We find it hard to accept that there seems to be no sense of crisis on the part of the government and its senior security officials.

A problem, perhaps. But not a crisis.
Yet for this year so far, more than 900 persons have been murdered in Jamaica, or about 112 people per month.

If these figures are extrapolated to the end of the year, about 1,350 people would have been murdered in Jamaica in 2004.

These bodies of the victims of homicides would stretch for about a two- and-a-quarter kilometre distance. Their graves, combined, would have required digging to a depth of about 8,100 feet.

But from the more serious and critical aspects to these murders is that on the current trajectory we will be at a record level, surpassing the 1,139 of 2001, and reversing the combined 17 per cent decline of the past two years.

Moreover, in more than half the cases the police will neither apprehend a suspect nor link a specific person to the crime, so that it can be tagged as cleared up when there is the inevitable 'shoot-out'. And in fewer cases still will anyone be convicted.

In other words, killing, for those who murder, is not a particularly high-risk activity - at least, not in terms of consequences from the law.

And that, fundamentally, is the crisis - the failure of law and order and the capacity of the law to act as a deterrent to crime.

Crime persists at abnormal levels in environments where there is no serious consequence for crime; where criminals believe that they can act with impunity.

Of course, there are social and political interventions which can, and must, be implemented to curtail crime but these cannot work alone or in a vacuum. They have to be underpinned by credible crime-fighting policies which are effectively implemented.

Frankly, we think that it is time, indeed, that the time is past-due, for a serious, honest assessment of the score on this issue and perhaps to link performance and rewards. In other words, it is time that those who are responsible be held accountable.

Indeed, it is not only wrong but vexatious when those who are responsible appear to attempt to evade their responsibility with the illogic of defending their own performances on the basis of comparisons with predecessors. That someone else also suffered from a poor performance does not vindicate my own failures.

Neither can those who are ultimately accountable continue to assuage our fears by attempting to paint this problem as a kind of enterprise in the management of a far-off, disconnected few.

Crime is not ephemeral, but hard and real and painful ... and bloody. Its solutions demand interventions that are multi-dimensional. But there must be a firm twist of a tourniquet by those who are responsible and accountable.

They should also learn about kitchens and their own capacities to survive the heat.

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World