Kill the glamour of crime – IDB
ACOMPREHENSIVE crime plan has been recommended to the Jamaican Government by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which should ensure that greater emphasis is placed on eradicating the glamour from illegal activities.
While not outlining the plans extensively, modernisation and state specialist at IDB Jamaica, Camila Mejia, highlighted during a Gleaner Editors’ Forum last week at the media house’s Kingston office that the proposed plans for crime will include measures that will force criminals to think twice before making wrong moves.
Important also is a new programme the IDB is currently designing alongside the Government, which seeks to create a properly digitalised criminal records database, which Mejia is hopeful will be approved by the end of this year.
“When you investigate better, you are taking out the incentive right away, because you have higher chances that you are going to get caught if you commit murder or [get] involve[d] in criminal activities. The IDB is designing a new programme with the Ministry of National Security that will definitely have an impact,” she said.
“We are helping the Government to digitalise data from criminal records, to implement a case management system that there can be better control of [criminal] data. This is a five-year project we are hoping the board will approve by the end of this year. The IDB Camila Mejia, modernisation and state specialist at IDB Jamaica.
is also looking now at working in prisons, and using the data.”
IDB hosted a workshop recently which focused on how Jamaica could use data on national security and violent crimes more effectively to decide better data-driven policies that have been tried, tested and proven in other countries.