Dear Editor,

Crime, especially murders, seems to be endemic to Jamaica as are mosquitoes. Successive governments have struggled to contain murders to acceptable levels. Many different things have been tried, including all sorts of social intervention, but none has worked so far.

The main reason, in my view, we cannot get a grip on this thing is that crime in Jamaica is like what drug trafficking is to drug cartels — a business. It’s a business that is highly profitable to many in the real economy and the underground one. Its beneficiaries include professionals and law enforcement personnel, to name a few. If this economic activity is removed the beneficiaries will be out large sums of money.

Its not talked about a lot in formal discussions on crime, but its widely known that one of the reasons Montego Bay continued to thrive even when there was a downturn in the economy in the last recession was that money had been pumped into the local economy through lotto-scamming activity.

Why is it that young people are so attracted to these nefarious activities?

The problem is if you have a child and each day you say to that child “honesty is the best policy”, and each time you say that the child looks out the window and sees a man with a gun marked dishonesty, and each time he pulls the trigger a pot of gold drops at his feet, who do you think that child is likely to emulate?

Having an education in Jamaica, truth be told, doesn’t amount to much. If you happen to get a job in your field of training the money that it pays is barely enough to live on.

As now Leader of the Opposition Dr Peter Phillips said: “In Jamaica, the man who plays by the rules gets shafted.” If the society is so structured, whether by design or coincidence, that a person who plays by the established rules that governs a society gets shafted because of it there is absolutely no incentive for that individual to continue living by those rules. Therein, in my view, lies the reason we cannot get a sustained grip on crime in this country.

Until, we destroy the economic incentives that underpin criminality and start locking up those who benefit off this economic activity, especially the ones that wear collars and gowns, we will continue to struggle and waste time, money and lives in the quest to live in a gentler and more humane society.

God help us if we do not destroy the foundations of this society that are built on celebrating the breaking of the rules and replace it with incentives that reward playing by the rules.

Fabian Lewis

tyronelewis272@gmail.com