Ian Boyne, Contributor
SHUTTING DOWN the crime factories in Jamaica and locking off the sources of their raw material supplies, as it were, will take more than economic growth, increased investments and greater employment.
A little rigorous thinking would show that values are more critical than economics in explaining the growth in crime.
Sloppy thinking causes people to infer that because it is true that situations of economic and social deprivation strongly influence violent crime, then economic growth is the magic elixir.
That is the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) mantra. I hope they are not irredeemable on this point, for we need a national consensus on the cultural and moral revolution needed to tackle the root causes of crime.
When one speaks of morality and an ethical foundation, some people regard that as a conversation-stopper, recoiling from anything which smacks of religion. Such is the theological devotion to secularist perspectives that even common sense eludes some secular humanists.
Consider some undeniable realities. For every ghetto youth who takes to the gun, who engages in extortion and skullduggery to escape the burden of poverty, and who is a proud member of a gang, there are many others enduring the same harsh, forbidding conditions who resist that path.
Why, if economics operates deterministically, is the criminal and the antisocial operative the exception rather than the rule?
Why, despite opportunities, do many poor ghetto youth remain 'upful' and 'hold the struggle' rather than bowing to criminality, wrong-doing and corruption?
Because they hold certain views in their heads and hide certain things in their 'heart of hearts' things inculcated by parents, grandparents, church, friends and authors who point a different way.
FATHERLESS CHILDREN
The recent Reclaim Jamaica forum by the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) wasted a lot of time traversing the well-trodden paths and alleys, and failing to deal incisively with some underlying causes of our problems.
One of the stubborn facts is that there is too much fatherlessness in Jamaica. Too many abandoned boys. Too many uncared for and unwanted children in the ghettoes.
Children's activist Betty-Ann Blaine talks about going into many yards in the inner cities and just being struck by the large numbers of nappies and baby clothes on what passes for clothes lines in the yards.
Usually there is no father around - just some teenaged and early-20s mothers who are usually walking, lean with two children in their arms and others tugging their clothes.
To lock down the crime factories we have to stop producing so many uncared for children. Young people and older, promiscuous men have to start learning how to keep their pants up and how to control their sexual lusts when they see these voluptuous and inviting ghetto girls in their daringly bare clothes, or lack of it.
Some don't want to talk about this 'population issue' for it reminds one of the "old bourgeois argument which seeks to blame the poor for having too many children, when the problem is inequitable distribution of wealth."
No, we are saying that children reared outside a loving, caring environment and in an environment of economic deprivation and social degradation provide the raw materials for the crime factories in Jamaica.
The teenaged gunmen and 'shottas' who are the foot soldiers of the organised criminal networks and the gangs are produced by irresponsible unions and fathered by men and boys who are slaves of lust and have no concept of what fatherhood is about. They are just looking a 'ghetto slam'. And look what we are getting as a result.
A recent study of Caribbean youth found that only nine per cent grew up with a father, and when step-fathers were factored in the percentage grew to only 13 per cent. So a large percentage of Jamaican youth are growing up without their fathers. This has grave economic and social consequences for society.
Disturbingly, too - especially in terms of social grounding and moral retrofitting - only about 50 per cent of Caribbean youth had any allegiance to any religion, whether Christian, Islam or Rastafarian.
And only half of those said that their religion had any effect on their day-to-day decisions. If there is no notion of social responsibility, moral obligation and social bonding, why shouldn't hungry, distraught and fed-up youth in the ghetto not engage in extortion and 'juk down' someone to take what he has earned?
Why should a ghetto youth who has been deprived of his social and economic rights respect your right to life and private property?
TACKLING NON-SECURITY ISSUES
It is hard for uneducated, illiterate, malnourished and bitter inner-city youth to understand the subtleties of arguing for moral objectivity and moral realism outside of a religious context. So if the church or Rastafarianism is losing its hold on the youth and there is no overarching national vision, what will shut down the crime factories in Jamaica?
All the commissioned reports done on crime in Jamaica point to the importance of significantly increasing the social and economic investments in the inner cities.
But the money simply does not exist to make these investments, either from the Government or from the private voluntary and non-governmental organisations.
So what is going to happen? How will we keep the inner cities from exploding? No economic model being favoured by either the PNP or JLP in this era of globalisation is likely to produce significant job-creation.
And most of the jobs being created are way out of the educational and training reach of the most vulnerable and at risk groups in the ghettoes. Let us face these facts and don't just talk gibberish or ask pointless or rhetorical questions at fora like the PSOJ's Reclaim Jamaica talk-fest.
Kingfish's success has produced a backlash which no one knows how to deal with. Increased law enforcement measures, increased and improved operational tactics, intelligence-gathering, etc., will never be enough to deal with the crime problem.
Tackling crime is not just a security issue. The security issues are important and quite desperately needed in the short-term. I continue to be in support of tough, resolute policing of the type that would make hardened criminals fear to be as brazen as they are now in the proximity of police stations.
There are some naïve souls who just want to recommend carrots in fighting crime. No, there has to be the big stick, too. Some criminals are not vegetarians - they don't eat carrots! They have to be given the stick in unmistakable terms.
So I am not coming with any sentimental stuff when I am talking about tackling the non-security issues related to crime. But using the big stick alone will create alienation, mistrust and have civil society fighting among ourselves over tactics, while the criminals are uniting and coalescing for their evil designs.
LOVE OF MONEY
You cannot deal with crime effectively in a poor country like Jamaica if you continue to have the high levels of materialistic obsession which exists.
There are two pieces of social scientific work produced in this country which represent the apex of scholarship, and no one who is addressing or assessing the issues of crime and violence can do without them.
I refer to Professor Carl Stone's 1992 paper Values, Norms and Personality Development in Jamaica and Professor Don Robotham's 1998 Grace Kennedy Foundation lecture Vision and Voluntarism: Reviving Voluntarism in Jamaica.
These are two masterpieces of social scientific analysis as it relates to Jamaica's fundamental challenges. This is what the leadership contenders in the PNP should be concerning themselves with, engaging the nation in some serious and out-of-the-box thinking rather than dishing out the normal economistic homilies.
Stone noted insightfully in 1992 that "We very rarely seek to focus attention in Caribbean social science theory and research on the realm of values, norms and personality traits... (We) rarely examine explicitly the norms and values which determine, underpin and help to shape the character and essence of those economic and social structures."
Then Carl Stone made what I believe is the pivot of much of our problem to do with crime and corruption in Jamaica today: "The dominance of money as the single most important currency of influence, power and status and the decline of respectability as a status defining factor have promoted increased and rampant corruption both in Government and in the private sector corporate world."
Today, you do not get respectability from working hard at your day job, working assiduously in your community and being loyal to your wife and family.
No, you have to live in a upper-class community, drive a prestigious SUV, BMW or Benz, have a well-paying, powerful job and have 'important' friends and connections.
Today, you are judged not by what you produce but by what you consume. Today, it does not matter how you get your wealth but that you have it. 'Get rich or die trying' is the philosophy here.
When we bring up young people on a system of values which say they are nobodies, useless and 'not saying anything' because they cannot bling, cannot buy a fancy townhouse or live like some criminals in multimillion-dollar homes in the hills, then how will they resist the pressures to kill or extort to get there?
TALKING ABOUT VALUES
There was a time when people were proud to die with their dignity, when it was a thing of pride to live in the inner city, but with their character intact. Today, people say to hell with character and a good reputation. Give me the money, the possessions, and the status which is conferred by materialistic pursuits.
The more people we have in Jamaica who fall prey to the compulsion to make it big at all costs, no matter what, the more crime and corruption we will have.
Which politician is putting this issue at centre stage? Who is talking critically and fundamentally about values?
They are still talking yawningly about economic growth, economic prosperity, more investments, lower inflation and lower fiscal deficits, not realising that even if the cake expands, it will not be distributed equitably under our neo-liberal economic system.
Besides, without a strong moral foundation, you cannot keep the inner cities from exploding and imploding. This is what our politicians from both parties are not addressing fundamentally.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can send your comments to ianboyn1@yahoo.com.
