Dealing effectively with guns and drugs for improved public safety
I have often heard references made to a visit to Jamaica in the early 1970s by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, first prime minister of independent Singapore and a man referred to as the ‘Father of Singapore.
He came here, we are told, to examine the existing economic development model in the hope of finding best practices to inform his own desire to transform Singapore from what was then a relatively underdeveloped colonial outpost with no natural resources, into a first-world ‘Asian Tiger’.
Today, Singapore, which is just about the size of St James, has a safe and confident population of 5.5 million, with per capita income of US$60,000. Singapore welcomes 10 million tourists per year, and some 60 million passengers pass through its international airport each year, making it the air transport hub of Asia.
The country is also the shipping hub of the region and a major exporter of high-value commodities. Singapore is reported as among the safest countries in the world. The country had 16 murders in 2011, which is just about what Jamaica has in a quiet week. The country is listed at Number 5 on the Global Competitive Index because it has to refuse certain types of investments, especially if they require large land space. The rule of law prevails; there is strong ethical government and a highly efficient and well-resourced police service. A first-world country by any standard.
In 2000, when American President Bill Clinton visited Colombia, that country was declared a “failed state”. Security analysts describe a failed state as one in which the state has lost the capacity and the political will to perform basic governance functions, such as efficient revenue collection; assure public security and safety; build and maintain critical public infrastructure; public services such as security, public health, education; enforce the rule of law and exercise sovereign control over the territory.
At the time of President Clinton’s visit, the Colombian Government was in charge of less than one-third of its territory. Drug lords and rebels controlled two-thirds of the country. Colombia had the highest murder rate in the world with over 60 murders per 100,000 of the population.
Drug lords and transnational organised crime syndicates had become so powerful that they had taken over court houses and killed judges. They recruited and paid young boys to kill policemen (1,000 policemen were killed in a single year); they slaughtered witnesses and innocent civilians and undermined citizen confidence in the capacity of the State to protect them and their rights.
Colombia’s economy floundered as investors chose safer and more stable environments to invest their capital and entrepreneurship.
Today, the state is in full control of Colombia’s territory; the country’s murder rate has dropped to around 30 per 100,000 of the population. Colombia achieved economic growth of 4.6 per cent between 2004 and 2009. The economy was described as a ‘rising star’ by the International Monetary Fund in 2011.
In the same year, 50 per cent of Colombia’s exports were commodities, not raw material; a strong indicator that the country is building an efficient value-creating economy although it must be said that Colombia has benefited significantly from improved terms of trade, mainly from increased prices for the products it produces.
This turn-around in Colombia’s fortunes has been credited with the leadership of President Alvaro Uribe, which began in 2002. Anthony Harrington, writing in QFinance February 17, 2011, quoted from a speech by current Colombian President Manuel Santos in which the latter praised his predecessor for his decisiveness in leadership.
He notes that upon taking office, President Uribe applied a very simple, yet very important concept that the Romans invented — namely, security. Security must be the first law of the republic; otherwise the other laws will not operate effectively.
For President Uribe, security meant that every citizen should be able to go about their business, secure in their possession of their property and their rights. It also meant taking back Colombia from the rebels and drug lords. In the said speech, President Santos praised Uribe’s stance on security as paving the way for the present Government’s success against terrorism.
“Today, the State controls every single centimetre of the Colombian territory,” notes President Santos, “and that has made a significant change (to our society)”.
He further noted that nowadays when he sits down with presidents and prime ministers from other countries, the first item on the agenda is no longer drug trafficking, violence and kidnapping. “Now we are talking about social development, human rights, the environment and how to grow at a high rate”, he said.
I have visited Singapore and Colombia, seen for myself the progress that has been made in security, stability and economic prosperity. I have interacted with security officials at high levels and I know how well they understand the linkages between the fortunes of their nations and the first priority of public security.
I live in Jamaica. I am fully aware of Vision 2030. Every element of police planning, from the strategic priorities to station level plans, makes reference to Vision 2030. We remind ourselves in every discussion about our promises, and our contribution to making Jamaica the place of choice to live, work, raise families and conduct business by 2030. We are very conscious of where we are, a mere 16 1/2 years from that acid test.
Today, despite a 40 per cent drop in murder, coming from almost 1,700 in 2009, Jamaica still ranks as the fourth most murderous country on earth behind Honduras, El Salvador and Venezuela. Our murder rate is around 40 per 100,000 of the population, down from 63 per 100,000 in 2009.
We have the second highest rate of murders/killings by guns in the world, at 47 per 100,000 of the population; second only to El Salvador with 50 per 100,000 of their population. Our murder rate is equivalent to that of a country experiencing two civil wars at the same time; it is much higher than countries experiencing war on their mainland.
For example, Iraq is two murders per 100,000; Afghanistan is 2.4 murders per 100,000; Mexico, in the middle of drug wars, has a murder rate of 22.7 per 100,000; and Brazil, which is earnestly trying to pacify Favelas controlled by drug lords, has a murder rate of 21 per 100,000. For those interested, the murder rate in the USA is 4.8 per 100,000 and in the UK 1.2 per 100,000. Ordinary citizens understand that a murder rate of 42 per 100,000 means that the killers are much closer to them than in a country with a much lower murder rate.
So with a population of 2.8 million and tourist arrivals of just over three million per year, Jamaica has a per capita income of US$9,000; a struggling economy and some 180,000 adults of working age are without jobs. We have huge potential for shipping and air traffic, which are not fully exploited. It is a shame to visit the Norman Manley Airport any day after 8:00 pm and see that magnificent piece of critical infrastructure empty and unused.
Heathrow, JFK, Miami International, LA and Singapore International Airport would be experiencing peak traffic at that time. Jamaica today is listed at 97 on the Global Competitiveness Index; meaning it is not quite open for business. Our capital city is closed for business by 5:00 pm and there are more painful observations which could be made about Jamaica and attributed to the issue of public security.
Jamaica’s economic development is being held back by a lack of public security. Organised crime and gangs are killing too many people; the prevalence of illegal guns in the hands of criminals is too much for the communities to endure. It is undermining citizen confidence in the capacity and will of the State to protect them in their homes, communities and on public transport.
Jamaicans will soon forget that the hard-working and committed men and women of the security forces who put their lives on the line every day to protect them have managed to achieve a 40 per cent reduction in murders and other violent crimes in a space of three years, because the rate of killing and gun attacks still remains too high.
Over 2,000 Jamaicans are victims of gun attacks each year. Just over a half of those die and the remainder are scarred for life. The Jamaican police have to endure an average 500 gun attacks from criminals each year. This same police force removes from the streets over 600 illegal firearms and thousands of live ammunition each year, while arresting thousands of gun offenders, most of whom return to the streets in short order on bail or on suspended sentences after conviction, even as many are acquitted due to weak prosecution cases.
The gangs and organised crime actors are the ones responsible for the fear gripping the population and the decline in citizen and investor confidence in broad sections of the society. The turnaround in social and economic fortunes which we need to put Jamaica in the reach of Vision 2030 cannot be achieved without dramatic and sustained improvement in our public security.
That can only be attained by a radical approach to public policy in the treatment of organised crime and gangs. Organised crime and gangs are in the business of crime for profit — they are not going to stop.
It matters not to them that the rest of society is suffering. They are making their money. The robbers who take a citizen’s gold chain from his neck and pump bullets into his body consider themselves winners because they trade that bit of gold into the lucrative, yet illegal cash-for-gold trade and collect money.
The ganja farmers who trade weed with the traffickers get cash; the traffickers who exchange some ganja for guns can sell and rent those guns for cash. The money collected abroad from smuggled drugs is used to finance the lavish lifestyle of the traffickers and re-invested in so-called legitimate businesses. The facilitators get cash.
There is a huge, illicit supply chain which guarantees wealth for those involved; they have no time to be concerned about the welfare of the rest of society. That concern is for the rest of us — the well-meaning Jamaicans who embrace Vision 2030 and desire a just, caring, safe and enabling society where honest individuals who are willing to work can achieve legitimate life goals. Gangs and organised crime are the most credible challenge to that ideal and must be defeated if we are to prevail.
WHAT WORKS
The criminals who hold our society hostage are rational persons. They know that if there was a personal cost to crime which will always exceed the benefit of crime, then, to them, crime would not be a worthwhile undertaking. We can expect that they will respond rationally to a dramatic change in our approach to treating violent criminals if the punishment for crimes at least matched the social costs of such crime.
So here are some options which the society may wish to consider in order to improve public security by reducing violent crimes:
Drug Traffickers: All persons arrested for drug trafficking, especially cocaine or attempts to take illegal drugs through our ports, should be denied bail during trial, tried before a High Court judge and upon conviction, be sentenced to time in prison of no less than 20 years. The only chance of a reduced sentence should be where the convicted person pleads guilty and provides law enforcement with evidence to convict co-conspirators.
Drug couriers, when being recruited, can only think of the monetary reward they will get. They have no idea what likely punishment they will face because there is hardly any. A cocaine courier caught in the USA will face 25 years in prison for a quantity of drugs, which will result in a fine for a convict in Jamaica. The persons arrested by Jamaican police in the most recent major drug busts are all on bail and free to carry on their illicit and lucrative activity.
If convicted, they can expect to be out and free to continue their illicit activities in short order. Any person travelling to Singapore by air will observe on the Immigration Card the following message in print, “Death for Drug Traffickers under Singapore Law”. Singapore doesn’t have to kill many drug traffickers. Everyone knows the cost of trafficking drugs to Singapore. Nobody is quite sure of the cost in Jamaica.
Gun Offenders: For every arrest on a charge of illegal possession of firearm or ammunition, or use of illegal gun in a crime — denial of bail and fast trial. Upon conviction, a prison sentence of not less than 25 years, with a possibility of reduced sentence upon a guilty plea and/or assisting law enforcement with evidence to convict co-conspirators.
Singapore solves all its murders because it has less than 20 per year. The simple logic of dealing with the front-end issue of dissuading criminals from using guns in crime is what drives their policy on the treatment of gun offenders. Any person caught with an illegal gun goes to prison for life. Any person who uses an illegal gun to commit a crime in Singapore is put to death. Not many persons are put to death there.
In Jamaica, convicted gun offenders can walk out of court with a suspended sentence or probation. Some pay a fine. Last year, for the period January to September, 75 per cent of convictions in the Western Regional Gun Court resulted in non-custodial sentencing, even as St James was recording twice the national murder rate.
In one case where a police raid netted four high-powered rifles, over 1,200 rounds of ammunition, bulletproof vests, telescopic lens and other war-like equipment — enough to start a small war — the accused persons who pleaded guilty were fined $80,000 and given three years’ probation. This approach does not signal any policy intent to improve public security.
Facilitators of Organised Crime: Upon conviction, mandatory prison sentence of no less than 20 years — with conditional reduction where there is a guilty plea or provision of evidence to law enforcement to convict co-conspirators.
Away with Fines for Guns and Drugs: No criminal appearing before the courts should come believing that he can pay his way out of a prison sentence if convicted. There should be no monetary fine.
Assets Forfeiture: This should be applied in all instances where it can be established that the convicted person, or anyone connected to him, receives a material benefit from the crime and should be pursued notwithstanding the extent of the prison sentence.
The Human Rights Concerns: There will undoubtedly be human rights concerns about such a radical public policy approach to dealing with violent criminals and such concerns should not be ignored. It must, however, be understood that public security and safety are a necessary prerequisite for the enjoyment of human rights. Criminals have undermined public security, stability and citizen confidence, triggering stagnation in our economy and, in the process, denied generations of Jamaicans the opportunity to achieve life goals and pursue happiness for over four decades.
Any preoccupation with human rights backlash from bold and courageous policies to enhance public security will only assure continued deterioration in the quality of life for all Jamaicans, rather than the denial of freedom for the few who undermine our security.
It is a tough choice to make, but we must not lose sight of the fact that the criminals who kill, maim, plunder and undermine public security are rational actors, who choose this path because they reap material benefits. Since the rest of us choose Vision 2030, it’s only logical that we do what works in our collective interest.
Owen Ellington is the commissioner of police.