Dear Editor,

I’ve long argued that states of emergency are one of the only legal tools we have to fight crime.

The other legal tool is technology, and not social intervention.

An illegal tool for decreasing our murder rate is to have vigilante squads defend and protect their community from criminals.

We are used to merely providing Jamaica’s homicide figures from the 60s to present, annually. To me that approach is too short-sighted.

Senator Robert Nesta Morgan, in the Senate last Friday, said over 40,000 Jamaicans had been murdered since Independence. He gave the numbers by decade, which to me is the right way to look at crime trends.

Homicide figures given by the decade by Senator Morgan were:

1960-1969: over 900 murders

1970-1979: 2,086 murders

1980-1989: 4,870 murders

1990-1999: 7,621 murders

2000-2009: 13,418 murders

2010-2019: 11,300-11,400 murders — so far

Even though Morgan gave out the statistics, he failed miserably in explaining the figures. For example, every decade since Independence has seen an increase — except for this decade.

Questions must be asked as to why this decade is seeing a decrease, and was the 2000-2009 decade just a one-off thing?

Is it the declared states of emergency that account for over a thousand lives being saved?

Going back to the point of looking at numbers annually can be misleading. Take, for example, in the decade that recorded the most murders in history. The 2000-2009 decade recorded lows of 887 murders in 2000 and 975 murders in 2003.

Meanwhile, this present decade has two lows that are higher than the previous decade — 1,005 and 1,097 murders were recorded in 2014 and 2012, respectively. But overall, this decade is better than the previous one.

I am not normalising over 11,000 murders in a decade, but any decrease should be analysed thoroughly. We need to get back to under 5,000 murders a decade. The Jamaica Labour Party and the People’s National Party need to agree on a homicide-reduction strategy for 2020-2029.

Teddylee Gray

Ocho Rios, St Ann

teddylee.gray@gmail.com