Unconnected dots in Jamaican crime fighting

Tags

Crime, Goverance., Government, Jamaica

Earlier this morning, I had half a mind to write about something I’d seen on Twitter, yesterday. Giovanni Dennis, a producer at RJR, posted a video of activity around a crashed grocery truck on Spur Tree Hill (near the border of Manchester and St. Elizabeth).  Here it is:

Grocery truck crashes at a section of Spur Tree Hill that borders Manchester & St Bess

Driver feared dead. 2 injured.

Looters meanwhile: pic.twitter.com/oQh17mBtXp

— Giovanni R. Dennis (@GiovanniRDennis) May 27, 2017

What first struck me about the scene was what it may be saying about the really desperate economic and moral situation of a significant portion of Jamaican society.

That people without much money or the prospect of getting any seize quickly an opportunity to get basic goods for free is no surprise; it happens in lots of poor countries; it also happens in richer countries, too. But, it could happen in an area where people are well-off; it’s just that routes for transporting goods are usually not that close to neighbourhoods where such people live (I know in the USA that may not be true, given the coverage of the Interstate highways. But, the general point is still valid.)

That we could not see any evidence of injured people and what if any assistance was being offered was partly unfortunate, but also telling. Our impression is that the injured were not the prime concern of those at the scene; even the onlookers did not seem perturbed by what they saw. I think that is a powerful image, and message. 

Just now, I read that the current Minister of National Security, Robert Montague, was pleading:

“Jamaica, we need to do better! Jamaica, we [cannot] only sit on our verandahs and criticise. It is time to get up, stand up and do something. It is time more people speak up and speak what you know…It is time to get up Jamaica; it is time to draw the line. It is time to stand up and be counted.” 

Just a few days ago, in the wake of the failed fraud case against Carlos Hill, because of the unwillingness of witnesses to appear and testify, Paula Llewelyn, the Director of Public Prosecutions, talked about “a demonstration of unenlightened self-interest leading to total disengagement in the process”.

Now, we cannot have it both ways. We know and have seen again and again that the average Jamaican is mired in various states of apathy and antipathy. We can look at turnout at elections for another leg to that stool. We know this! Yet, without even a breath to acknowledge what may be the reason, we are to believe that ‘Poof!’, citizens will see the walls of Jericho tumbling down and suddenly feel urged to get up and hold it up, and if it falls, rebuild it?

Just a few months ago, the same Mininster of National Security boldly saw that citizens needed help: “The country really need fi get under control because criminals a pressure everybody. So, him [Montague] haffi go wherever he has to go to get the thing under control. It [obeah] can work, but a no that alone. The whole nation have to come together as well.”  OBEAH!?

In fairness to Minister Montague, he had also previously said he had been ‘specially picked by God to tackle the crime monster‘. Now, I’m not too hot on all things religious, but the link with God-chosen and Obeah-reliance is lost on me. Anyone can help, here?

He’s also taken a leaf from his predecessor, Peter Bunting, who had often called for divine intervention in crime, including in 2014, and when crime appeared to be turning a corner in 2015, some lambasted him for not giving God his due. Well, Peter knew better than to take the Lord’s name in vain, especially when it appears in hindsight that such credit would have been premature.

Most of what I do each day is to look at dot. I try to see what they show when connected to each other, because if one just looks at one or a few, there’s no real picture. So, let’s add another dot.

In the middle of the month, the Inter-American Development Bank study, Restoring Paradise in the Caribbean: Combatting Violence with Numbers, stated (my emphases) ‘The Caribbean region needs to redirect its anti-crime efforts in favor of more interventions that are evidence-based and targeted at high-risk individuals and geographic areas, with improved monitoring of police and justice systems.’ What the IDB study also noted was: ‘Victims are concentrated in neighborhoods with high physical disorder, low trust among neighbors and a gang presence. Even within those neighborhoods, crime is concentrated in pockets.‘ [I need to find out if perpetrators are similarly from concentrated areas.]

So, what does my looking at dots tell me?

• Many Jamaicans don’t care enough about themselves enough to act in their own best interest. (At its worst, they would rather be silent about crime than speak out or act against it.)
• Many Jamaican do not care enough about each other to help even the dead and dying, instead of looking to see what they can get from the distress of such people. (It’s more likely that your fellow Jamaican will prefer to look on while crimes are being committed than doing something immediately to confront it. This goes back to those calls for ‘heroism’ when a student from Jamaica College was stabbed on a bus, allegedly for his cell phone.)
• Ministers of National Security have been floundering badly to put together a coherent policy to tackle the high wave of crime that has been battering Jamaica for decades. In desperation, a call to the people goes out as a statement that ‘we have no idea what to do’.
• We need to drill down to small areas to address the core problems of crime in our society. (That means ‘attacking’ the bases that have been built for political purposes, or created themselves on the back of lax policies that allowed ‘crime’ to be a way of life. Notwithstanding, the first bullet, politicians have shown amply and repeatedly that they can act in their own best interests.)

Good government and governance are built on consistency and credibility. Absent those two things, and all the talk in the world can only be seen as hot air.

 

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Jamaica and its ‘fight’ with crime: haphazard approaches may work, but they cannot have certainty.

Tags

Crime, Governance, Government, Jamaica, Logic, Problem-solving

Economics is one of several disciplines (and they are in both the arts and sciences) that force you to think about many problems from first principles, elaborate on those initial conditions, apply various assumptions to that, and then move to conclusions. These conclusions can then be tested in theory (with mathematical modeling, for instance) and practice, by trying to look at real world evidence and seeing if that comes close to what one would expect. However, much of life is an ongoing experiment, and we do not have the luxury much of the time to hold things static or to know whether some or many of our assumptions held true before events, through events, and hold true still after events. Humans are responsive, so modify actions based on past experience. All of that simple summary is to say what?

I have some clear views in my mind about what kinds of things work with humans and which dont. Those views are borne less out of economics and more out of living. However, I hold onto one strand of economics all the time: people always respond to incentives. Once you understand the structure of those incentives, then changing those is what will change behaviour. 

Now, we could argue to the end of the world whether or not some incentives are stronger than others, or if each incentive works the same for each person. That’s where life gets really complicated. Example: Many people use pain to get others to respond. That works better for people who have low pain thresholds. If you have a high pain threshold, someone may have to go to the ultimate point of taking your life (and maybe not even then) to get a response. 

Money is similar, in that we each respond differently, depending on our starting level of assets, and our prospects for those assets to increase or decrease. We have different tolerance for risk and different responses to rewards. Some cousins asked me to play poker for a pot of US$20, and I said I’d be interested if it were US$2000; they were not. They played and got really jacked up at the end to collect the US$20. I watched the NFL game. 🙂

So, what about crime? In particular, what about crime in Jamaica?

I fail to see how one can make a case for doing ‘something’ to ‘deal with crime’ (whatever that something is, and irrespective of the element of crime that is to be addressed) without some basic tenets and questions concerning:

• What you see as the problem? 
• What you tried?
• What worked?
• What failed?
• How you responded to failure and success?
• Who are the actors?
• What are the intereconnections?
• What are the rewards from crime and what are the risks that are being taken and overcome?

Those are just some simple questions whose answers would then lead most people to say an understanding of the problem has been shown, and we know what weaknesses and strengths we are dealing with on the many sides of law and order and law breaking. 

To my mind, none of that has anything to do with things like politics or culture or gender or a host of features and attributes that make for some interesting colour, but do not go to the fundamentals (economists love those).

So, I am about as interested in labelling someone and their opinions as I am in knowing what colour underwear they have on today. 

What I have seen repeatedly in Jamaica on the matter of crime is simple. Its main actors in leadership positions, who are in the business of law-keeping, have not been able to tell a story that makes sense from start to finish. When that is the case, the one clear conclusion is that there is much misunderstanding, much confusion, and little real idea of how to solve the problem. (What economics tells me, and it’s shown to be true in life, is that in such circumstances the responses that come forward MUST BE REACTIVE, NOT PROACTIVE–because, you’ve no real idea how to deal with the root causes, so treat symptoms.)

Before someone jumps up and shouts how unfair that is, I will ask one simple question. If successive Ministers of National Security have called on prayer and God as their answers to the problem, what are they doing taking tax payer money to perform a job that they say is not theirs?

If someone wishes to paint me a different picture, I remain as patient as ever. 

I suspect that the excitement about August Town going murder-free is founded on a series of results that came from many of the questions I posed above being asked and answered. 

Crime ‘fighting’ must be like the way that healing works in the body: it starts from the inside, not the outside.

Some takeaways from Jamaica’s local government elections

Tags

Governance, Government, Jamaica, Local government, Political issues, Politics, Voting rights

The votes have barely been fully counted, but there are many take-aways from yesterday’s local government elections, and many of them do not need much data to be clear. Here goes:

General take-aways from local government elections

• The current Opposition, PNP, was in disarray for the national elections, played around for a few months after that doing so-called internal reflections, did little to change themselves or their message, and got a royal raspberry yesterday, losing overall control of parish councils, including plum locations like Kingston and St. Andrews. If Nero were wearing an orange toga, it would be clear what was going on, and that the party leader had her finger on the right button saying there’s”something rotten in the town (sic) of Denmark”.
• Jamaican local government politics is a mere fig leaf for people’s notions of national electoral issues.
• Those involved in local government are not going to advocate for change, as that is likely to make their political lives worse, not better.
• Money matters, and those with control of national budgets should have the upper hand with regard to local government issues, and also the upper hand when it comes to guiding local government election outcomes. Only a blinkered mole would not see J$600 million spent ahead of elections as anything but thinly disguised vote-buying. Call a bushwhacker a bushwhacker! The gem this time was calling the elections in the period just before Christmas, when it could feasibly be argued that this was normal seasonal work. But, give my ailing brain a break with that empty rhetoric!
• Local government has been serially denuded of real power over local outcomes as many implementing agencies are national and handle local issues as part of their logical geographical division of operations.
• Local government needs a substantial base for raising local taxes to address local issues. I’m not sure that the national appetite for more fiscal burdens exist at this time, and also past performance gives little confidence that parish councillors are not money grabbing weasels, in general…with due respect to those who are merely rats sniffing out cheese–and we know the allure of cheese.
• Turnout was low: preliminary figures indicate that about 30 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots. But, that was no surprise, especially as indications are that the debates made many people less likely to vote.

Some thoughts on voting turnout

It would be nice for many reasons to see higher turnouts, but that won’t necessarily change things in Jamaican politics. One of our burdens is sticking with a first-past-the-post system, in a country where many people may live in so-called ‘garrison’ constituencies, ie one party has a virtual lock on certain seats, so voting against that party is often a wasted vote in term of results in that constituency. Winning by one vote with a 100% turnout isn’t different from winning by one vote with, say a 45% turnout. In fact, the first situation may be terrible, because it means that say 49.99% of voters do not get their choice, which is worse when that percentage represents a large absolute number of people.

However, if some forms of proportional representation were in place, votes would mean much more. Those who are really looking for independent candidates would have more reason for casting votes for such people if they knew that their aggregate voting could matter. Likewise, and more obvious, if you were in favour of the minority party in a garrison, but knew that your party’s aggregate voting was important, then voting behaviour ought to change.

I’ve said before that low turnout is not necessarily reflective of voter indifference, but possibly a large amount of voter antipathy. People see much wrong with political processes, including candidate selection at one end and what politicians do ‘in the name of the people’, much of which is shameful, if we are brutally honest. Many people do not want to be associated with that shamefulness. 

One of the pieces of theatre during the local government debates was really on point, when one candidate rolled out a ‘scandal list’. Imagine that capturing the imagination of people more than an ‘achievements list’.

Sadly, the latest election is another page of Jamaican politics which is really about scraping the bottom of the barrel. Politics is not to where our brightest aspire. We also suffer from the limited talent pool that exists, not just in politics, but in management and decision-making in general. Our decades of talent drain has taken its toll on our output quantity and quality, and our productivity, and politics has not been spared in that ‘race to the bottom’.

I’ve been saying it (Jamaica) must get better, soon. That’s not because I’m impatient, but because all things become habits, if done long enough. Mediocrity in politics is no exception.

The body is in pain

Tags

Accountability Governance, Government, Jamaica, NHT

My gut dislikes almost everything I’ve heard about the purchase by NHT of property in Trelawny, whether land alone or land and buildings.

My head aches when I think that senior public officials did not see any need to inform the minister handling the portfolio about the purchase. The latest justification, that it was never the practice in the 38 years of the NHT sounds like a last refuge from utter contempt for the people at large and their chief representative, in particular. It beggars belief that NHT thought this was some humdrum transaction.

My belly rumbles at the sound of NHT board members defiantly saying they won’t resign. So comfortable are they in their rightness? If so, resignation would show a willingness to have that view reaffirmed. Being reappointed is very normal, if someone is really as good as he thinks.

This view was supported, though, by the slick appointment of new board members. That stamped the view that all is well on board HMS NHT.

The mutiny amongst the public, at many levels, that was rumbling loudly never got a change of Captain. The Admiral made sure of that.

My body is not in a good state.

My country is not in a good state. That state is due in large part to a State that shows too often that it doesn’t feel what we feel. That is despite all the good sounding statements to the contrary.

Good government: some thoughts on why Jamaica is failing

Tags

Civics, Governance, Government, Jamaica, Legal framework

An interesting feature of good government is the extent to which the state encourages collective good behaviour. However, that behaviour needs a framework, which is usually codified as laws and regulations. The encouragement to hold onto the framework can happen through positive or negative. incentives, i.e. benefits or punishment. So, we may find that we are rewarded for following rules. Or, we incur personal or collective losses, such as facing fines for breaking laws.

Jamaica is interesting because the state has failed in this role for many years and in many areas. The current concerns about health issues, and the outbreak of chikungunya give good insights into that failure.

Citizens were never encouraged to maintain sanitary conditions, and never faced serious penalties for not doing so. The results are obvious: garbage is more present than absent. The state failed further by not fulfilling its function to help dispose of garbage on a regular basis. The reasons for that may have some legitimacy in that financial constraints limited buying and using equipment and people. But, it’s a weak justification, because it reflects a choice to use money for other non-essential purposes such as vehicles for officials.

Crime is another area where we see this failure in full light. Criminals are rarely caught and when caught are less often punished. So, the incentive to be law-abiding is low. Again, the state adds to our woes by itself having a significant portion of law enforcement officers who are themselves law breakers.

When the state machinery is corrupted, it’s hard for citizens to see sense in trying to hold onto the good behaviour framework.

All the burden shouldn’t fall on laws and regulations, though, as some moral code should also be in place to guide people in areas where you want people to act correctly, but cannot write down grow that should be. But, that moral code needs reinforcing by constant and consistent application, as with every citizen looking out for every citizen. At its simplest, we can imagine how an adult would show care for a child and help it navigate things too difficult to manage. So, any adult could help a child cross the road. The child, in turn, has learned that courtesy is expected and a simple “Thank you” would suffice to show that.

But, we can see the moral code has been whittled away. Using my simple example, we may see less willingness by adults to assist children, and fewer displays of simple courtesies. That has a downward spiral, where disregard for child safety is more common and children’s courtesy to adults is less common.

Another aspect to this social good behaviour is the extent that rule-makers create good rules and modify them as circumstances change. My mind goes quickly to how that doesn’t exist with what happens in some schools with dress codes. We can understand the desire to get children to understand the discipline of what is seen as good decorum. But, it’s hard to see this when it appears to move to extremes. So, the idea that modesty is imposed by girls having skirts no less than say 4 inches below the knee seems reasonable. But, for that to move arbitrarily to say 11 inches is bothersome. It’s more concerning because it’s not universally applied, suggesting that personal preference has guided more than some common sense, in the true meaning. Is that near tripling of length going to be associated with a three-fold improvement in anything? I suspect not. Further, a burden has been added to parents for dubious benefit.

Finally, our belief in fairness has to be bolstered all the time when the state expects us to behave well. That is eroded when we see the state and its officials getting away with things that other citizens cannot. That is the essence of the problem with letting corruption take hold. State officials should be seen to be sanctioned at least at the same rate as others. When this doesn’t happen, resentment and distrust of the state must increase. Jamaica would have been a very different place had more officials faced court and sanctions for their apparent transgressions. But, by reserving special treatment for itself, the state (officials and politicians) sold out.

None of the is beyond fixing. The chikungunya episode is giving an example of a fix can appear quickly. Politicians and corporations buy into the idea of national cleanliness and within days we get examples of good behaviour to follow. But, follow we must, not just the one-off for show. We also don’t need entities to show the way because each citizen should feel empowered to take the first step.