In the absence of dons ...

IN THIS society which finds it so difficult to coalesce around anything other than sports (when we are winning!), the consensus on the need for social intervention as a key strategy for building post-garrison communities is both heart-warming and a significant achievement.

It is now a truism - among all classes but, importantly, among the upper classes - that serious money for social projects and economic strengthening has to be pumped into inner-city communities if we are to get a serious handle on crime. Our finance minister has said as much as US$1 billion could be needed for social intervention programmes, and already some multilateral institutions and donors have indicated their interest in helping to fill the gap that will be left if we are successful in reining in the dons and their lucrative drug trade, which has fed and schooled many.

call for Social justice

In earlier years, when people in the middle and upper classes talked about crime fighting, they largely had in mind beating, 'batter-bruising' and even assassinating 'the ole bwoy dem' or 'the ole criminal dem'. There were only a relatively few people like Denis Daly, Flo O'Connor, Ronnie Thwaites and John Maxwell who were valiantly standing up for human rights and calling for social justice. Now those views have been mainstreamed. The human rights lobby is now more influential than the Reneto Adams posse.

It is a good thing that we have seen that evolution in Jamaica and that the business class, multilaterals and uptown people realise that merely killing off poor black people is not the solution to inner-city violence, crime and social degeneration. But there is one reality we have to face and face squarely: Jamaica will not for the short or medium term be able to galvanise the amount of funds necessary to solve the problem of inner-city poverty and underdevelopment.

Those who believe that social intervention is the magical elixir will be disappointed again. Jamaica will not raise that US$1 billion or anything near that. The International Monetary Fund's (IMF) compression-of-the-economy, heavy manners budget that we are under will not allow any meaningful assistance by the state, despite good intentions.

In the immediate rush of adrenaline after the Tivoli invasion and the most recent threat to the State, the finance minister, the business community and the chattering classes will say the right things and make the right pledges about social intervention, but when hard decisions have to be made about expenditure, inner-city communities will not get anywhere near what they will need. We need to begin to realise from now that if we continue to hold the view that we can simply throw money at our inner-city problems, then we are doomed.

Support for economy

The dons not only supported the particular communities within which they lived and ruled but they have supported the Jamaican economy overall. Our gross domestic product figures don't begin to capture the total economic activities in Jamaica. The underground economy accounts for a significant part of our economy. If Jamaica is to be successful in its war on terror and anti-gang thrust, this will leave a considerable hole in our already-burdened economy.

We are all cheering at seeing the backs of the dons and the criminal overlords, but those of us who are economistic or hold the money-answers-all-things view will soon begin to feel the effects of our anti-organised crime initiative. We will see an increase in property crimes and burglary as well as petty theft. Philosophical materialists hold to the primacy of economic forces in shaping society. They ridicule philosophical idealists like me who speak highly of the role of ideas, values and beliefs in shaping society. They scoff at attempts to "inculcate morality on hungry belly".

They say it is futile to lecture people on ethics, values and attitudes when they have few economic opportunities and when they operate in a weak economy. I concede that economic factors are highly influential and, in some instances, determinative of economic and social outcomes. Man shall not live by bread alone, but man can't live without bread. Economic deprivation can and often does deform morals and foster corruption and crime.

But we have to be careful that we do not over-make the point. For while we must sensibly acknowledge that raw economics has to replace the raw politics which prevails in the garrisons, if we believe that buying people's good behaviour with money is a sufficient replacement for political clientelism, we are setting up ourselves for a fall.

Our narrow economistic people are as philosophically naïve as they are practically challenged. For money is no guarantor of civil behaviour or good character. As the contractor general or those charged with investigating corruption globally know, paying people to be honest does not always work. That's why the argument about paying people enough so that they won't be corrupt is misguided for it does not account for greed or some people's insatiable lust for more.

Our society, which has now adopted the social intervention mantra as a panacea, has to be warned about putting excessive and fundamentalist faith in this theology.

The people of Tivoli, accustomed to the largesse of its 'legend' and deposed President, will not suddenly en masse turn to learning trade or working for $8,000 a week under some multilateral-funded or Government project. Cleaning up Tivoli, providing economic and training opportunities for its people will not by themselves produce excitement on the part of the people of Tivoli.

Getting handouts from the don is not the same as getting up early in the morning to go on some project to learn something economically useful. Staying up all night at Passa Passa and other dancehall events and waking up in the afternoon to watch blue movies and kick some football while depending on the don to let off cannot equate with working eight hours a day to get $10,000, which can't buy the name-brand things celebrated in the dancehall.

A compete re-socialisation is needed in Tivoli and other inner-city garrisons. The society has not come to terms with what exactly is needed for inner-city transformation, and is just tossing around this matter of social intervention as if were a magic wand. Social intervention without re-socilalisation is a dead end. But our intellectual elite marginalises discussions on values and attitudes, dismissively regarding such matters being in 'the purview of the church'. They fail to see, in their materialistic myopia, that values and attitudes - social capital - have everything to do with the country's ability to achieve sustainable development.

When 'youth and youth' after training can't get any work; when the sisters fail to pick up employment after their courses, how will they manage the frustration and anger after their expectations have been built up? When people reared on stealing electricity and water now have to pay; when they have fewer handouts because the dons are gone and the shottas are in hiding, how will they survive in this IMF-pressed economy?

immediate challenges

There won't be enough money to throw at our crime and inner-city problems. How will ghetto youth and 'man and man' hold di struggle, hold dem head up and 'keep the faith' when nutten naw gwaan? If they don't have non-materialistic values and ways of motivating themselves, how will they keep away from joining the crime factory? How will they not provide fodder for a new set of dons and 'shottas'?

And who will deal with the anarchy in the ghettoes when petty and big crimes start to occur all over the place and there is no one to 'set the order'? When frustrated youth start raping people's teenaged daughters, stealing from 'Soupy' on the corner and start robbing Mother P's little shop, who will drive the fear of hell in them so that they stop and others don't dare join them?

Community police who have to uphold human rights and depend on witnesses to convict people? Give me a break. The dons rule with an efficiency and swiftness in terms of executing justice that cannot be replicated by the police - and should not, David Batts, Carolyn Gomes and Yvonne McCalla-Sobers would be quick to lecture us (correctly).

Some people might well live to miss the dons and rue when we chased them out of town, unless we find a way to resocialise our people and to change their values and attitudes. Our economistic intelligentsia and philosophical materialists waiting for either revolutionary Marxist change or capitalist transformation are totally bankrupt in dealing with the real and immediate challenges which will face post-don, post-conflict garrisons.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com or columns@gleanerjm.com