Each time we hear of a new plan to revitalise the jaded neighbourhood watch programme we are even more mystified as to why an initiative like that — in this environment of wanton bloodshed — is not up front and centre in our fight against crime.

Perhaps the National Security Council, drawing on the resources of The University of the West Indies and the think tank Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI), can help determine the reason for the severe under-performance of the neighbourhood watch.

Indeed, one would have expected that the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government, which can claim paternity for the introduction of the programme in Jamaica in 1987, would have been all over it.

Since, from all indications, the governing JLP and the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) will never jointly lead the fight against crime, the neighbourhood watch is the nearest thing to mobilising communities to that end.

To be clear, we have no intention to throw cold water on the latest call by the president of the National Neighbourhood Watch (NNW) on Jamaicans to re-engage with the programme because the concept is still a good one and nothing else seems to be working.

“Let’s come together and let our voices be heard for the change we seek. Help us to reduce crime and violence, preventing it from getting to your doorway,” Dr Asha Mwendo urged at a forum last week in observance of International Day for Rural Women.

“We are changing the game from being seen as — and that’s the perception — informer groups. We are saying we are part of the proactive answer that this nation needs to reduce crime and violence,” said Dr Mwendo, the first woman head of the NNW.

The idea of organising communities to protect themselves against criminals should not be such a difficult endeavour, especially as we know that both parties have embraced it in the past.

Older readers will recall that in the 1970s there was what the then Michael Manley Government called the home guards. It is the same concept that was rebranded as the neighbourhood watch under the Edward Seaga Government in the late 80s. The only difference was that home guards were armed.

In both cases, the reason for the programme was a steep rise in crime, as was the case when the concept of the neighbourhood watch was born in the United States in the 1960s and spread to the United Kingdom as the home watch in the 1970s.

Essentially, residents of communities, working with the police force, form neighbourhood patrols and design methods of alerting each other when a crime is being committed, or about to be committed, in their area. They actually reduce crime in areas where they are taken seriously.

Dr Mwendo suggests that they have not worked well in Jamaica because they “have become appendages of citizens associations or community development committees”, thus obscuring their mission.

Moreover, they have the stigma of being seen as “informers”, an ugly side of the street culture which rages against people providing information to the police against criminals.

Jamaica has 785 formal communities, according to the Social Development Commission. We believe that if more effort was put into establishing and sustaining neighbourhood watches it would bring about a serious dent in the incidence of crime nationwide.