In his address to the recent Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) Regional Investment and Capital Markets Conference Prime Minister Andrew Holness called attention to the negative factors that have influenced the Jamaican economy and society since the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic. He believes the Government has done well in containing the economic fallout from the pandemic, despite the negative outcome of an 18 per cent contraction for fiscal year 2020/21. He pledged to rebuild “even stronger”, citing macroeconomic stability, among other factors.

The extent to which the prime minister and his Government will be able to maintain loyalty to his pledge will revolve substantially around his Administration’s ability to deal with the crime problem — a matter which was not addressed in his presentation.

The truth is that violent criminality and the murder of Jamaicans by Jamaicans has reared its ugly head with a savagery that we have not seen in recent years. Even the homeless on our streets are not spared in the senseless bloodletting that we have seen in the first month of the new year. The brazen killing of a woman while she was at worship in one of our churches in Falmouth is a clear indication of what we are up against. It was certainly not a good ending to a bloody month.

Since the start of the year there have been close to 120 murders, more than the number that was reported for this time in 2020. It gives no pleasure to report these statistics, except to make the point that we are still on a trajectory that will undermine if not cauterise any attempts at building back stronger after the pandemic has been brought under measurable control. Neither is it intended to bash any Government, yet it cannot be overlooked that the primary responsibility of any decent Government is the security of its people within its borders.

The truth is that over the past two decades the country has experienced an average number of 1,000 of its citizens being murdered with no clear end in sight. It can hardly be contested that over the years successive governments have failed at this most important task of protecting its citizens in this regard.

What must be done? In its most recent ‘talk fest’ on crime, the Government, Opposition, and key stakeholders agreed on four mandates to be implemented in fighting crime. The focus would be on:

* dismantling and eliminating criminal gangs;

* normalising and reintegrating troubled communities;

* preventing corruption, collusion and money laundering; and

* reforming and modernising the police and justice system.

All of these are ongoing activities which have reaped some success, such as the dismantling of gangs. But to what extent are these mandates being pursued with any alacrity, especially with the dampening effects of COVID-19?

Is there a budget for reintegrating troubled communities; to help people to feel more secure in their homes in inner-city communities; to embark on social intervention policies that can remove the blight that is still too much a feature of these communities especially in the Kingston and St Andrew metropolitan areas?

Where are we on the matter of corruption? For the past three years we have remained almost static on the Corruption Perception Index, which measures how individual countries treat corruption.

All of these efforts will come to naught if the citizens of the country are not made to feel that they are important stakeholders in the fight against crime. They do not believe that they have a seat at the table and that their views matter at official talk fests where ‘elites’ gather to speak on their behalf. They have come to expect the inchoate, gratuitous appeals which are made from time to time by their political leaders whenever there is a flare-up of violence, but somehow they expect nothing to change for the better.

The sad truth is that most Jamaicans do not feel that they are important stakeholders in the fight against this monster. Where are the rolling town hall meetings in parishes or constituencies about the crime problem? How seized are our parliamentarians about this issue in their respective constituencies? A television address about the existential threat we face may be helpful, but it cannot replace engaging people in their communities and letting their voices be heard on a troubling problem.

If you want people to help then seek them out and enlist them in the fight. Let them know that their views matter. The mere fact of listening to them and getting their ideas by engaging them in conversations will make them more open to do their bit.

I might be beating this to death, but there has never been any successful way to fight crime that does not have the cooperation of citizens in the fight. The criminal-minded person lives among us, visits the restaurants we visit, drives on the same roads we do, and engages in myriad activities that are common to all of us. These people return to their abodes at night and to the bosoms of their loved ones, who often wash the blood of others from their clothes, and sometimes to parents who aid and abet their activities.

In other words, criminals are not phantoms. They are hemmed in by the same real estate that limits all of us, a geographical space in which we are surrounded by the sea. Only a few criminals with the resources can escape our shores to another country, such as Cuba or Haiti. Most are among us, and have nowhere else to go.

It is in this context that localised intelligence from willing citizens can go a far way in denting the crime problem. There is no better way to get intelligence other than engaging people where they are. They know what is happening. Of course, the biggest humbug to this endeavour is distrust of the police. Will people feel comfortable or safe in divulging information to an entity that is known to be abysmally corrupt?

Outside of engaging the citizenry in a more focused and robust way, and adopting other creative methods in intelligence gathering, the authorities will only return to the tried and failed policies of the past. They will adopt knee-jerk reactions when murders, like a breakout of hives, erupt in given volatile communities. States of emergency (SOEs), or other suppressive methods, will become the ready tools of choice. But none of these approaches are sustainable over the long term, as the evidence has borne out. We seem to be communicating to the hardened criminals among us that we are running out of ideas, with the Government blaming the Opposition for not supporting its use of SOEs to fight crime.

Again, as this column has said repeatedly, we cannot use states of emergencies over a sustained period to fight crime. Apart from the obvious human rights concerns, they do not provide the environment that will lead to the containment of crime over the long haul. They work well in the initial phases of a crackdown on volatile communities largely, as a result to the saturation of these communities by the security forces and the suspension of human rights concomitant with such operations. But they place inordinate powers in the hands of the police and soldiers which were never intended to be used except for a short period. This is why they cannot be used willy-nilly or as suppressive measures in the fight against crime. Even the security forces themselves become mentally exhausted by the prolonged use of these methods.

If we are serious about crime, we must treat it as the national emergency it is. There is no moral equivalence between the rampant criminality we have been experiencing and the fight against COVID-19. But one cannot help but wonder at the lack of focus on a problem which this January alone has taken close to 120 lives, notwithstanding the urgency of fighting the pandemic which, for almost nine months, has killed close to 400 Jamaicans. How many of our citizens will be murdered in the next nine months?

The Government must realise that we are literally staring down the barrel of a gun and the situation merits a national emergency response. We need decisive leadership to chart a better path forward.

Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest, social commentator, and author of the book WEEP: Why President Donald J. Trump Does Not Deserve A Second Term . Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or stead6655@aol.com.