MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Executive director of the Crime Monitoring and Oversight Committee (CMOC) Oral Khan is calling for the support of churches to lobby the Government to fast-track legislation in support of a consensus on crime.

“One of the things we are asking the Church to do is to lend its voice to the issues that are supported by the consensus… There are a number of pieces of legislation that the consensus agreed should be given priority and should be passed. Some have been passed rather late,” he said while addressing a crime prevention and citizen security forum at Church Teachers’ College in Mandeville last week.

The National Consensus on Crime is focused on creating a national programme of initiatives and actions to transform Jamaica into a safe, secure and investment-friendly society through the forging of a national consensus with Government, Opposition and civil society.

Khan pointed out to his audience, consisting of church leaders in Manchester, that CMOC is pushing for legislative changes including amendments to the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA).

“The legislative programme is behind schedule and there are some items that we still need to see movement on. One very important piece of legislation has to do with the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) where we want to see a reverse burden of proof, and that will come through the unexplained wealth orders. There are lots of persons using criminal activities to acquire wealth and we would like to see an amendment to POCA which would permit the courts to make an order so that persons with unexplained wealth will have to say how they came into possession of that wealth,” he explained.

“That is one of the items on the legislative agenda which needs to be advanced; and we know the Government responds to public pressure and we need to hear more voices calling for this legislative action to be fast-tracked,” he added.

Khan said the Enhancement Security Measures Act is also important.

“We have also spoken about enhanced security measures. The Government and Opposition came to deadlock regarding the use of states of emergency, and there was an agreement at the time when the consensus was signed that they would work on a new piece of legislation — the Enhanced Securities Measures Act — which would enhance the powers of the security forces in a manner that is consistent with the constitution to be sure the states of emergency are legitimate under the constitution. But they are some provisions which the previous regulations had introduced which ran contrary and which the court said that couldn’t work,” he said.

“We are trying to get the Government to move forward with the Enhanced Security Measures Act, which will be something that both Government and Opposition can agree on and give the security forces some new tools to work with,” he added.

Khan said that the correctional reform has been moving slowly.

“…We haven’t gotten much feedback from the Government in terms of what is happening with the reform of the correctional services. We know that a whole lot needs to be done, we know that there has to be an amendment to the Corrections Act, and we haven’t even had the Offender Management Policy which will inform the amendment to the Corrections Act,” he lamnted.

“Again the voice of more stakeholders, the Church being one of [them], needs to be added to the call on the Government to take action on these several items,” he insisted.