Unbelievable best describes our reaction to radio reports yesterday that the National Security Ministry is to open a probe to determine how Justice Paul Harrison’s report from the Armadale Commission of Enquiry was leaked to the media.

Unbelievable because we thought that the substance of Justice Harrison’s report would have been foremost on the minds of the ministry’s officials, rather than trying to find out who stole the Government’s thunder in having Nationwide Radio and the Sunday Observer bring to public attention last weekend, information that the administration had in its possession since January 15.

Given the ministry’s misdirected focus, the public could hardly be blamed if it came to the conclusion that the administration would have been more comfortable had the highly respected judge’s report remained secret. For his comments point to brutality of the worst kind meted out to children who, we maintain, are first and foremost deemed as ‘bad’ by the society.

Is not the National Security Ministry concerned that Justice Harrison, retired president of the Court of Appeal, found that Correctional Department staff, among them the present commissioner, Mrs June Spence-Jarrett, kept 23 young girls in the most dehumanising conditions at Armadale?

Is not the National Security Ministry concerned that Justice Harrison found that the fire that initially killed five of these wards of the state on the night of May 22, 2009 was sparked by a tear gas canister thrown into the locked dormitory by police constable Lawrence Burrell?

Is not the National Security Ministry concerned that an additional two girls died because of that fire and that Justice Harrison described the constable’s action as “harsh and unnecessary”… and “an unlawful use of force”?

Instead of going on a witch-hunt for the source of the leaked report, we would have thought that the ministry would have set the wheels in motion to punish those responsible for this travesty.

We would also have been encouraged had the National Security Ministry indicated that it was taking steps to clean up the country’s correctional system. For that is the larger issue unearthed by Justice Harrison’s report.

Pastor Mark Stewart’s comments

We had no doubt that Pastor Mark Stewart would have been the target of human rights advocates after his very frank comments on the death penalty were published in yesterday’s edition.

Rev Stewart, in his sermon at the funeral of Clarendon dentist, Dr Ricardo Patrick Fraser at the Blue Mountain United Church in Manchester, said that those who killed the dentist should not be allowed to live.

“It is easy to seek revenge for his murder, and my Bible tells me about the wages of sin is death and an eye for an eye,” Rev Stewart told hundreds of mourners.

“When you look on a man and stab him up like this, that man fi dead, man. A parson a say that, so oonu can say so… man fi hang, man,” Rev Stewart said to thunderous applause.

Dr Fraser could have stayed in the United States and made a good living, but chose to return to his country to serve the people of Clarendon. He did so for eight years and became known for his philantrophy as well before he was brutally murdered by callous beasts.

The applause that greeted Pastor Stewart’s comments in the church is not surprising to us, as most Jamaicans are sick and tired of the crime ravaging the country and the inability of successive governments to bring it under control. The upshot is that most people support the death penalty.

Pastor Stewart therefore makes a point that we have made in this space before — the death penalty is still the law, therefore the Government should apply it or change it.

But for God’s sake, do something!