Daniel ThwaitesCOLLEAGUE COLUMNISTS have expressed many excellent points and ideas about the causes and potential remedies for the enduring crime plague. One may not always agree with the emphasis, but variously, calls to upgrade the intelligence capacities of the Force, for the resuscitation of an educated and properly trained officer corps, and for the openness to assistance from other nations are all to the point.
Let us entertain no illusions about it. Jamaica is in a severe crime crisis. It has been in one for two and one-half decades, and there has been no significant change in the recent climate. So another series of issues suggest themselves for examination. In particular, what explains the intense level of extremely high-profile reportage being given to crime over the last two weeks? Never mind whether one likes it or not, or thinks it assists or hinders the overall development of the country. The question is, why has it been happening all of a sudden? Perhaps there has been a proverbial straw that has broken the camel's back.
But even from a merely sociological perspective, it is interesting to know what that piece of straw was. Was it any of the awful murders we have seen? Was it the increase in rape and other sexual offences, mostly against the women and the children? Not likely. It appears that a robbery from Air Jamaica precipitated the landslide of attention. And even if it was not that, perhaps the press itself should investigate and tell us what was the triggering event.
But what does all of this tell us about our society? What does it tell us about the distribution of influence and resources? About the capacity to mobilise government to citizen concerns? Permit me, dear editor, to say this: There has been very little else but crime in the news as a direct result of a corporate decision by a few media owners. And this scenario raises a bevy of interesting questions, none of which will be properly ventilated or discussed. Why? It should seriously worry us all that the decision-making circuit about what is an immediate and pressing public issue in this country is so vanishingly small.
Interestingly, most of our better journalists are openly questioning the media campaign. They know that the media is never simply a mirror of society. It is an active participant in the formation of expectations, desires, and fears. It is an important contributor to the process whereby citizens articulate their concerns and contextualise their experiences. Remember that just recently the press czars joined together in an unholy alliance of misguided opposition to the Anti-Corruption Bill. This time around the concerns are, without question, far more appropriate. The object of their attention is government's seeming inability to significantly reduce the crime-rate and that surely must be worrying to all citizens. This time the press is largely in the right.
But the current situation ought to reinforce some facts that the public has been becoming more and more aware of. The news can be a tool. It can be a whip, goading action. It can be a sledgehammer, destroying confidence. It can be a pin, puncturing pretence. It can, of course, be a knife, disembowelling the body-politic, surgically removing hope and opportunities.
An illustration: Mr. Ed Bartlett was on telly Wednesday night saying that to his personal knowledge massive tourism-related investments have been turned away by the current hysteria. So we see that de same knife dat stick sheep, stick goat.
Daniel Thwaites is involved in teaching and writing.
