Dear Editor,

The horrific images of the Buckfield incident captured on video have understandably brought widespread condemnation of the police and the mob urging them on. But sadly, like much else that goes wrong in Jamaica, it looks likely to go down as yet another nine-day wonder. If the incident runs true to form, few will stop to ask why incidents like this occur and how we can prevent them from recurring. Because to ask those questions is where the rubber hits the road. The society will not be able to avoid such incidents in the future, simply by prosecuting those responsible or weeding out bad eggs from the police force. That’s been done before.

What the society needs in order to reduce the number of such incidents is a fair, swift, accessible justice system because, clearly, the police and the mobs exacting “jungle justice” for years now have no faith in the current one. It is when moving towards such a fair, swift, accessible justice system that we find the roadblocks. Forty-eight years after Independence many minds are still tied to the apron strings of Mother England, and none moreso than the legal fraternity which has a vested interest in the status quo.

Jamaica does not need useless, time-consuming preliminary inquiries. Except for murders, we would lose nothing by having judge-alone trials. The vast majority of the countries in this world get along fine without jury trials. To continue to preach sermons asking potential witnesses to risk their lives in the current environment – when the likelihood of acquittal is as high as that of reprisal – is a waste of breath. To ask people to travel repeatedly long distances to parish capitals for trials won’t work either. No business would operate this way.

So unless Jamaicans are prepared to ask the hard question of “why” and stop believing that by the current tinkering with the old colonial justice system we will change anything, there will be more Buckfields.

Errol WA Townshend

Canada

ewat@rogers.com