Harsh reality of Jamaica’s homicide rate

WE look on Haiti and see a country on the edge of becoming a rogue State — a State without law enforcement having control at any level or on any matrix that is in keeping with a functioning country.

We then automatically assume that the present state of affairs and slaughter comes at the end of a bitter history of a high homicide rate.

That assumption would be incorrect. Haiti has no history whatsoever of a murder rate that is remotely near what Jamaica or El Salvador has been producing for years.

If we look on Haiti’s murder rate up to five years ago, it was 6.7 per 100,000 in 2018. This compared to Jamaica’s, which was 47 per 100,000.

If we even look on the period 2014, 2015, 2016 to 2018, Haiti’s highest was 10 per 100,000 in 2015.

Jamaica’s best year over the last five was 2018 at 47 per 100,000.

I do realise that the environment in Haiti may not be conducive to recording proper statistics. However, I don’t think they are hiding thousands of murders.

The harsh reality is that this dangerous failed State did not come about after a runaway homicide rate. In fact, it may not have become this disaster if it had a history of high homicide activity. That may be a lot to stomach, so let me explain.

High homicide rates are normally the result of gang warfare. The constant slaughter weakens the gang apparatus in totality, even though it strengthens the actual gang which is primarily committing the murders.

The fact is that murders lead to retaliations and counter-retaliations that essentially weaken the wider group. Haiti didn’t have this killing culture, so they were able to focus on crimes for profit. These involved robbery, kidnapping, and extortion, to name a few.

The above-noted type of crime increases wealth and allows gangs to become more powerful. This continued until they could challenge law en- forcement and control parts of government.

I’m sure at this point their homicide rate is high as hell because now the system is not broken, but absent. I will never know though, because they are not currently posting anything that I could use as a genuine statistic.

The harsh reality is, our culture of high homicides work in a peculiar way that few understand.

My study, commonly known as The Portmore Homicide Study but formally known as Gangs, Victim/offender Overlap and Informal Settlements — their role in the Portmore homicide crisis, indicated that as much as 75 per cent of all murder victims who were under study had some link, at various degrees, to gangs.

So in essence, if the gangs’ end game is the defeat of law enforcement and of governance, it is being inhibited by their self-destructive penchant for killing each other.

This is something we as a country have to understand — even if we don’t like it, even if we are ashamed of it. This is because ignoring facts because you don’t like them is embracing the philosophy of the ostrich which buries its head in the ground.

Although I speak frankly of the part gang homicides play in gang destruction, I am not suggesting we should be comfortable or encourage this practice.

The trend with crimes that exist for profit is that they do best in an environment where there is less killing and combat. Criminals will themselves tell you that.

This balance is hard for them to achieve because they exist on profit based on the fear they generate.

They are good at bringing about a state of fear as most of the persons they encounter can’t possibly oppose them, until they come upon an opponent of a similar ilk and the battle results in a homicide. Hence a high homicide rate.

What I do suggest is that we prepare, and fastidiously so, for the day they stop killing each other.

When we think of them as a possible threat to the future of government as an entity, then legally we get to that space where laws that apply to the regular citizen don’t necessarily apply to them.

This impacts imprisonment, combat, and the treatment of their assets.

This does not mean that I consider them formidable opponents. They have guns and numbers, they are also untrained and cowardly, but the biggest thing they have is the legal right guaranteed to every other citizen.

This needs to change if we are to prepare for that day when they stop killing each other. We need to be able to treat them as prisoners of war, or even that status given to the remanded at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Again, this is not because I’m comparing them to Muslim insurgents in will, training or ability. I desire this application because I am a pragmatist, not a dreamer, and I see what is coming if we don’t take the steps to prepare a legal foundation for a Haiti scenario.

We have failed to prepare before. The reaction to the deportee crisis of the nineties was not prepared for. The repealing of the Suppression of Crime Act was not prepared for. The reaction of the gangs and the police force to the Indecom purge was not prepared for.

Let us at least prepare for the day they stop killing each other.