Ian Boyne, Contributor

Again, while the criminals are united in war against us as a society, we have been turning the polemical guns on ourselves in a war of choice over the matter of preventive detention and other measures to fight terrorism.

If anyone says what we face in Jamaica today is not terrorism, it only serves to confirm my point that we have not yet reached the tipping point in terms of being jolted by our crisis in security. The firestorm which has been generated over the issue of preventive detention, and the quality of the discourse, suggests some fundamental misunderstandings.

I keep insisting that we should teach philosophy from the primary school level, with heavy doses in high school and as a requirement for the first degree, because reasoning skills are so critical to every discipline and indispensable in everyday life. Our debates suffer incalculably because people on opposite sides seem to have an inability even to understand one another and to grasp the gravamen of the objections to their points. People fail to critique their own positions and to ask hard, penetrating questions of themselves to determine the strength of their own position.

Gunmen at it again

Follow me with this thought: Klansmen and One Order thugs are 'hotting up' Spanish Town again, while gang warfare is taking place in Rockfort, and the central Kingston gunmen are at it again. Thirty-five are killed on the weekend, 10 on Monday and 15 on Tuesday. The talk-show hosts are screaming that "the Government must do something"; people are jamming the talk show lines to shout hysterically that "something needs to be done", that the prime minister "can't allow things to continue to get out of hand".

Newspaper editorials are biting in their criticisms of the Government and various interest groups are issuing statements left, right and centre. The Government must do something right now, not next month. Now. One life saved is worth all the effort the Government can put in to cauterise the situation. We are not talking about solving all crime for all times. We are talking about stabilising a situation temporarily - but that 'temporarily' can mean that 10 lives could be saved today. I have a multiple choice for you.

Measures

Of all the following measures, which is likely to have an immediate effect on the mayhem that the marauding gangs are wreaking: Social intervention programmes; further equipping the police and strengthening their intelligence-gathering capabilities; providing jobs for the unemployed and poor who end up in gangs; reforming the 'corrupt police force'; improving police-citizen relations; making the police respect the people and treat them better; improving values and attitudes; curfewing those areas and getting certain notorious gunmen off the street right away through preventive detention.

Tell me honestly which of those measures - all of which are absolutely important - would have an immediate effect on the number of murders being committed today? Don't come back and say cynically that, "Well, killing the gunmen would probably help better, so by your logic why don't you recommend that?" I am outlining measures which liberal democratic governments have used.

You can't eat your cake and have it. You can't be bellowing in your editorials, columns and on your talk shows about "It's time the Government does something about crime", "What is Golding doing? Doesn't he realise we are in a crisis?" and when he tells us that we might have to be inconvenienced we behave as though in the real world we don't face real dilemmas. We exhibit a kind of infantile fantasy that life should be idyllic, ideal and non-problematic. That's not the real world. In the real word we have trade-offs. Sure, it is problematic to have detention without trial. It can be abused and we must insist that measures are put in place to prevent this. That is what the debate should be about.

As adults we behave as though life is black and white when it is elementary in philosophy that there is a vast difference between 'ought' and 'is'. We have to accept the harsh realities of life. Do you doubt that there are criminals whom people know, but who by their sheer command of terror make it almost impossible for people to give evidence against them in court? How many times have you heard of notorious personalities who have cases in court and when they are to be tried, witnesses - who had even initially shown some courage - just simply vanish? Must we as a society accept that these criminals must continue to be on the streets to kill again and again while we are trapped by our legalism?

'Tried and failed'

Saying that "this method has been tried in the past and failed" is not to provide a convincing rejoinder to those who are advocating preventive detention. For one, our murder rate is much higher than in the past, so things have got worse since we last tried this method. Two, the fact that something has failed in the past does not mean it can't work in the future. It is likely that what was tried was not accompanied by certain others things, without which it was bound to fail.

I think we have made significant progress in our debate on crime. We have finally agreed - and no longer believe it is just 'socialist talk' - that the poor and marginalised have to be lifted up, and that we cannot allow the levels of poverty and degradation to exist and have peace in this society. This is a great advance. I am glad that the upper classes recognise that they have to be concerned about people in the inner cities and that trickle-down capitalism will not work. There has to be direct social intervention.

Tough policing needed

What we need to do - and this would be for the first time - is to combine social intervention, radical police reform, economic growth (so people can have "opportunity", as Motty Perkins would put it); massive investments in our security and justice system with hard, tough policing and strong legislative action. We have never used hard, tough, resolute policing along with the other necessary things we have now agreed on. So stop talking about this thing was tried already. It was approached in a piecemeal fashion in the past.

As the prime minister has put it, "We have to go in and move out the garbage the same time we are removing the gunman." We did not do that in the past, and what the prime minister is committing to do differently now is to take a balanced and holistic approach. (The People's National Party had it right conceptually, but fell short on actual achievement on the social side).

The position of the human rights community has to be given serious attention. There are a number of corrupt policemen and they have abused people's rights. I am pleased that we have powerful voices in the society who are lobbying on behalf of poor, ghetto people who have been brutalised by the police and neglected by the 'haves' in this society over the years. It is good to be in a country where there are groups like Jamaicans for Justice, the Farquharson Institute and the Jamaica Council for Human rights, which are standing up for people who have not been traditionally taken seriously by the elite, and whose rights have been trampled. Let us not malign the human rights groups. They are a vital part of our democracy and a critical bulwark against the suppression of the civil liberties of the poor.

Human rights are never absolute

But the human rights groups must get some things straight philosophically: Human rights are never absolute under the modern state system. Philosophically, only anarchism sets forth the view that the state does not have the right to suspend certain liberties or to take them away completely from certain individuals.

"The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is at the heart of the western democratic credo. But the state has the right has the right to take your life. (It's called capital punishment). The state can take away your liberty and lock you up in jail for 40 or more years. And you know what that does to your pursuit of happiness!

While you might argue that individuals have rights prior to the state - and this comes from a theistic philosophical framework, grounded in natural law - in the non-Hobbesian condition, the state has priority. Now there are states which are totalitarian and which oppress their citizens, and States which have overstepped their bounds. That is why there is international law, international rights conventions, and now the concept of humanitarian intervention and 'the responsibility to protect' paradigm in international relations.

Democratic states have always had the right to curtail civil liberties in emergency or special situations. Arguing from absolutist positions is philosophically naïve and historically ignorant. Jamaica would not automatically become a human rights 'violator' if it enacts legislation to hold people without charge for 28 days or 40 days. The only thing we can argue about is whether the situation warrants such an action, not whether such an action is inherently unjust and wrong from a human rights point of view.

In my view, we have not reached the tipping point on crime - with all the shrill calls to 'do something' from these same detention objectors. But I think the prime minister is right that we should not have to suffer greater mayhem before we cauterise the problem.

And people must stop talking about this or that hard-policing matter not being 'the answer to crime'. Argue better than that. It is not being proposed as a solution to crime. It is part of a package. Hard policing, hard legislative action will not - I repeat - 'solve' our crime problem. I don't know how often I have to write that for my critics to get it.

We cannot put together the evidence this evening to put away some dog-hearted criminals. But we can take them from the streets this morning through detention, and save some lives. I can live with that.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com. Feedback may also be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.