So, this leaked Armadale enquiry report.

What a thing. Everybody’s calling for Commissioner of Corrections June Spence-Jarrett’s head. A knee-jerk reaction, but understandable, all things considered. Certainly, the righteous indignation is in order. Seven wards of the State — girls all under 18 years old — died tragically in the fire at the Armadale Juvenile Correctional Centre compound, the hellish details surrounding which read like something straight out of a Charles Dickens novel. Public sentiment is that somebody be made to pay. Quite understandable.

The staff members at the home were unbelievably cavalier in their actions on the night of the fire, and I personally believe the policeman in question who retaliated to the girls’ insults by throwing into the dorm the tear gas canister that started the fire should be held criminally responsible. (Hello? Behavioural problems were what landed the girls there. Should we commiserate with him because his delicate sensibilities were offended by a few teenage girls?) And, by the way, where was his supervisor in all of this?

The commissioner, however, seems as likely a candidate as any to be thrown under the bus.

(And so soon after her permanent appointment, too. How quickly the honeymoon ends.) It all went down on her watch. With position comes great responsibility. That’s the price of leadership. I don’t see that she has any option but to resign. I mean, what can she say? “Ooops, my bad, folks, but moving right along…”

I don’t think so.

(At the time of writing this, there are no signs of her imminent resignation.)

But even if she does resign, what next? It’s one thing to want to make a public example of her, but that would only be like throwing raw meat at rabid dogs to shut their yapping up. What qualities should we be looking for in the person who eventually replaces her? Surely, the criteria must involve more than a mere desire for an improvement in pay scale.

What disappoints me is that the level of the discourse is not being raised. Instead of launching witch-hunts to find the source of the leak (can you believe the minister made this the priority?), how about using this as a forum to address what’s at the heart of this Armadale clusterf*@%#? Which, I imagine, was at the heart of the Eventide Home disaster of 1980, as well, when more than 100 elderly and infirm inmates perished. Chances are there’ll be another scandal at another institution in another 30 years, if we simply make Mrs Spence-Jarrett the sacrificial lamb and continue on our merry way. If we don’t learn from the past, aren’t we doomed to keep making the same mistakes?

There’s a culture of brutishness in this country, which nobody seems to want to address. Our public officials are products of that very culture of crassness and insensitivity; in many ways, they’re really victims of the system. I’m not an apologist. I’m saying, though, take a good look at our public figures. Look at our politicians, for example; look at their performances in Parliament. Without cringing, I dare you. Listen to them during TV and radio interviews. Make a note of those with whom the words ‘genteel’, ‘statesman’, ‘refined’ can be associated. Now, take a gander at some foreign politicians. Don’t look at Obama because, well, that’s simply not a fair fight, is it? But just your average foreign politician from somewhere north of us, even in the heat of debate. Notice anything different?

Then look at our people. Have you noticed young lovers? Does it strike anybody else funny how young men often express affection for their young paramours with a seeming chokehold about the neck? I suppose hand-holding might make them look, shall we say, not quite macho. And what about that horrible newscast many of us witnessed recently, when residents of a community, in order to deal with a crocodile nuisance that had surfaced in their midst, threw a dog into the river as a sacrifice because, well, it was just a dog and not really one of God’s creations.

Jamaica is a hard place. I’ve said this in this space before. It’s an exceedingly hard place to live in. That’s perhaps a legacy of our shared history of slavery. There’s a hardness — I don’t know how else to term it — that has engulfed us as a people that we’ve come to take for granted. But it’s really not a normal state of affairs. Ever wondered at the unaccountable aggression levelled at you when you, say, ask a customer service clerk for assistance over the phone? Ever entered an establishment and found yourself greeted by cold stares of malice, resentment and plain dislike? It’s bizarre.

Then there are simple day-to-day things. Have you heard some variation of any of these phrases, or perhaps used some yourself:

* “You want me t’ump you down?”

* “The pickney want a chop in him head!”

* “I nearly kill her wid lick!”

* “Whey mi ‘lass deh?”

* “You want a box cross yuh face!”

* “I wi stab/jook you inna you eye!”

Perhaps it’s a legacy of slavery, this savagery that seems to be written almost atavistically into our DNA, which reduces us to seeing ourselves and, by extension each other, as less than deserving of benign consideration. I don’t know; I’m not a psychologist. But perhaps this also explains what happened at Armadale and what I suspect may obtain at other institutions of this nature.

A popular radio talk-show host introduced the term ‘scarce goods and spoils’ into the national vernacular, years ago. This is meant to explain the entrenched, systemic problems within the public sector that cause it to function inefficiently. In other words, as in the days when house slaves curried favour with the slave owners by reporting on the field slaves, so, too, today, we step on each other in the interest of upward mobility and getting ahead.

It’s the age-old story of the Jamaican people: shaft or be shafted.

Seven girls from Armadale could tell that story.

If only they could.