Chang enemy of social intervention?

THE GLEANER editorial (‘Tell us more, Dr Chang’, October 1, 2019) accurately pinpointed the question to be answered by Minister of National Security Dr Horace Chang. What advantage does detention for an indefinite period in a state of emergency (SOE) declared by the governor general and announced by the prime minister have over a large number of security personnel positioned in a location by simple direction of security heads?

Dr Chang and Prime Minister Andrew Holness have had 20 months (counting from the start of the St James SOE in January 2018) in which to bring evidence of the superiority of the SOE in answer to that question. They have yet to do so. This alone will convince thinking Jamaicans that the SOE is a truly necessary tool for resolving Jamaica’s violence and murder.

The question stated above for Dr Chang was provoked (afresh, I could add) by the denunciation of social interventions in St James that he made last week as published in The Gleaner dated Monday, September 30, 2019.

Over the two decades from 1997 to 2017, their input has been a failure, Chang declared. He specifically named the churches, the Peace Management Initiative, and the Citizen Security and Justice programme. Was he targeting, with this selection, civil-society and voluntary organisations, since he omitted the State’s Jamaica Social Investment Fund? It is not explicit.

Chang’s blast raises two other more pertinent questions, however: What level of social INVESTMENT was made in turbulent communities over those decades? Second, was it not the State, administered successively by the Jamaica Labour Party and the People’s National Party, that had prime responsibility for such investment? I think it must be obvious that, compared with the billions spent on the security forces over the period, expenditure on social investment in deprived communities, especially by civilsociety bodies, has been minuscule.

And therein lies the failure that Dr Chang and, if he agrees with Chang, Mr Holness have so far not acknowledged and adequately addressed. I say ‘adequately’ since there is a social investment element, called social intervention, in the zones of special operation in Mount Salem and Denham Town. These have brought some worthwhile benefits in terms of roads, fencing, some training, and so on but have no effect, according to Chang, on murder.

LIFE-SAVING RESULTS

But any serious analysis of social investment would have to recognise and distinguish different types. The benefits just listed, while helpful, are miles away from the life-saving focus on hundreds of high-risk youth; the mainstreaming of those willing to move away from negative lifestyles; and the building of community values, leaders, and social capital that, along with treating emergency trauma, are the speciality of PMI’s violence interrupters and social workers.

This social investment, too, as I have pointed out in previous letters, has had life-saving results, specifically in respect of violence and murder. With serious funding, alongside regular policing by a reformed Jamaica Constabulary Force, we would actually have, in fairly short order, a remedy to the present regime of murder.

However, this will only materialise within a context of the Government coming up with a medium- to long-term plan of social investment in community health, education, security, and youth opportunity to end the present deprivation that is nourishing crime.