Need deeper analysis of states of emergency
WE WANT to believe Prime Minister Andrew Holness that his administration has strategies, other than the declaration of states of emergency, for combating Jamaica’s crime problem.
In this regard, the Government and the police owe the public a greater level of transparency about their policies and programmes and a robust analysis of the existing states of emergency to provide a basis against which people can judge the logic of the new one.
By this we mean a review beyond the declaration of a 20 per cent decline in homicides for the first nine months of this year, but to include how, specifically, the use of the emergency powers contributed to this drop, whether the gains are sustainable in a postemergency period, and what trade-offs, if any, the society will have to make over the long term for the use of these powers as a crime-fighting tool.
We, of course, understand that in Jamaica’s circumstance, this week’s declaration of a state of public emergency, covering sections of political constituencies of Central and West Kingston and South and South West St Andrew – to join those in the parish of St James and the police division of St Catherine North – is popular and politically ticklish to question. For, despite a 20 per cent decline in murders in the three police divisions in which these areas fall, the drop is not even across communities. Indeed, homicides have increased in some areas, cases so brutally horrific as to fray national emotions.
In the event, there is an argument to be made about the success of the states of public emergency in St James and St Catherine, imposed earlier this year when homicides were increasing at an annualised 20 per cent. Based on police statistics, up to September 22, the day Mr Holness announced the public emergency for the Kingston and St Andrew communities, 953 murders were reported in Jamaica. That was 237, or 20 per cent, fewer than for the corresponding 234 days in 2017.
Significantly, the parishes of St James (-147) and St Catherine (-27), as well as the Kingston West Police Division (-14), where a zone of special operations is in force, accounted for 188, or 79.3 per cent of the decline in homicides. That, it would seem, is a compelling case for a state of emergency. Further, there is the matter of the 2010 west Kingston state of emergency. That was followed by a more than onethird decline in homicides over the next three years.
The point, however, is that states of public emergency, which allow for the abridgement of people’s fundamental rights and freedoms, were conceived for use in extreme circumstances, such as what happened in 2010 when the State was under threat from Christopher Coke’s gun hawks, rather than a policing tool for extended use. In that sense, it’s a sort of shock-and-awe instrument.
Perhaps St James in January, with its homicide rate of more than 200 per 100,000 population, befitted that treatment. And St Catherine North in February. But we would expect that, as contemplated in the regime imposed by the Constitution for their imposition and extension, the use of these emergency powers would be quick and clean, informed by deep intelligence planning.
ZOSOS SHOULD NOT BE ROUTINE
In circumstances such as those that now face the country, the security forces would have been expected to have identified who they needed to apprehend and do so with alacrity, rather than having these superpowers for lengthy periods. In other words, employment of a state of emergency, with the power of the State to impinge on people’s rights, ought not to become routine.
Maybe matters were approached with our expected sense of purpose, in which event the public should be afforded the benefit of the analysis and review of what has happened so far, including an explanation of whether the decline in murders mightn’t have happened with the same concentration of the security forces in St James and St Catherine, but without the extended emergency powers. There ought also to be an explanation of whether the rights and procedures preserved under the states of emergency have been allowed to the 2,000 people detained since their establishment.
In a system where policing by consent is the standard, long-term use of extreme powers is hardly efficacious. And when we resort to them, the process has to be accountable and transparent.