A fresh approach is needed. The zone of special operations (ZOSO) initiative does have two excellent features, but it is not the answer to the level of violence and murders. It is also clear that neither the Government nor the Opposition has an alternative plan. They have simply thrashed around with straw substitutes. So I am proposing a new strategy that corrects ZOSO while keeping its respect for rights and its combination of social input with policing.

The true problem

This strategy rests on a concept of the problem that must be grasped if the strategy is not to appear simplistic and naïve. The primary problem is not the commonly identified violence and murder. Those are mere symptoms. The problem is underserved and endangered communities and their 140,000 young men and women on a wrong path. This is the source reality we must grapple with. But this is not a disavowal of the need for strong policing to counter criminality.

A grave situation

The gravity of the country’s crisis cannot be overstated. It is more than the numbers threatening to burst earlier highs. It is the relentless breaking of one-time barriers; murder moving beyond male victims to women, children ans the elderly, with the occasional beheading; beyond one-one killing to multiple drive-bys; and beyond slaying in the dark to brazen midday plaza acts. Increasingly, now police are shot at, and there is open talk in the west of a “war” on them. What next? A very perceptive non-Jamaican resident described this arena as “a low level insurgency” — a comment not to be lightly dismissed.

The strategy

Instead of an army of soldiers and police backed by social intervention, I propose an army of social workers backed up by soldier and police posts. The number of social workers per community, depending on its size, could be no more than four or five. The security number manning a police post could be 10.

The social workers become an ‘army’ by multiplying four or five by a sizeable segment of the 100 crime-ridden communities identified for the Community Renewal Programme (CRP). The CRP was requested in 2010 for the Planning Institute of Jamaica by Prime Minister Bruce Golding.

The charge to the social workers is to bring to the mainstream in each community the 50 to 250 young men and women who are mostly unemployed and highly at risk of taking part in criminal gang activities or already starting to do so.

The second charge is to build community activity, spirit and resilience. It would include, for example, community obligation to ensure that school-age children are in school. If these two tasks are well tackled, criminal gangs will literally find no space in communities.

The social workers will focus, first, on winning the trust of the youth, then head off their conflicts through mediation and engage them in healthy sport and cultural events. Four-day retreats away from their communities will instil values to govern drug use, sex, family and community life, personal and career development. They include the drawing up a case file on each youth so as to steer each toward literacy, further education, vocational training in a skill, an entrepreneurial project, or/and a job.

The charge to the police post, by its simple presence, is to give to the community that security that is their right and the State’s basic responsibility. It is to counter illegal shooting or criminal activity. The police post’s stay should only be as long as weakness in community resilience requires it.

Implementation

(a) Pace: There has to be impact similar to what the May 2010 security forces operation achieved both on the ground and psychologically. This is why the ZOSO-type one-one rollout will not cut it. Not that every single needy community can be sorted out at one time, but six frontier parishes must be targeted simultaneously. The seriousness of the crisis demands no less. The task is islandwide and urgent. No endangered community can be left out for long.

(b) Agency: Plainly this is a civil society task in collaboration with the State. That is why the Peace Management Initiative (PMI) (East) must be the lead agency. It is an independent nonpartisan civil society body with a nearly 16-year history of collaboration with political parties and, through funding, with the State — the same kind of joint work of the Economic Programme Oversight Committee and the earlier Electoral Commission of Jamaica.

The charge to social workers outlined above is exactly what the PMI is already doing. It has the experience, comprehensive vision and detailed knowledge of multiple communities. It already has some 75 social workers deployed in 30 communities across four parishes. Alongside Chicago CeaseFire (now Cure Violence), from seven years ago, it has trained its own social workers and is capable of training the larger body required.

PMI’s earlier success in the Kingston Metropolitan Area has been documented. In 2009, a 42 per cent drop in homicides in its focus areas even as islandwide the country recorded the highest rate ever. In the 10 communities around Spanish Town (bus park not included), the PMI reports a 30 per cent decrease in murders this year over last for the January to September period (police statistics are only by parish). Meanwhile, in the parish as a whole it recorded an 8.4 per cent increase and the nation 26 per cent. For this year’s July to October 14 period, five of the same communities had zero murders.

(c) Cost: Clearly the principal cost will not come from social workers or police posts. The PMI is having to manage its programme on $50 million for July 2017 to March 2018. Small police posts will cost substantially less that the current 300 to 400 men and women per ZOSO. The main cost will be to meet infrastructural and employment needs, like those recently committed to in St Mary South Eastern. This is where State agencies and the private sector can collaborate. John Mahfood has set one kind of example, Grace and Staff Foundation another.

Ministries of the State with responsibility for roads, domestic and irrigation water, and garbage collection have to focus their attention more rigorously on poor and needy communities. The Jamaica Social Investment Fund, Urban Development Corporation, Tourism Product Development Company, Jamaica Business Development Corporation, and other similar bodies have to work alongside the Social Development Commission. The private sector has the huge role of providing the larger part of that crucial component that is the employment craved by well over 200,000.

Yes, this will run into quite a few billion dollars. In another article I will have to spell out possible sources. But will the cost come close to a quarter or half of the $80 billion (five per cent of GDP) lost to violence and murder every year that we dally?

Horace Levy is a member of the Peace Management Initiative and for many years he has been active in the non-government organisation community. Send comments to the Observer or halpeace.levy78@gmail.com.