There is no shortage of crime plans - JDF boss

With crimality wreaking havoc on every aspect of the Jamaican society, Major General Rocky Meade is of the firm belief that there is no shortage of crime plans in the country. Rather, he believes that there is a huge gap in creating long-term solutions that will bring results.

Meade, who is the chief of defence staff at the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), was the keynote speaker at the Mico University College's Research Day, where he assessed the topic 'Education Reimagined: Towards Solutions for Crime and Violence.'

"... We keep calling for crime plans, but we don't have a shortage of crime plans," he declared.

"A crime plan, if effective, will help you to solve the immediate problem of the high violence that we have. But to have long-term impact, we have to get to the youth and make sure that they are not attracted to the gangs and violent activity," declared.

He added: "I am going to work with the police, with the crime plan to tackle the immediate problem. However, simultaneously, we are starting to tackle the youth to attract them to proper employment so that they don't get in the gang of tomorrow."

Address root causes

The JDF boss stressed the importance of creating sustainable frameworks and policies that will address the root causes of the monster that continues to plague the country.

"There are those who believe that the JDF can solve all the problems and that by taking all delinquent youngsters into the military, they will be fixed and our problems will be solved," Meade said.

"One of things that we have learnt from other youth programmes that have existed before is that if you take the youngsters, provide them with some discipline, they will do well during that time. But you put them back into the communities, unemployed, and it doesn't take very long for them to revert," he said.