Dear Editor,

In order to solve the age-old problem of violent crimes in our country, an approach which demonstrates care for the victims is crucial.

Victims need care and support when they are continuously being brutalised by criminals. Financial support from the Government to relocate families, particularly vulnerable women, children, and the elderly is one such tangible action. The Government must be pressured to ensure that the fragile are protected.

Instead of spending billions investing in prisons, we need to provide social security nets for our pensioners. Alternative transportation is needed for the ailing. Tears came to our eyes and anger rose in our hearts as we witnessed the treatment of an elderly citizen using a cane who was asked to leave a bus because the card machine was not working.

The infirm have no voice. There is no “back of the bus” even to facilitate segregation and discrimination. There are no buses sufficient to transport the populace. The abuse continues and all shy away from defending the poor commuters in the transportation sector.

You can’t blame the youth if indeed they grow up seeing the onslaught on their poor mothers. Anger swells and they either become abusers themselves or take revenge, spiralling gang-on-gang inter-community violence.

In every district across Jamaica gas stations have become the holding areas for students to pile into taxis. Driving over ravines, roads “bruck whe” from Gayle to Retreat, broken electrical wiring entangled in trees — such is the journey to school. Limited water and defective housing are not social fixables, they are not serious issues for public outcry.

Apparently, the continued obscene obsession with private domains continue to smear our screens and we ignore the obvious bleeding victims on the roadsides. We need to stop casting stones and bring in the guns and tally the bullets.

We need Good Samaritans to solve crime in Jamaica.

Catherine Neil

stcatherineneil22@yahoo.com