A country’s judicial and criminal justice, laws, and practices are determined by the system of Government and not on what is required to save lives. It’s that simple.

Countries with low rates of crime, such as Cuba and China, achieve this because their laws are fashioned from their system.

This could include indefinite detention acts or extremely long sentences. This can occur largely because of a non-existent Opposition. It might not be your dream State, but it certainly is a safe State.

There are democratic countries that have really low crime rates, such as Norway, Sweden, Holland to name a few. They have very liberal laws.

The saving of lives doesn’t really factor in because there is really no threat as they have low rates of poverty.

Jamaica and Belize are democratic countries that are more comparable to Cuba than they are to Norway or Sweden, speaking economically, but have the same levels of freedom that Norway and Sweden enjoy.

No doctorate is needed to figure out why Cuba is so much safer than Jamaica.

It’s a quagmire because we want to maintain our freedom, but not at the expense of our lives.

Or is it the other way around — we want to save lives but not at the expense of our freedom?

I totally understand, but I must confess that I waiver on this commitment to freedom at all costs every time a gun is pointed in my direction and I hear it go bang.

To be honest, at that point I rarely ever give a damn that we are as free as we are and I am far more concerned with my own mortality.

I imagine that not one victim of murder who saw his end coming cared a lick about how free we are as a people. Yet, in this hopeless reality, we have salvation. It’s called the zone of special operations (ZOSO).

This act allows us to select war zones and turn them into controlled environments, rather like ‘Little Cubas’.

Now, if Michael Manley’s legacy is the National Housing Trust (NHT), and Edward Seaga’s is Human Employment and Resource Training (HEART), and Bruce Golding’s is the Independent Commission of Investigations (Indecom) and PJ Patterson’s is the highways, then Andrew Holness’s legacy is the ZOSO. It’s brilliant!

This is what will allow us to one day return to a normal State.

This act allows for detention, curfews, and entry without warrant. Even better, it has a long-term component designed to deal with social infrastructure and social issues. This will lead to cultural change. This could work.

So I want every inner-city community that the gangs have dominion over to be declared ZOSO areas. This will allow for the earlier stated laws to be effected against gang members — you know, those detention practices I spoke of earlier.

Now listen, I said gang members, not poor people, gang members.

I want this status to exist for a minimum of 10 years so that it can bring about cultural change.

You see, in many poor communities the powerful force on the ground most of the times is a gang.

It has been like this for almost 50 years.

Under ZOSO the gangs would be impotent and a new generation of young people would grow up seeing this — police and soldiers as the dominant force all the time, not just when they run in and run out.

Mount Salem is living proof of how well this system can work. We need to spend a decade or more there and kill the culture of gang domination.

We also have to be cognisant that the generation I speak of will grow up in a space controlled by law enforcement and therefore we have to be careful this doesn’t foster hate.

The protectors must also be policed.

The human rights community needs to be in these zones. Give them an office.

We want people to be treated well, so we will accept the control mechanism of being observed whilst we protect.

Occupation is usually peaceful, so it poses little or no risk to them.

The big issue is staffing this occupation and the new Overtime Act. The development of a Jamaica Constabulary Force auxiliary will provide that.

Could this system allow for a democratic environment for law-abiding Jamaicans like that of Norway or Sweden, but for the gangsters it would be like they live in Cuba, China, or Vietnam?

A divided Jamaica, yes, but not along the lines of rich and poor, black and white, Jew and gentile; instead, one environment for the gangster and another for the rest of us, standing with pride with the proverbial boot planted on the neck of the killers.

— Feedback: drjasonamckay@gmail.com