MONTEGO BAY, St James — Programme director, Community Renewal Programme, Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) Charles Clayton says the answer to the nation’s crime problem is definitely not the resumption of hanging.

In fact, Clayton pointed out that there is no evidence of lower crime rates in countries that use capital punishment.

“There are some people who believe that all we need to do is to resume hanging and it will all stop. You don’t even catch them, so how you going hang them? That’s the problem,” Clayton argued.

He added: “And the second thing is that there’s no data around the world that suggests that those countries that have exercised capital punishment have a higher rate of success, in terms of fewer violent incidents, than those that don’t.

“In fact, some of the most peaceful countries are those that do not include capital punishment in their menu of solutions.”

He was delivering the keynote address at the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (MBCCI) inaugural security summit held at the Montego Bay Convention Centre last week.

Speaking ahead of Clayton, Security Minister Dr Horace Chang, said Government needs all the stakeholders on board in the war against crime, and promised that the Administration will continue to improve the Jamaica Constabulary Force and expand its crime-fighting capacity by recruiting more officers to apprehend criminal elements.

“The Government is committed to ensuring that we provide the police with resources. We had a two-year gap because the budget had to be focused on the health issue [COVID-19] for the past 24 months. We have maintained our policy, we are restoring that this year, and we are seeking to expand the police force to its appropriate size,” the security minister said.

Clayton, who was in full support of Government’s efforts to strengthen the police force, also agreed that there was need for a “societal response”.

“There are many fronts on which we need to tackle it. On the one hand, the Government is doing a lot of work in strengthening the police force and in strengthening the institutions to manage the situation. But that alone won’t help,” Clayton argued.

“What it really requires is what we have been talking about at this conference; you have heard it. It is a need for societal response.”

He stressed the need for a corporate approach “where agencies look at the communities and at the different areas in which there are gaps”.

“You look at the fact that the governance structures don’t work; you look at the fact that the social systems don’t work; the family structure, they’re not there; parental support is not there. How can parents support their children in the absence of financing? These are things that we have to look at. Parenting programmes generally speak to theoretical frameworks that work when the resource is there. But do you have the framework to provide them with the assistance when those resources don’t exist? What do you tell your parents, you need to point them to the agents of State that can provide support or to other mechanisms. But, in a vacuum, they can’t be good parents,” the PIOJ official said.

He also said there is need for community members to be connected with State agencies.

“We have this social environment that we have to relate to, and resources are scarce. And, except we combine our resources, that social environment cannot be properly tackled. There are multiple dimensions to that. There are governance structures to be resolved,” Clayton argued.

He added: “It is governance issues that lead to the formation of alternative governments within these communities where the State becomes marginal and the community itself finds its own solutions, finds its own justice mechanism, finds its own mechanism for social services, where community members become disconnected from agencies of State. They don’t know how to get their passport, they don’t know how to get their TRN [tax registration number], they don’t know how to apply for a job, they don’t know what health services will do for them because they have been divorced from all of this.”