I have been a contributor to several crime conferences recently and have participated in numerous public discussions regarding crime in Jamaica.

The topics range from the increase of violence in a reducing crime environment to the homicide rate.

I have realised that there is amnesia present in our country and it is standard. It is not differentiated by class, education, or even political affiliation.

What I am talking about is our general crime environment and how it is being discussed and even presented.

This encompasses the proliferation of all serious crimes, with a particular emphasis on murders, sexual offences, robberies, break-ins and shootings.

The whole country is making statements that would indicate that there has been no improvement in reducing serious crime.

Everyone has forgotten that the murder tally in 2017 was 1,647. In that year the rape tally was 489, robberies totalled 1,273, shootings 1,483 and break-ins 1,197. This, if compared to our end of year statistics for 2021, when murder at 1,463, rape at 448, robberies at 771, shootings at 1,262, and break-ins at 908, and our 2022 mid-year murder figure of 737, could result in, if trends continue, a 2022 murder total of about 1,474.

This shows a trend indication of an 11 per cent reduction in the five-year period December 2017 to December 2022 in relation to murder.

This is an incredible feat if you look on all other crimes also reducing. You can’t measure a trend or assess the success of programmes or personnel over a one-year period.

Ignoring the feat that has been accomplished is dangerous. Why? Well, there are a few reasons.

Firstly, pretending that the programmes have not worked increases the likelihood of changing and cancelling them.

Governments are fickle; they are influenced by public opinion.

We as experts, academics and media personalities influence public opinion. We may be forcing unnecessary change that is destructive to the national security of the country. Secondly, it could result in the removal of key persons who are making great strides, and replacing them with persons who will be starting from scratch.

In 2017, we were heading towards a crisis. We had increased our homicide rate in that year by 22 per cent from 2016. If this trend had continued, we would be at 4,400 homicides now.

The spell was broken in 2018 and although the homicide rate trended slightly upward after the dramatic fall, it is still nowhere near what it was at the end of 2017.

Five years is a reasonable period to assess the success or failure of a policy initiative.

However, it is even more relevant because major changes have occurred in our country within that window since 2017. The Government changed on February 25.

A new commissioner of police was appointed in April of 2017. The Criminal Justice (Suppression of Criminal Organisations) Act, known generally as the ‘anti-gang legislation’, has become a much-used tool since 2017. The minister of national security was also changed post-2017 (in 2018).

We cannot continue saying that all the above are failing if crime, including murder, shows a significant reduction over a five-year period.

Have we even considered the effort that it took and the accomplishments that have been attained by the Criminal Investigations Branch (CIB) of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) over the last four and a half years?

Tesha Miller, the leader of Jamaica’s largest gang, the Klansman gang was convicted.

His former ally turned adversary and alleged leader of his own section of the gang, Andre “Blackman” Bryan, is on trial and has been remanded for years.

The investigation was at a level that Jamaica has not seen before.

It demonstrated effort, organisation and courage, although you would never know it with all the negative press regarding the trial.

But trust me, this case will force all cases brought under this law to be significantly more sophisticated than they once were.

The CIB has charged and managed to remand and try offenders. The operations section of the force has, without an occupational force, managed to bring about a reduction of all crimes within the five-year period.

The jails have managed to keep the remanded, despite inadequate facilities and serious staffing issues.

There is also a significant misunderstanding about how important it is to reduce crimes like robbery and burglary. These are the crimes that will impact the regular citizen who is not gang-affiliated.

It is during a robbery that the regular person is likely to get shot. Think about it. You’re not in the habit of double selling lead sheets, are you? Nor are you likely to steal anyone’s cocaine.

However, you traverse Half-Way-Tree. You also visit your bank. No one is going to rape you in Parade, but it’s likely to occur during a burglary. These are the crimes that threaten the innocent the most.

Serious changes are on the horizon to reform the Gun Court to a one-way street to long-term incarceration. This did not happen by chance. I can imagine what Marlene Malahoo-Forte must be going through to pass this legislation in an environment where criminal rights trumps victims’ rights.

We all need to forget politics as it relates to crime and focus on defeating these criminal parasites, irrespective of which party is in power.

We the people really don’t care which party destroys the enemy; we just want them destroyed!

We are tired of hearing about killing and even more tired of hearing about killers ‘rights.

The absence of constructive analysis in mass media that we see now is the same kind I observed when Dr Peter Phillips was destroying the narcotics traffickers.

No one had anything positive to say. It’s just our culture.

If we can do what we did between December 2017 and now in the five-year period 2022-2027 we will be heading back to an era of sub-1,300 homicides per year.

This may seem like it’s still a crisis issue, and it is. But it trended upwards for decades and now it’s trending down if you are looking at five-year trends, which is the logical time period in the analysis of any national security initiative.

If we keep this up, we could one day be a Caribbean country again, because sometimes it appears we are something else.

Feedback: drjasonamckay@gmail.com