Tougher penalties alone won't solve Jamaica's crime problem

In response to the recent tragic shooting of two nine-year-old boys in St James, Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness has urged Parliament to expedite legislation for longer sentences for murder. This call for tougher penalties is not a new approach and has been a reflexive response by governments to incidents of criminal violence. While the crime crisis in Jamaica is severe, with approximately 1,500 murders annually and a high homicide rate, simply increasing penalties is not a guaranteed deterrent.

Betting on tough penalties

Jamaica Gleaner

12 Nov 2023

THE FIRST response of Jamaica’s governments to almost every nasty incident of criminal violence is usually a declaration of intent to harshen penalties for the offence.

So, it wasn’t surprising last week when two nine-year-old boys were shot dead by unknown assailants while travelling in a taxi in the parish of St James that Prime Minister Andrew Holness urged Parliament to fast-track legislation for longer sentences for murder. A 26-year-old man who was also travelling in the cab appeared to have been the real target of the ambush.

“There are, before us, amendments to legislation, which will increase penalties for such criminal terrorists…,” Mr Holness said. “I urge the House to pass these amendments forthwith – before the year is out.”

The prime minister’s reference was to proposed amendments to the Offences Against the Person Act (OAPA), which would, among other things, lift the mandatory minimum sentence for “capital murder”, or the most serious homicides, from 20 to 50 years. Mr Holness seemed also to hint at tougher sanctions for illegal gun possession, even beyond those instituted last year with the overhaul of the Firearms Act.

These are not all. Parliament recently approved a new bail law that will double the time, to 48 hours, before an arrested person has to have a bail hearing, and to allow the police to hold accused people for longer before they are formally charged for crimes.

And even persons who are granted bail, investigators, depending on how they manage the case, could have up to a year before having to actually lay charges.

REFLEXIVE RESPONSE

This reflexive response is neither new nor confined to the Holness administration. In the 1970s, in the face of rising gun crime, the Michael Manley government introduced a specialised Gun Court and mandatory life sentences for the illegal possession of firearms, until the penalty was struck down by the Privy Council, Jamaica’s final court, as unconstitutional. Mr Manley had the Gun Court and adjacent prison compound painted red because, he said, it was “dread”.

He apparently assumed that the psychological impact of the colour of the prison would be a deterrent to gun crimes.

This default tough-on-crime posture is understandable when governments are under pressure from citizens, who vote in elections. They must show that they are doing something – and toughening penalties is visible and easiest to project.

Moreover, the crisis of criminal violence is real. Approximately 1,500 Jamaicans are murdered annually, for a homicide rate of 55 per 100,000 – among the world’s highest. Put another way, there were 1,303, or 671 per cent more murders recorded in Jamaica in 2022 than in 1974 when Mr Manley instituted the Gun Court and indefinite detention for gun-related crimes. And it is not only homicides that have grown in those 48 years.

But while sanctions have to reflect the severity of the crime and the repugnance with which the society views the offence, tough penalties aren’t by themselves deterrents, notwithstanding the emotional charge they may provide.

Crimes have first to be solved and the real perpetrators charged, brought before a court of law and convicted. That has to happen within a reasonable time. To borrow a phrase: justice has to be certain and sure. Which requires several things, especially law enforcement and justice systems coming together relatively seamlessly. Which isn’t happening now.

CONVICTION RATE

Take the matter of the conviction rate for criminal offences, especially murders, in Jamaica’s courts. According to the court data for last year, the Home Circuit Court’s Criminal Division disposed of 479 charges from 174 cases. One hundred and twenty seven (127) or 26.5 per cent of the charges ended in guilty outcomes. And of those outcomes, 94 or nearly three-quarters (74 per cent) were the result of guilty pleas.

Murder accounted for 133, or 28 per cent of the charges disposed of by the court: 32 of which ended in guilty outcomes, either by convictions or guilty pleas. “Which suggests,” as the court’s statistical document put it, “a roughly 24 per cent probability that a murder matter could end in a guilty outcome …” The converse of which is that 76 per cent of the charges ended in not-guilty outcomes.

The conviction rate was even lower for rape – six, or 15 per cent of 40 charges.

At the Gun Court, 1,235 charges from 399 cases were resolved, of which 374 or 30 per cent were guilty outcomes. And of these, two-thirds resulted from guilty pleas.

The courts have become more efficient in disposing cases, having cleared the backlog in the parish system and close to doing so in several divisions in the Supreme Court. The rest of the system – law enforcement and prosecutorial – needs to match its advances.

Considered differently, the police reported 60 per cent cleared-up rate for homicides up from less than 50 per cent. This now has to be reflected in conviction rates in the courts, notwithstanding the time lag between the completion of investigations and matters going to trial. That is more likely to be a greater deterrent to crime than the harshening of penalties – especially if it is the real perpetrators of the crimes who are caught and convicted. Further, when sentences are extreme, criminals are more likely to take their chances at trial rather than plead guilty.

The constabulary says that it is making progress in solving cases. The JCF can accelerate this process by rebuilding public trust in the institution in which too many Jamaicans have too little confidence and perceive as corrupt. Fixing this should perhaps be a primary focus of the Government.

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