$682m allocated for social intervention programmes

[Assasin]

$682m allocated for social intervention programmes

Saturday, July 26, 2008


PRIME Minister Bruce Golding says Government has set aside in this year's budget $682 million to continue work on a number of social intervention programmes, including the Citizens Security and Justice programme.

He said that under the Citizens Security and Justice Programme, 17 communities have already been targeted and that the programme had been successful in some communities but had failed in others. He said efforts are being made to try and wean members of communities away from criminal activities.

"We have had a number of social intervention initiatives, some financed and promoted by government and some by non-government organisations. We are trying to synchronise them so that everyone can be aware of what is happening, and to collaborate on them rather than collide with each other," he said.

Golding was responding to questions at Wednesday's post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House. The briefing followed his presentation in Parliament Tuesday during which he outlined the government's new legislative measures to fight crime. He disclosed that in addition to the crime fighting legislation, government had also initiated a number of social intervention programmes.

According to Golding, government has been looking at the effectiveness of its own programmes which have worked in some communities.

He said money had been spent under the Citizens Security and Justice Programme in places like Rockfort, Drewsland, August Town, and Tower Hill, but these communities continue to be the source of violence and conflict. The programme has, however, worked in places like Kencot - which is represented by Opposition Member of Parliament Peter Phillips - and the community of Fletcher's Land which is in Golding's own constituency.

He said that in an effort to try to identify the reasons for the failure of the Citizens Security and Justice Programme in some communities, he had instructed the Planning Institute of Jamaica and the Ministry of National Security to do a serious evaluation before spending the $682 million identified in the budget.

[Lazie]

Well there are those who are going to claim it is not enough.

[Assasin]

Not enough but if it help direct one yuth in the right direction is one youth less off the street.

[Lazie]

Not enough but if it help direct one yuth in the right direction is one youth less off the street.

If 1 trillion was allocated for these programs it still wouldn't be enough. With the limited resources we have, plus the amount of money that is going to be needed to revamp the JCF etc .. people need to be realistic.

[Assasin]

Well the Brazillian city of Sao Paulo reduce crime rate by a half without any form of poverty injection but the expert them will tell yo why we can't.

[Lazie]

Well the Brazillian city of Sao Paulo reduce crime rate by a half without any form of poverty injection but the expert them will tell yo why we can't.

"Expert"

[Don1]

the apologist's applause

Well the Brazillian city of Sao Paulo reduce crime rate by a half without any form of poverty injection but the expert them will tell yo why we can't.

Note that people are building and have built individual houses in the Caribbean that cost far more than the paltry amount (including this latest offering) that Jamaican governments perpetually allocate to improve the condition of the poor.... this classic case of lip service continues... and the apologists applaud.

what's a "poverty injection"?

what's was the social and economic situation in Sao Paulo and how does it compare with Jamaica? .. any worthwhile answer may well be beyond you.

Apart from crime reduction, is poverty reduction and improving the lives of the poor a wothwhile end in itself?

The type of thinking regarding poor people that you manifest (which is the typical Jamaican approach) is the reason so little is done... and the ultimate reason that high crime levels will persist regardless of the party in power.

[Assasin]

the fact is yes it maybe beyond me but maybe you can do the research yourself.

I have read in at least three article where the rate reduce without any significant added fund or government monetary intervention. But it is just easy to cast away others finding and think that only we know best.

[Assasin]

The Unsung Story of São Paulo’s Murder Rate Drop
Brazzil Magazine, News Analysis, Ted Goertzel and Túlio Kahn, Posted: Jun 10, 2007 a2a_linkname=document.title;a2a_linkurl=location.h ref;
Editor's Note: Murders dropped by half in São Paulo since the year 2000. The singular fall of the violent crime in that city proves a disconnect between murder rates and wider socioeconomic forces, the writers say. Ted Goertzel, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey and Túlio Kahn, Ph.D. is a sociologist in São Paulo, Brazil.

The murder rate in the state of São Paulo has been cut in half since 2000. This will come as a surprise to many readers because there has been so much news coverage of brazen attacks by organized criminals on police stations and public transportation in São Paulo as well as in Rio de Janeiro and other Brazilian cities.

These attacks are intended to generate media coverage, embarrass officials and intimidate law enforcement. They disrupt the life of the community and threaten the forces of law and order. But the number of people killed in these attacks is very small compared to the mundane monthly toll of homicides that get little press coverage.

The attacks by organized crime are a response to police crackdowns that have put large numbers of offenders in crowded prisons and removed thousands of handguns from circulation. These police measures have substantially lowered homicide and some other violent crime rates, and have made life much safer for the average citizen or visitor to São Paulo.

The criminal homicide rate in the state of São Paulo reached 35.7 per 100,000 residents in 1999, according to official police data collected by the state's secretary of public safety. It had been increasing steadily since the mid 1980s. Then, with the dawn of the new millennium, there was a remarkable turning point.

The homicide rate turned down rapidly, falling to 15.1 in 2006. Preliminary figures for 2007 show a further decline. There was a parallel drop in the attempted homicide rate. The rate for negligent homicide (96 percent of which is automobile accidents) did not decrease. The decline was in willful, intentional murder and attempted murder.

The news was not as good everywhere in Brazil. Data from Brasilia's ministry of justice shows a stable criminal homicide rate for Brazil as a whole from 2001 to 2005.

During this period, the rate declined only slightly in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's other huge urban agglomeration. The fact that São Paulo did so much better than Rio and other cities suggests that policy measures implemented on the state level were responsible.

At 15 per 100,000 in 2005, the criminal homicide rate in São Paulo has not yet quite reached the levels achieved by New York City (seven in 2004). But it compares very favorably with the rates reported by Detroit (42), Baltimore (44) and Washington, D.C. (36) in the same year.

Criminological research has uncovered a number of important facts about murder in São Paulo:

* Men are both the offenders and the victims of most homicides; the rate for women is quite low.
* Most homicide victims are between 15 and 29 years of age.
* Most are killed with firearms; the average number of bullet wounds per victim is 6.9.
* Among those whose blood is tested, fewer than half are positive for alcohol, less than 1 percent for cocaine.
* Most occur on the weekend with the peak on Saturday and the lowest number on Wednesday.
* Most of the reduction in the homicide rate has been in the large cities, including the state capital.

The homicide decline in the state of São Paulo in the first decade of this century is similar to the decline in New York City in the 1990s. In both cases, the police adopted more effective methods. In São Paulo the state police forces gave new priority to gathering accurate and timely empirical data and using it to plan and evaluate programs.

An intergovernmental communications network was established to link the military and civil police. Crimes were entered into a geographic information system, and saturation units were sent to areas controlled by drug traffickers. A data base was established with photographs of over 300,000 criminals. Telephone switchboards were set up to receive citizen complaints of incidents, and a web site was opened to take reports of thefts of vehicles, documents and cellular telephones.

Community policing stations were opened, and a homicide combat unit was organized with an emphasis on solving difficult cases. A specialized unit was organized to provide supportive assistance to women who were victims of sexual crimes. Sophisticated computer software linked information from police reports with bank records, telephone records and probable areas of residence. And the police began more aggressive efforts to remove illegal firearms from the streets.

As a consequence of these efforts, the number of imprisonments in the state of São Paulo increased from 18,602 in the first quarter of 1996 to 30,831 in the first quarter of 2001, after which it settled back to approximately 23,000 a month. This increase in the number of convicts sent to prison each quarter of the year led to a steady increase in the state's prison population. The turning point in the state's criminal homicide rate came at the peak of this increase in imprisonments.

Gun control was another important factor in the crime drop. In October 2003, the Brazilian federal government enacted a new set of laws to limit the importation of firearms, make it illegal to own unregistered guns or to carry guns on the street, and increase the penalties for violation of gun control laws.

Despite the failure of a national referendum in 2005 to ban commerce in arms and ammunition altogether, Brazilian gun control legislation is much stronger than that in most states of the United States. This legislation has helped to reduce homicide rates.

Data from the Ministry of Health shows that deaths due to firearms in Brazil increased steadily from 1992 to 2003, then dropped significantly. The Ministry of Health data include all categories of gun deaths, including accidental deaths. The improvement was not consistent across Brazil, however.

Comparing 2003 to 2004, deaths due to firearms declined 19 percent in the state of São Paulo, 9.9 percent in the state of Rio de Janeiro, 14.5 percent in Pernambuco, and 20.6 percent in Mato Grosso. But they increased by 7.2 percent in Minas Gerais, 29.3 percent in Amazonas, 11.4 percent in Pará. The improvement in the statistics for Brazil as a whole can be largely accounted for by a very sharp drop in São Paulo which accounts for about 25 percent of the national firearm deaths.

Passing legislation is not enough; the legislation must be vigorously enforced by the state police forces. In the state of São Paulo, confiscations of firearms by the police rose from 6,539 in the first quarter of 1996 to 11,670 in the second quarter of 1999. This peak coincides with the beginning of the great São Paulo homicide drop.

Firearms confiscations remained high through 2004, and then settled back to their previous level. São Paulo authorities believe that the decline in firearms confiscations after 2004 was because the new national legislation had increased the penalties for carrying firearms and fewer persons risked carrying them on the street.

Before the recent homicide drop, Brazil's high homicide rates were frequently attributed to high levels of poverty and inequality. In a recent book, historian Luís Mir insisted that Brazil was in a state of civil war and characterized São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro as metropolises of death.

Mir insisted that "nothing can be done about the problem until the majority and the minority sit down and discuss the slices of the pie" that each social class receives (Geração Online, 2004). His book was published three years after the homicide rates in São Paulo had begun their sharp decline, yet no such radical re-slicing of the socioeconomic pie had taken place.

The same thing happened to leading American criminologists James Q. Wilson and John DiIulio who published works in the early 1990s predicting massive increases in crime rates after the rates had already begun their precipitous decline.

These analysts erred by attributing cyclical peaks in crime waves to persistent social and economic problems, underestimating the extent to which violent crime has its own dynamics and can be treated as a separate problem. When crime waves get out of hand the public demands action, political leaders allocate more resources, and the criminal justice system does its best to respond.

In both Brazil and the United States, police authorities took effective action to reduce violent crime without waiting for underlying social problems to be resolved. This was also true in Colombia where homicide declined 15 percent in the three years from 2003 to 2006.

By contrast, homicide rates in Venezuela have increased 67 percent since 1999 despite a booming economy and a populist government that claims to be redistributing wealth to the poor.

The great São Paulo homicide drop shows that effective measures can be taken to reduce lethal crime without waiting to solve underlying socioeconomic problems.

Ted Goertzel, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. He is author of a biography of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. His WEB site is http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel

Túlio Kahn, Ph.D., is Coordenador de Análise e Planejamento for the Secretaria de Segurança Pública in São Paulo. His research is available at: http://www.ssp.sp.gov.br/estatisticas/.


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[Don1]

the fact is yes it maybe beyond me but maybe you can do the research yourself.

I have read in at least three article where the rate reduce without any significant added fund or government monetary intervention. But it is just easy to cast away others finding and think that only we know best.

I merely asked you to substantiate your claim and show why Sao Paulo is analoguous to Jamaica... this is a city that has great wealth and booming industry and many other dissimilar indices to Jamaica....maybe Jamaica can draw lessons from their experience... maybe not.

It's not for me to disprove your claim.. it's for you to prove it with the requisite facts..if you choose... then one can analyse reasonably if it makes sense.

If you can't or won't that's not a problem for me.

[Assasin]

Well we can discuss it but if it is beyond me then it makes no sense. I am only reflecting upon information I have.

Like most on the forum I use to believe we have to put massive money into certain area but seen other information I think we can do much better right now. I have posted an article below done by an analyst.

[Don1]

nice! .... but one question... does Sao Paulo have political garrisons throughout its territory controlled like fiefdoms by rival political gangs closely aligned to the major political parties who refuse to cooperate to end their madness? I don't think so.

This Brazil info does not change my opinion... there is no reasonable policing solution to a sustainable reduction in crime. We have seen these policing solutions all fail miserably for the past 2 generations. Golding's plan will also fail after a period of dampening crime.

The sustainable solution is a social contract involving all important sectors of the society including both parties... combined with massive investment in uplifting people.

This has never been tried and some like you say Jamaica can't afford it.

I say we can't afford not to do it. You all can keep your crime plans.

[Don1]

Well we can discuss it but if it is beyond me then it makes no sense. I am only reflecting upon information I have.

Like most on the forum I use to believe we have to put massive money into certain area but seen other information I think we can do much better right now. I have posted an article below done by an analyst.

you substantiated that Sao Paulo has reduced crime by policing methods primarily it seems... as have many cities in different countries.

what you have not substantiated is why such policing efforts (many of which have been tried in Jamaica) would actually succeed in Jamaica... in view of our unique political and sociological circumstances.

that is the crux of the matter.

[Assasin]

I personally am not looking for miracle from Golding, I supported when Peter Phillips took over rom KD knight and supported him until after 2-3 years I saw no sensible reduction.

That plan that Golding came out with will do nothing much by itself. The first thing have to happen is Jamaicans have to change. Too much spousal abuse, too much people fail to settle argument and too much self proclaim badmen.

What I am saying is it can be done if Jamaica is really serious. As the article pointed out in Venuzula even though the economy has improved and many lives have been helped crime has risen so it could be also possible that they pump money into these areas and the problem remain the same.

In some case is not like money has not been pumped in these community but the money go in the wrong hand and guiness bottle and the people never feel the effect. It is always nice to think both party can come togather and have a good social contract but as far as I see it, it will never happen, NEVER.

[Muadib]

I have one question..

Which of the following have failed miserabley over the past 2 generations ?

1. An intergovernmental communications network was established to link the military and civil police.

2. Crimes were entered into a geographic information system, and saturation units were sent to areas controlled by drug traffickers.

3. A data base was established with photographs of over 300,000 criminals.

4. Telephone switchboards were set up to receive citizen complaints of incidents, and a web site was opened to take reports of thefts of vehicles, documents and cellular telephones.

5. Community policing stations were opened, and a homicide combat unit was organized with an emphasis on solving difficult cases.

6. A specialized unit was organized to provide supportive assistance to women who were victims of sexual crimes.

7. Sophisticated computer software linked information from police reports with bank records, telephone records and probable areas of residence.

8. The police began more aggressive efforts to remove illegal firearms from the streets.