There’s good reason, we insist, to continue highlighting the need for a fully equipped laboratory to assist the police’s forensic gathering capabilities.

While we commend the Government for the investment it has already made in providing the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) with forensic equipment and training in that critical arm of crime-solving, we still believe that the cost of a fully equipped laboratory — US$21 million over three years, we’re told — is an investment that will give the best bang for the buck.

To be fair, the equipment already in the hands of the police is nothing to sneeze at — drying cabinets, used for the drying and storing of evidence; fuming chambers, which develop latent prints from objects; light sources, used for locating shoe prints, fibres and particulate evidence; digital colour photography and chemicals used in the gathering of forensic evidence which are just some of the tools at the disposal of the policemen and women assigned to the Major Investigation Taskforce (MIT).

In addition, the Forensic Crime Scene Investigators who make up that unit are well-trained by an international crime scene expert and consultant, Mr Hayden Baldwin, who served the Illinois State Police for 29 years and is certified as a senior crime scene analyst by the International Association for Identification. This association is said to be the world’s oldest and largest organisation of forensic identification investigators, examiners, analysts and technicians with more than 7,000 members.

Mr Baldwin has been mandated to train trainers in the JCF, a move that will ensure the transfer of vital skills over the long term. So that programme has tremendous value to Jamaica.

We can’t, therefore, see the logic in what appears to be hesitance from the authorities in pursuing the establishment of a lab to assist these Forensic Crime Scene Investigators whose dedication to their jobs no one has been able to question.

We would have thought that having voted to retain the death penalty, our legislators would have seen the need to ensure that we have in place the scientific capabilities to truly determine the guilt of people accused of committing murder.

We are therefore renewing our call for the Government to get serious about setting up this facility, as what now exists is unable to provide investigators with the assistance they need to apprehend those guilty of committing crimes and secure their conviction.

And if the legislators are really serious about fighting crime, they will grant the police’s request for DNA and plea bargain legislation, as we are convinced that those tools will go a far way in helping the Constabulary to function more efficiently.

They work very well in other jurisdictions. It should be no different here.