Tweet
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>Stop ****footing with crime</SPAN>
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Henley Morgan
Thursday, November 09, 2006
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=88 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>[img]http://66.132.176.52/columns/images/20061108T180000-0500_115028_OBS_STOP_****FOOTING_WITH_CRIME_1.jpg[/img]</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>Henley Morgan</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>I have a simple two-pronged strategy for dealing with the type of crime (localised civil war) that is currently raging in the corridor leading from the Norman Washington Manley airport to the capital city, and which with disturbing regularity rears its ugly head in Spanish Town and other garrison communities mostly across the Corporate Area. 1) Make crime cost, and 2) make peace pay.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Making crime cost the perpetrator is a deterrent strategy. It says to the would-be criminal the following: "To the extent that your actions are premeditated and are therefore a matter of personal choice, before you act, count what it is going to surely cost you in terms of the loss of your ill-gotten gains, your freedom and possibly your life."<P class=StoryText align=justify>There is a recommendation in the Report of the National Committee on Crime and Violence (June 11, 2002) that communicates this strategy in harder policing terms than any I have seen elsewhere. It deserves repeating.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"The JCF must complement the use of curfews with a standard procedure for cordoning and searching a community once violence has, in the judgement of the competent authority, escalated to crisis proportion. The procedure must involve bringing in the manpower, sniffer dogs, metal detectors, helicopters and whatever other technology is available to seal off an area and search it from top to bottom, to use a common expression. We are further suggesting that these special situations do provide another legitimate opportunity for introducing overseas-based personnel on a limited and controlled basis. Personnel from the Caribbean Search Centre as well as observers from human rights groups could be involved in these exercises."<P class=StoryText align=justify>I want readers to picture vividly what the deployment of such an operation would look like. Within 48 hours of uncontrolled violence in, say, Rockfort, combined security forces numbering up to 500 commandos launch an Entebbe-type raid. In a flash, a cordon is thrown up around the area, leaving no escape route. Like a tourniquet applied to a bleeding arterial wound, the cordon is tightened each day as a methodical search is conducted. Every house and shack is emptied of its contents; every square inch of sod is turned.
Entry and exit is controlled military style. Adults are taken to work and children to school in government-provided transportation. Food, water and other life-sustaining supplies are delivered to the area under strict supervision. The operation continues night and day until the community belches; spewing out the criminals and yielding the cache of weapons that hitherto could only be found in miniscule quantities.<P class=StoryText align=justify>I guarantee you if such an operation were surgically and skilfully executed, it would be a decade or more before another community erupted into an orgy of murders, evictions, bombings and open challenge to civil order. Communities, like individuals, do learn. But learning that crime costs is by itself not enough.<P class=StoryText align=justify>A preventive strategy is also necessary. The sociological, economic and even historical reasons underlying crime and violence, particularly in garrison communities cannot be summarily dismissed. Communities learn that peace pays dividends when these issues are effectively addressed and the social and material well-being o
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Henley Morgan
Thursday, November 09, 2006
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=88 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>[img]http://66.132.176.52/columns/images/20061108T180000-0500_115028_OBS_STOP_****FOOTING_WITH_CRIME_1.jpg[/img]</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>Henley Morgan</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>I have a simple two-pronged strategy for dealing with the type of crime (localised civil war) that is currently raging in the corridor leading from the Norman Washington Manley airport to the capital city, and which with disturbing regularity rears its ugly head in Spanish Town and other garrison communities mostly across the Corporate Area. 1) Make crime cost, and 2) make peace pay.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Making crime cost the perpetrator is a deterrent strategy. It says to the would-be criminal the following: "To the extent that your actions are premeditated and are therefore a matter of personal choice, before you act, count what it is going to surely cost you in terms of the loss of your ill-gotten gains, your freedom and possibly your life."<P class=StoryText align=justify>There is a recommendation in the Report of the National Committee on Crime and Violence (June 11, 2002) that communicates this strategy in harder policing terms than any I have seen elsewhere. It deserves repeating.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"The JCF must complement the use of curfews with a standard procedure for cordoning and searching a community once violence has, in the judgement of the competent authority, escalated to crisis proportion. The procedure must involve bringing in the manpower, sniffer dogs, metal detectors, helicopters and whatever other technology is available to seal off an area and search it from top to bottom, to use a common expression. We are further suggesting that these special situations do provide another legitimate opportunity for introducing overseas-based personnel on a limited and controlled basis. Personnel from the Caribbean Search Centre as well as observers from human rights groups could be involved in these exercises."<P class=StoryText align=justify>I want readers to picture vividly what the deployment of such an operation would look like. Within 48 hours of uncontrolled violence in, say, Rockfort, combined security forces numbering up to 500 commandos launch an Entebbe-type raid. In a flash, a cordon is thrown up around the area, leaving no escape route. Like a tourniquet applied to a bleeding arterial wound, the cordon is tightened each day as a methodical search is conducted. Every house and shack is emptied of its contents; every square inch of sod is turned.
Entry and exit is controlled military style. Adults are taken to work and children to school in government-provided transportation. Food, water and other life-sustaining supplies are delivered to the area under strict supervision. The operation continues night and day until the community belches; spewing out the criminals and yielding the cache of weapons that hitherto could only be found in miniscule quantities.<P class=StoryText align=justify>I guarantee you if such an operation were surgically and skilfully executed, it would be a decade or more before another community erupted into an orgy of murders, evictions, bombings and open challenge to civil order. Communities, like individuals, do learn. But learning that crime costs is by itself not enough.<P class=StoryText align=justify>A preventive strategy is also necessary. The sociological, economic and even historical reasons underlying crime and violence, particularly in garrison communities cannot be summarily dismissed. Communities learn that peace pays dividends when these issues are effectively addressed and the social and material well-being o
Comment