Anti-gang project for Jacob

No doubt, the new Police Service Commission (PSC) is learning a lot from what has happened, good or bad, in recent years to the police service, the process of appointing a commissioner of police (CoP) and the PSC itself. Further, the new commissioner, whoever he or she may be, will also learn a lot, even determined not the repeat mistakes.

Given the social and psychological conditions that help produce criminal behaviour, and the low detection and prosecution rates that help perpetuate criminal acts, the new acting or substantive commissioner will certainty face tough challenges of crime and public safety. Community policing and support are vital.

According to Deputy Commissioner McDonald Jacob, the formation and criminal activities of gangs continue to pose a serious problem for policing. He recently declared: “The upsurge in the murder rate is a result of gang activity. Right now, we have a split-up in the gangs and they are warring with each other. We had the gang called the Muslim gang and then the Rasta City gang, and it split into the Sixes and it is now the Nines.”

He added: “Gangs are involved in a lot of organised and enterprise crime and where there is money churning, there will be warfare in the streets.” He noted that there are also white-collar gangs at the “upper echelons of society” who have joined up with street gangs and finance them.

Jacob’s information suggests that since the police are aware of the rise in gang formation and activity, there is desperate need to not only arrest and prosecute but to dampen the formation of gangs. The troubling public concern is that the anti-gang legislation, with its long list of draconian offences and jail terms, did not bear the promised fruits.

When the anti-gang legislation was coupled with the tough no-bail legislation, it made one wonder why did so many young men still got attracted to gangs. Was it ignorance of the law and its consequences? Didn’t potential and existing gang members hear about the long list of 46 offences and lengthy detentions from just being a gang member, extortion, illegal firearm possession, promoting prostitution, robbery to blowing up a building. And curiously, “misbehaviour in public office.”

The Anti-Gang Act of 2018 promised to “discourage membership of criminal gangs and the suppression of criminal gang activity.” It seemed a failure and not worthy of extension before an independent review was conducted.

It is well known that a significant number of gang recruits emerge from secondary schools mainly from being frustrated dropouts or academic failures and then vulnerable to gang culture temptations. There are of course “middle class” gang members.

However, our research into the remand yard in 2013 and before showed, for example, over 90 per cent of the “no-bail” inmates were lower-class, mainly school dropouts or only with primary school education. Career goals and opportunities were lacking.

It now seems a matter of great policy urgency to give increased emphasis on the gang prevention side, that is, in the education system where the temptations and supply of gang membership largely begin. Law enforcement and the courts appear at the tail end of the gang phenomenon.

This should raise a red flag for Jacob, his executive and line minister Fitzgerald Hinds. If things are left as they are, both gang membership and criminal gang activity will become worse. Gang membership is often a point of no return. Prevention is more effective, less expensive and life-saving.

Last month, speaking on gangs at an ASIS-International security conference alongside Jacob, I explained the nature, motivation, attractiveness, lifelong consequences and human costs of gang membership. I proposed a pilot school project to help nip gang membership in the bud. That is a project headed by a well-trained police-partnered team to visit prioritised schools, explaining the nature, implications and more critically, the list of offences and no-bail punishment: also developing occupational alternatives while illustrating what the fearsome no-bail remand yard looks like.

Within this social justice and gang prevention model, it is fitting that these young people know before what the severe provisions of anti-gang and no-bail laws look like, even going back to 1994. This will help inspire a mental shift and an anti-gang culture in our schools.