Tell us more, Dr Chang
HORACE CHANG, the national security minister, owes the residents of Montego Bay and, by extension, the people of the parish of St James, and for that matter all Jamaicans, a fuller explanation. For, if we interpret him correctly, Jamaicans should, for decades, expect no respite from criminal violence except if they surrender constitutional freedoms to states of public emergency. His more cynical critics may put it differently: that Dr Chang, who is responsible for internal security policy, has no sustainable answer to Jamaica’s crisis of crime.
Montego Bay, and the island’s western parishes – St James, Hanover, and Westmoreland, which are now subject to a state of emergency (SOE) – have become the new epicentre for criminal violence in Jamaica. The three parishes, particularly St James, have been subject to significant amounts of analysis about the cause of crime in the region, which has largely centred on the intersection between the rise of lottery scamming and social and economic privations.
POLICY IMPOTENCE
It was at one of these discussions last week that Minister Chang appeared to suggest that in relation to crime, Jamaica is faced with policy impotence, or at least flaccidity in their implementation, especially with regard to Montego Bay/St James.
Every single intervention medium that can be thought of, that has been done in Jamaica, has been done in Montego Bay,” Dr Chang said. “Every single one has been active and the homicide rate moved from 12 per 100,000 (in 2007) to 182 per 100,000 (in 2017). So where is the success?”
He added: “… The first time we had a significant fall (in homicides) that saved over 200 Jamaican lives and stopped mayhem and slaughter in the streets of Montego Bay was the introduction of the state of emergency.” This reference, of course, was to the state of emergency in St James that was in place for almost all of 2018 when murders in the parish declined from 342 the previous year to 102 – a drop of 70 per cent.
The emergency measures lapsed in January but were reimposed in April and extended to Hanover and Westmoreland in the face of an uptick in murders in the west. By the end of September, there were around 100 homicides in St James, about a quarter more than at the period the previous year, but representing moderation since the reimposition of the SOE.
Or, taking Dr Chang at face value, it is the only initiative that has, over the short to medium term, delivered results against crime. “Everything in Montego Bay has failed and failed miserably. The churches, the Peace Management Initiative, the Citizen Security and Justice Programme, and others, have done a lot of good things but have failed to effect transformation in Montego Bay. Unless we face that reality, we will not move to make the required change.”
We accept Dr Chang’s proposition that spending on health and education are “two critical areas” to which the Government must steer resources to deal with the problem. Our grave difficulty is his implied presumption, which is keeping with the prescription of his boss, Prime Minister Andrew Holness, that in the medium term and beyond, SOEs are sine qua non for the control of crime.
As we have noted before, Mr Holness, Dr Chang and the security chiefs have not provided in-depth analyses of the several states of emergency, including what about them have produced the desired efficacy. The most critical element of a state of public emergency is the power it provides for the abridgement of constitutionally protected rights, especially against arbitrary arrest and detention, or, in the event of a person being detained, to be brought before the courts with speed.
The side of an SOE that is most obvious to Jamaica, though, is the concentration of security forces in designated communities whose presence is likely to be a significant deterrent to crime. It, however, doesn’t require a declaration of a state of emergency for the security chiefs to deploy personnel in specific areas. The question to be answered, therefore, is whether it is the increased presence of police and soldiers in an area, or the abridgement of rights, that is fundamental to a functioning democracy and thus crucial to anti-crime policy.