By United States State Department standards, Jamaica gets another failing grade in its report on human rights practices, and local rights watchdog, Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ) and the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) agree.

Both JFJ executive director Carolyn Gomes and Opposition spokesman on national security Derrick Smith lashed the Government for what they say is its failure to improve the country’s justice system and provide speedier dispensing of justice for victims of state abuse.

The US report praised the Government for the “general respect” it paid to the rights of most citizens, but chided the Jamaican state over its handling of alleged extra-judicial killings by police, a weakened justice system, violence against women and mob killings.

“There were serious problems in some areas, including: alleged unlawful killings committed by members of the security forces; mob violence against and vigilante killings of those suspected of breaking the law; abuse of detainees and prisoners by police and prison guards, poor prison and jail conditions, continued impunity for police who commit crimes, an over-burdened judicial system and frequent lengthy delays in trials, violence and discrimination against women, trafficking in persons and violence against suspected or known homosexuals,” the report stated.

“So what else is new?” Gomes asked. “What we need now is for them to do something about it,” she added, without disclosing what she thought should be done.

The August 19, 2006 killings of four men by police in Chapelton, Clarendon, allegations of a cop setting an inmate on fire at the Montego Bay lock-up in April last year, and the fatal shooting of Richard Williams by cops in 2001, were some of the cases the report said proved that the Government was lackadaisical in disciplining offending cops.

But Gomes said those cases were just the tip of the iceberg.

She used the case of Hapete Henry, who was killed after police fired into a crowd at a football match inside the National Stadium in 1998. The case was yet to leave the Coroner’s Court, Gomes said.

The Coroner’s Court has been plagued by a huge backlog of cases. In the past, resident magistrates have had to double as coroners, despite the very high backlog in their own courts.

In 2005, the Government enforced legislation to reform the procedures for the conduct of coroner’s inquests and to speed up the time it took for cases to pass through the system.

But Gomes said the changes have had little effect on the pace of justice so far. She said there were dozens of cases of allegations of police killings which had not yet been dealt with.

Smith criticised the failure of the police to investigate themselves whenever allegations of extra-judicial killings arose. He said the Bureau of Special Investigations (BSI) – the police body responsible for probing fatal shootings – and the Office of Professional Responsibility, set up to probe charges of corruption against cops, were woefully understaffed and had a poor record of bringing cops to justice.

He said there were 375 fatal shootings between January 2005 and December 2006 and 37 up to March 3 this year.

“We are particularly concerned about this, especially that the body responsible for investigating shootings by the police, the BSI, has a poor record,” Smith said.

He said the BSI had investigated 2,109 fatal shooting cases over the six years since it was formed, but only 1,175 cases had been completed, and of that amount, 1,070 were submitted to the director of public prosecutions.

“Five hundred and twenty of those cases were referred to the courts and only four resulted in convictions. At this rate, the BSI will never catch up and justice delayed is justice denied,” Smith complained to the Sunday Observer.

The State Department report also criticised the prison system, citing overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions and the holding of children in adult penal institutions.

But head of the Department of Correctional Services, Major Richard Reese, said no State Department official visited any of the island’s penal institutions last year.

“No visits were conducted,” Reese said, “Whenever any mission requests information on the status of any institution, the department affords them visits so they can see it first hand,” Reese said.

He said while the conditions in the prisons were not perfect, sanitary conditions had improved significantly.

Children who are given custodial sentences by the courts are sent to adult prisons by the courts, Reese said.

“It depends on the age of the child, but they are segregated from adults and are provided with counselling, education and other rehabilitation services,” Reese said.

He said cases of warders abusing prisoners had also dropped significantly.