Police research and NEPA development orders

Martin Henry

It was an absolute delight to read the police response to the criticisms, scholarly and otherwise, levelled against its study, Education and Crime: Evidence from Prison Inmates in Jamaica.

The response, 'JCF responds to 'flawed study' claims', carried by this newspaper last Wednesday, was finely crafted by Assistant Commissioner (ACP) Norman Heywood, a guest columnist. So di police can do research to? And can defend purpose, method, findings, conclusions drawn and limitations in research methodological terms of validity and reliability and do so in language far more accessible to the public than the language typically used by 'real' researchers to obfuscate and to sound learned rather than to simplify and to make clear.

The release of the research paper, the use of it by the minister of education in a ministry paper tabled in Parliament, and the hauling and pulling of it in public debate have come at a time when fresh allegations have been made of the police operating "death squads" and their minister announcing an intention to tag them with cameras while on operations in response to the outcry about the high levels of police killings, many of which are deemed to be extrajudicial executions. ACP Heywood was both well prepared and well equipped to take on public affairs analysts, weeping stakeholders in the education sector and, specifically, academics, critics who were glibly, and too often emotionally prepared to label the research 'flawed'.

knowledge creation enterprise

But not to worry, hauling and pulling research presentations is the very essence of the knowledge-creation enterprise. We usually expect, though, that objectors will provide better alternatives for consideration.

Research has become extraordinarily concentrated as the business of certified academics who can be very jealous and dogmatic gatekeepers ensconced in academic institutions and talking to each other in academic language in peer-reviewed academic journals. But a massive knowledge-creation and knowledge-sharing revolution is now under way and shaking things up like in the early days of modern science. To the same extent that most academics hold them in suspicion and low esteem, I am a great fan of Wikipedia and open-source publishing, which free knowledge creation from 'academic' control and are rapidly self-correcting with instant challenges possible in the ICT-driven global knowledge commons.

The JCF, in the study, asked a statistically significant random sample of prison inmates which secondary school they had attended. As ACP Heywood points out, "The study was conducted with the primary aim of informing intervention strategies in schools through its school resource officer (SRO) programme. In other words, the study was conducted to address specific, practical questions ... . The questions to be answered were whether some schools featured more frequently than others in the prison sample and, if so, whether the frequency levels are significant enough to be cause for concern. The schools so determined would then be targeted with a specially crafted SRO programme."

Well, some schools did feature more frequently. And the numbers don't lie. "None of the research questions in the study referred to a relationship between any of the variables."

The big question is why some schools featured more frequently? And the study didn't set out to answer that.

In a rational 'black box' strategy (we don't know what is happening inside, but we can make inputs and obtain outputs), the police paper and the ministry paper, from which Minister Thwaites felt obliged to back-pedal with apologies, proposed social interventions in the high-frequency schools to prepare students to resist the pull of crime.

Clearly, there are limitations. Every study and every public policy has them. Attacking 'flaws' in a well-designed and well-executed study is hardly a scholarly or useful intervention.

In passing, why are there only 3,310 inmates in the prison population in this high-crime country of 2.7 million people, as reported by ACP Heywood? Singapore, with one of the lowest crime rates in the world, has 16,000 prisoners in a population of 5.4 million.

tagging police officers

As I have said elsewhere, the plan to tag police officers with cameras reminds me of the breathalyser and the radar speed guns, etc., etc., which have been introduced into policing here as samples, but which were not maintained.

We should make it a requirement that the cameras only be worn on bullet-proof vests. The minister well knows what the public may not: The police are short of hundreds of bullet-proof vests. No vest; no camera.

As an unintended consequence, the cameras are very likely going to increase crime. Under INDECOM pressure, the police are already mumbling about (further) dropping arms in the fight against crime and protecting themselves from prosecution. Forced to collect evidence which may be used against them, officers will be further more inclined not to engage.

As in good research, I am only describing, not defending. It is what it is.

And as a colleague ominously spells out the matter, with the low conviction rates in the courts and the continued operations of crime bosses even when incarcerated, with all the dangers to the rule of law and to human rights, a large number of citizens quietly support the extrajudicial actions of the police as a crime-control measure. But who is going to study that?

construction squadron

Not only are the police conducting serious, defensible research, the force has assembled a construction squadron like the army's. Good going!

Another much-maligned public agency, the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA), has promulgated four new provisional development orders on behalf of the Town and Country Planning Authority (TCPA). Did you know there was a Town and Country Planning Authority?

Covering the parishes of Portland, Manchester and Trelawny, and the Negril and Green Island area, these development orders outline policies that address issues related to parking, public transportation facilities and urban sprawl.

The orders also give consideration to the need for adequate housing to satisfy a growing population, access to open and recreational spaces, and the encouragement of rainwater harvesting for new developments.

"The intention is to bring order to the development in the areas. Some of the concerns addressed in the orders cover traffic congestion, limited carriageway, absence of sideways, inadequate drains and poor drainage network," says Dione Chambers, senior physical planner at NEPA.

Isn't that nice? But what about enforcement of old and new development orders and of that old Towns and Communities Act? I hope the police are not too busy with good research and with commendably constructing and refurbishing their own facilities. NEPA, TCPA and the JCF are public-order agencies that we desperately need to work well.

Martin Henry is a university administrator and public affairs analyst. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and medhen@gmail.com.