Ronald Thwaites | Before judge or maker

Just asking: why would anyone join a gang when the fate of being “fatally arrested “or put “before their Maker” is increasingly likely as senior policemen and our prime minister have mandated? Not many people need fear being brought before a real judge or even face a resurrected hangman.

“Neutralising” those who are deemed unworthy of life or due process is summary in Jamaica. On the street corner, behind the zinc fence, accusation, conviction and execution take seconds, unlike the years and years it takes to go “before a Judge”.

WE SPAWN CRIMINALS

And the public love it and with Old Testament fervour, bay for “an eye for an eye”. Their fear of criminal marauders knows no other recourse. But despite the dubious statistics about gang numbers, the society continues to spawn the murderous youth who sprayed the innocents at Cherry Tree Lane then parade themselves on TikTok on their way to the same morgue and “Must Pen Cemetery ”as those they slaughtered.

In the 18th Century when there were public hangings of pickpockets in London, pickpockets would turn up in numbers to ply their trade as their victims gawked at the ones dangling on the scaffold. Or when slaves in our own past would gather in excited witness at the brutal whipping of their own kith and kin.

Trying to kill out what is sometimes falsely attributed to “gang violence” in Jamaica is about as futile as is the Israeli pogrom to “eliminate Hamas” or equally Hamas’ intent to “eradicate the state of Israel”.

HOW ABOUT A POSITIVE APPROACH

It’s not that we don’t know what better to do. Last week both the police and the people in Parade Gardens gave witness to the early success of Project Star in sustained, bloodless reduction of violent crime in that febrile community. Before its activities were inexplicably and culpably downgraded for want of state support and likkle-bit of funding, so did the Peace Management Initiative. And there were more genuine efforts ( not “headline grabbers”) like theirs.

When youths see some hope for themselves; some dignity and self-respect which they can grasp – work, livity, healthy discipline, all but the most warped will avoid the gun and the criminal gangs. When they have the opportunity to join the cadets, a disciplined sports program, the Pathfinders or a police youth club, they don’t end up prematurely, or at all, before “a Judge or their Maker”.

EFFECTIVE SCHOOLING

When the expensive 16-year school experience teaches Christian and ethical living, wholesome values and attitudes and positive mentorship, when father and mother mind their pickney, when children go to Sabbath or Sunday school, most youth at least have a fighting chance to rise beyond the negative infection of social media and the hyped-up banality posing as state-sponsored entertainment. This instead of the treadmill of educational and social failure which leads to distress and destruction.

We seem to be heading more in the direction of El Salvador than of Cuba or Singapore, societies which, in very different ways, inculcate order and productivity.

THEY GET IT

So yes, we do know what to do to effectively stanch the criminal and official blood-letting. Horace Chang and even the retiring policeman Mr Bailey seem to get it, but are weak in the exercise of their considerable influence and power to effect change.

Do these powerful leaders acknowledge the connection between chronic and increasing illiteracy among school leavers and the flow of unattached humanity into criminal life-styles? If they do, where is this reflected sufficiently in public policy and programs? And what does the PNP, the increasingly likely next government, have to say?

BAKED-IN INCREDULITY

It is dangerous when, as now, many citizens don’t believe what the leaders of government are saying, especially about life, liberty and essential services. How many accept the now memorized refrain that is supposed to justify every police killing? Or take the issue of a properly secured prison for those few for whom there is no alternative but rehabilitative confinement. Mr Holness says the money to build one is hard to find. But he is responsible for Jamaica’s refusal of the left-handed offer by the British eight years ago to finance such an institution. That was a mistake.

So for a good while longer, the purposeful cruelty of daily 19 hour lockdowns in Agana Barrett, Adijah Palmer-style overcrowded cells will continue as will the corruption and the behind-bars plotting of external mayhem in our school-houses of crime and human degradation. Holland is closing prisons for want of convicts. What do they know that we don’t?

SIX FOR A NINE

We continue to be given a ‘six for a nine’. Telling us about the defects liability period for the bruk-up section of the St Thomas highway is purposely diversionary. Who was the subcontractor who short-changed the base material? Why wasn’t the defect picked up long before by the expensive project consultants or the all-powerful main contractors? Where was the NWA?

And more, trucks – much more than cars, especially over-laden trucks, mash up roads. So where are the long-ago sabotaged scales on the South Coast highway and how many inches of overlay has been laid down to withstand that heavy traffic? Those are the questions to be answered by our governors instead of the placebo of who will pay for repairs.

UNACCEPTABLE

I have just seen the video of the interchange at a traffic stop at Dover in St Mary between a police officer and a certain Mr Dunn, suggested, but not named, to be an elected official. This person is heard repeatedly calling the policeman a “pig” and refusing his legitimate orders. The officer responds with commendable firmness and restraint.

His is the gold-standard of policing. Were the brawler other a person of prominence he might have been dispatched “to his Maker” by a lawman of less maturity and integrity.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com