THE outcome of the Dudus/Manatt Commission of Enquiry could prove a crucial indicator for the future of crime-fighting in Jamaica, social scientists have warned.

“If people don’t feel they have access to justice on the grounds that the state is corrupt, then they have no motivation to comply with the rules of the country and that just furthers the corruption because it means that all we are going to do is hustle,” said anthropologist of social violence Dr Herbert Gayle. “People will not feel any remorse in hustling, in getting involved in illicit activities and you cannot build a country on that basis.”

According to Gayle, it is extremely critical that something comes out of the enquiry. “Even if it is a set of recommendations or some plans for the future, people would be pleasantly surprised based on what we are seeing in the field,” he told the Observer. “It would help in the sense that it is going to be used as a kind of benchmark for a restart for governance, which is more than just access to justice.”

Gayle’s comments come even as data, dubbed the Complete Snapshot, collected for his programme the Complete Picture — aired on Newstalk 93 FM Mondays to Fridays, 12:15 pm to 3:00 pm — show that poor Jamaicans continue to feel excluded from accessing justice. But more importantly, the data reveal that people believe that among those with the most access to justice are ‘criminals connected to politicians’.

“This has implications for policing and for the extra-judicial killings that we are seeing,” said Gayle. “A police officer, between 2005 and 2006 when I did research with them, pointed out to me that they had situations where they had arrested one young man four times. On two or three occasions, they were told by a politician to let go that young man. The last time that young man went to court, he got off again. The question was asked of me ‘what would you do to that young man when you meet that young man who has got ‘show-off’ and tells you he is going to ‘eat your food?’

“So the police are saying that extra-judicial killings have to go on. The judicial system let him (the criminal youth) go, the corrupt politician tells the police to let him go, and now he (the police) is vulnerable, so he is saying if that is the kind of situation we have, then extra-judicial killings are going to continue because they are going to have to go for him (the criminal youth) before he comes for them,” he added.

The Complete Snapshot data, which had a sample size of 200 — 100 males and 100 females, 50 from each gender category in the age group 18-34 and the other 50 in the 35+ group — also saw Jamaicans counting among those with the best access to justice in the categories of people such as “the upper class”, “politicians” and “merchants”.

At the same time, it revealed that 71 per cent of those questioned think access to justice is only fair or marginal, while 25 per cent, the majority of them male, consider access to be poor — particularly for “the poor”, “inner-city males”, “uneducated people” and those who are “mentally challenged”.

Criminologist Bernard Headley, for his part, holds out little hope that anything tangible will come of the enquiry and predicted it did not augur well for helping to effect a reduction in crime.

“I think really that what happened with the whole Dudus affair is that the justice that people — particularly those who suffered — (were looking for), as things now look, they are not going to receive that. We are not even going to know the truth really — and truth being a part of justice,” he told the Observer.

“We are smart enough to know why, but the truth about it from the perspective of the people who know, who engaged in the hiring (of the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips), we are not going to know. There is a lot of smoke screens and a lot of politicking and people making themselves look good, but we are just not going to know the truth. That bothers me because we have well over 100 people who were killed,” Headley added.

Amidst the wrangling over the extradition of accused drug lord Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, the security forces last May went into a heavily barricaded Tivoli Gardens in search of him. In the process, they clashed with gunmen in the community, leaving some 73 people, including two policemen and a soldier, dead and several others as yet unaccounted for.

Following the three days of skirmishes, which began on May 24, there emerged reports of police abuse and extra-judicial killings in Coke’s former stronghold — all of which have prompted the commission of enquiry.

As for ‘Dudus’, he was held almost a month later along Mandela Highway in the company of Reverend Al Miller, who said he was taking Coke to the United States Embassy at his request.

Meanwhile, Headley said people are gaining insight into the types of leaders the country has, courtesy of the enquiry.

“As we watch, we are indeed learning a lot about the kind of governance we receive and the quality of the people who lead our state apparatus,” said Headley. “And there are some intricacies that we are gathering — we are learning that which we were not privy to before. So it isn’t entirely a waste; it is adding some knowledge — maybe not credibility to the system of government, but at least we are getting insight.”

It is for precisely this reason, the veteran researcher said, that successfully bringing down Jamaica’s crime rate over the long term looks to be in question.

“We are seeing a classic case in which the institutions of government, primarily law enforcement and the judicial system, are really setting a very poor example in the pursuit of justice,” said Headley. “If people lose faith in the two foremost institutions that are supposed to be about justice, then it automatically weakens their confidence in the entire state, which means don’t come around here telling me about obeying the law, don’t tell me about infractions against the law, don’t come around here telling me about crime and, most ominously, I don’t think I am going to get any justice from the state.

“Justice not only has to appear to be done, justice has to actually be done and if people are not seeing either one, it doesn’t bode well for their confidence in the state and it is certainly not going to go very far in restraining their behaviour,” added Headley, who lectures at the University of the West Indies (UWI).

Gayle, in the interim, has cautioned that while commendable, the gains of the police’s crime-fighting efforts could quickly be eroded if the proper social safety nets are not put in place. He noted that this was especially important, given people’s poor perception of the justice system.

“The situation is that if we don’t capitalise on this now, while the guys (members of the criminal underworld) are holding meetings all over the place and planning what to do, it means that when retaliation comes, if it comes, then nobody will be able to do anything,” the anthropologist told the Observer. “At the end of the day, if you have people who believe that certain groups do not have access to justice, then unless there is genuine social nurture of this group, in the long run there will be no reduction of violence.”

According to Gayle, with every reduction in crime that has come as a consequence of brute force, the succeeding years have brought mayhem.

“Every time we have a dip, the following year is worse, and every time we have a dip in murders — especially for two years running — the situation gets worse after the police themselves have to take a break,” he said.

Jamaica is now in its second year of seeing a downturn in the crime rate.

Gayle used the example of the Super Mano Dura (Super Firm Hand) gang legislation of 2004 in El Salvador to reinforce the point.

“(They have since moved) from (having the) seventh highest murder rate in the world to number one. The third year came and they nearly dead,” he said, noting that Super Mano Dura, up to 2010, had resulted in 70 murders per 100,000 in the population. “We (Jamaica) have moved from number two to number four (given the recent activities of the police).”

Still, Gayle, who himself lectures at the UWI, said all was not lost.

“It depends on whether the social service side of the Ministry of National Security, with the PMI (Peace Management Initiative) and Hush the Guns, Children First, and the mass of units working on the ground can pool and capitalise on the downturn. If they can do this, they can actually pull out some of the recruits that can bring the retaliation to us,” he said. “In other words, a country can use force and still not face the retaliation but the social units have to work. It is not the force that creates change, but the social units.”

Headley has also questioned the value of brute force to realise gains in crime reduction.

“If it was the action of the police forces in Tivoli Gardens in May of last year that are causing momentary declines in our murder rates, then the question I ask is this, is that the kind of pyrrhic victory we need in order to defeat crime: killing a lot of people to reduce numbers of homicides?” he inquired.