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EDITORIAL - Weighing the utility of fingerprints
published: Tuesday | December 26, 2006 <DIV class=KonaBody yJQdZ="true">
We note the stirring of a debate over whether the huge fingerprint database accumulated by the Electoral Office in its enumeration of voters should be made available to the police in criminal investigations.
The idea, perhaps surprisingly to many, has the support of Danville Walker, the director of elections. After all, Mr. Walker is the guardian of the electoral process and, we assume, would be intent on doing all in his power to keep the system sancrosanct and to get as many people as possible to exercise their right to vote.
In an issue that could pit libertarians and privacy advocates against promoters of law and order, we have sympathy for the views of people like Mr. Walker, even if we are not, at least yet, swayed by their argument.
Indeed, promoters of the call for an intermingling of the police fingerprint file with the Electoral Office's database have a major and compelling point - the state of crime in Jamaica. Even after a 20 per cent decline in murders this year, the number of homicides in Jamaica for 2006 will be in the region of 1,200. That is, Jamaica will have a murder rate of over 46 per 100,000 of population, one of the highest in the world for a country that is not at war.
While such statistics are frightening, they do not tell the whole story about crime in Jamaica, not the least being that fewer than half the murders are 'cleared-up', by which the police mean that a suspect has been identified to their satisfaction. Most of these cases, however, never reach the courts for adjudication.
Conventional wisdom in Jamaica has been that most major crimes in the country are committed by relatively few, mostly young men who persist in the absence of effective deterrence. Few are ever caught, and of those who are held, fewer still are convicted for lack of evidence.
Part of the problem was that the investigative skills of the police had degraded over a generation of paramilitary operation, compounded by the lack of forensic equipment and expertise. It is only recently that the police have acquired a computer-based fingerprint matching system and is only now in the process of transferring its paper files to an electronic database, a system the Electoral Office has had for more than a decade. Indeed, the Electoral Office has fingerprints used to identify voters and reduce fraud, for over a million people. It makes sense that some would feel that the police, given the context of crime in Jamaica, should be allowed to piggyback on this resource.
But even in our fear of crime, worse could happen if we undermined and weaken our democracy, even if we are careful about how we manipulate the foundation upon which democracy stands. An important plank in this is the right of voters to privacy, the erosion of which is a step in the ascendancy of the authoritarian. When people enumerate to vote, they do so with the expectation that this right will be protected.
A real fear is that today the opening of the database is a legitimate search by the police for a criminal, but tomorrow it might be something else. Soon, people could stop enumerating to the detriment of democracy. <HR>The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.</DIV>
published: Tuesday | December 26, 2006 <DIV class=KonaBody yJQdZ="true">
We note the stirring of a debate over whether the huge fingerprint database accumulated by the Electoral Office in its enumeration of voters should be made available to the police in criminal investigations.
The idea, perhaps surprisingly to many, has the support of Danville Walker, the director of elections. After all, Mr. Walker is the guardian of the electoral process and, we assume, would be intent on doing all in his power to keep the system sancrosanct and to get as many people as possible to exercise their right to vote.
In an issue that could pit libertarians and privacy advocates against promoters of law and order, we have sympathy for the views of people like Mr. Walker, even if we are not, at least yet, swayed by their argument.
Indeed, promoters of the call for an intermingling of the police fingerprint file with the Electoral Office's database have a major and compelling point - the state of crime in Jamaica. Even after a 20 per cent decline in murders this year, the number of homicides in Jamaica for 2006 will be in the region of 1,200. That is, Jamaica will have a murder rate of over 46 per 100,000 of population, one of the highest in the world for a country that is not at war.
While such statistics are frightening, they do not tell the whole story about crime in Jamaica, not the least being that fewer than half the murders are 'cleared-up', by which the police mean that a suspect has been identified to their satisfaction. Most of these cases, however, never reach the courts for adjudication.
Conventional wisdom in Jamaica has been that most major crimes in the country are committed by relatively few, mostly young men who persist in the absence of effective deterrence. Few are ever caught, and of those who are held, fewer still are convicted for lack of evidence.
Part of the problem was that the investigative skills of the police had degraded over a generation of paramilitary operation, compounded by the lack of forensic equipment and expertise. It is only recently that the police have acquired a computer-based fingerprint matching system and is only now in the process of transferring its paper files to an electronic database, a system the Electoral Office has had for more than a decade. Indeed, the Electoral Office has fingerprints used to identify voters and reduce fraud, for over a million people. It makes sense that some would feel that the police, given the context of crime in Jamaica, should be allowed to piggyback on this resource.
But even in our fear of crime, worse could happen if we undermined and weaken our democracy, even if we are careful about how we manipulate the foundation upon which democracy stands. An important plank in this is the right of voters to privacy, the erosion of which is a step in the ascendancy of the authoritarian. When people enumerate to vote, they do so with the expectation that this right will be protected.
A real fear is that today the opening of the database is a legitimate search by the police for a criminal, but tomorrow it might be something else. Soon, people could stop enumerating to the detriment of democracy. <HR>The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.</DIV>