year. The logic is simple. Of the 135 people arrested for murder in Baltimore last year, nearly half had a prior conviction for a gun offence. So it makes sense for police and parole officers to keep close tabs on former gun criminals. "

Any serious solution to the repeat offenders problem must also include additional prisons, some variation of three strikes you're out laws, plus stricter bail conditions and mandatory sentencing for violent crimes. There's no getting around these unpleasant facts. If you want good, you nose have to run.

Serious social intervention is definitely needed in our inner cities. But if you plant a field before you weed it, the corn will be strangled before it can grow. Similarly, social welfare programmes can't work if vicious criminals are numerically strong enough to destroy them. So weed first, then plant. Or as they say - tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.

Every government since independence has ignored the need for more prisons. But though it's an unpopular topic, the numbers speak for themselves. In 1989 we had 400 murders and 4,000 prison spaces. In 2007 we had 1,600 murders and the same 4,000 prison spaces. Even a schoolchild will see something wrong with this equation. But apparently government ministers can't.

We can't build new prisons overnight. But the government should tell us it's aware of the present numerically inadequate situation, and that it's doing something about it. As to money, hell we built two US $30 million stadiums for the Cricket World Cup 2007, not to mention a US $10 million plus sports complex in the Sligoville bush.

Imagine if that Trelawny stadium/cow pen had been a new prison. No more revolving doors for repeat offenders who commit the majority of crimes. And more time for police to deal with fundamentals, rather than just chasing and trying to lock up the same guys over and over.

At any rate the U.K. and U.S. and E.U. are probably willing to help fund a new prison project. For one it might mean fewer Jamaican criminals entering Britain and America.

'How can we afford it?'. Well the proper question is 'How can we not afford to do it?'. A March 2007 World Bank study - "Crime, Violence, and Development: Trends,

Costs, and Policy Options in the Caribbean"

- estimated that if Jamaica reduced its homicide rate to Costa Rican levels, our annual GDP growth rate would increase by 5.4 per cent.

Jamaica's total GDP is roughly US $10 billion. So five per cent additional growth represents about an extra US $500 million per year. Obviously a properly funded comprehensive crime strategy that includes building more prisons will pay for itself many, many times over.

Studies show that, up to a point, prison works to cut crime. As a May 12, 2004 London Times article put it: "If we take into account the full social and economic cost of allowing persistent offenders to roam free, prison is a bargainÉ One [US] study by Professor John Dilulio estimated that the annual cost of keeping a criminal in jail is $25,000 and the total social and economic cost to society (including policing, insurance, injuries, replacing stolen property, and household expenditure on security measures) of allowing the median offender to remain at large is $70,098, a resulting cost-benefit ratio of 2.80."

A 1981-1996 comparative study of UK and US crime rates also showed that the US crime rate fell as the risk of imprisonment rose. Conversely, the UK crime rate rose as the risk of prison receded. As one writer said, "The conclusive evidence may not impress the modern ideological social reformer. But the facts do seem, shall we say, inescapable."

Cutting crime boils down to political will. And the ultimate source of this is not Colonel MacMillan or Prime Minister Golding, but we the Jamaican people. It's a simple question really. What type of country do we want to live in?