WE are thankful for the significant drop in crime, especially murders, since the short-lived State of Emergency.

However, lest complacency sets in, we feel constrained to remind the nation of some critical facts.

Fighting crime consists of two actions; first the apprehension of criminals and second, the prevention of crime. The more we neglect crime prevention, the more time and money we have to spend on apprehension.

It is our view that the ultimate crime prevention measure is employment, particularly among young male adults. This in turn drives economic development.

The Jamaican economy has not generated enough employment since the late 19th century when the social pressure did not manifest itself as crime because of the escape valve of migration.

One in 10 able bodied males left to labour and die building the Panama Canal and then on the banana fields and railroads of Central America and Cuba. Starting during World War II, Jamaican men went to cut cane in Florida and pick apples and tobacco in Connecticut, USA. Then in the 1960s, the ‘Windrush’ generation went to operate the London Transport System and introduce the Ska and Calypso style cricket to staid Lords.

When Enoch Powell shut off the escape value of migration to Britain in the mid-1960s, we filled our quotas to Canada and the US, but crime surged. By the late 1960s then Prime Minister Hugh Shearer exhorted the newly armed Jamaican Constabulary to shoot and not “recite any Beatitudes”.

Some crime is spawned by greed among the rich and the poor alike but most emanates from the needs of the poor, in particular, the young unemployed males who turn to violent crime.

The arms race between the police and the criminals escalated exponentially after unemployment reached unprecedented heights. Jobless figures only ceased to rise when the Government stopped counting those who had given up begging work as part of the labour force.

The lesson is that containing crime to socially tolerable levels is best accomplished by the crime prevention antidote of employment rather than apprehension.

Every government since Independence has failed to create an economy that generates enough employment, and every government has spent more and more money on apprehension.

The current situation requires more resources to tackle apprehension and prevention.

The security forces, unrestrained by politicians and human rights considerations, won the war against ‘Dudus’ and the Evil Empire. Proof of the victory in this battle is the 40 per cent drop in the murder rate in the months following.

But if there is not immediate and substantial resources devoted to employment then the drop in the murder rate will be a fleeting lull, like the sense of community that lasts for a few days after a hurricane.

This maxim is universally valid as a book published last week underscores. How Wars End, a study of the US at war since World War I, concludes that war has two equally important aspects, the fighting and the rebuilding. The US even when it won the fighting, lost the war.

We in Jamaica must be careful that we don’t win the battle of Tivoli but lose the war on crime.

The Government’s post-Tivoli crime plan is not being implemented in earnest. Lack of funding cannot be the impediment when there is so much grant money in the international institutions and the donor agencies of our allies.

Well do we know that the devil finds criminal activities for idle young hands.