No reasonable person would argue with former Prime Minister Mr P J Patterson regarding the recent senseless murder of Ms Barbara Gayle who had been, for decades, Jamaica’s leading news reporter on legal matters.

Mr Patterson, who, like many of Jamaica’s legal luminaries personally acquainted with Ms Gayle, said her death should be “a wake-up call for Jamaica to take action and promote a culture of love, compassion, and shared humanity”.

Yet, as Mr Patterson reminds us, Ms Gayle’s death “is but the most recently alarming in a catalogue of violent and dastardly acts of savagery…”

In other words, numerous similar tragedies down the years should have served as “wake-up” calls for a nation seemingly numbed into inaction by criminal brutality.

Despite statistics showing declines in murders and other criminal violence, it’s not enough to depend on police action — no matter how intelligence-driven — to combat evildoers.

In this space we keep hammering at the need to proactively unite the nation against criminals. That’s from community grass roots up, across political lines, and embracing all segments of society — an unbending coalition in defence of law and order.

Mr Patterson, in his recent release, reminds us of another closely related aspect that’s an imperative for the defeat of crime over the long term. That’s proactive, purposeful socialisation to achieve behaviour change.

He argued that “[W]e must begin to end this destruction of ourselves by a decisive change in the culture of our relationships within our homes, the neighbourhoods, the workplaces, our schools, and recreational space. Anything less will be like recurring decimals which perpetuate our own individual vulnerability to criminal extinction…

“Anger and greed must give way to caring and tolerance at every level… The solution to the national dilemma has to begin with acknowledging the sacredness of life — the belief that one’s own life is of intrinsic value. That necessitates valuing and treating others with respect.”

And that, “It is past time for Jamaica to reclaim its values and promote the attitudinal changes which emphasise the importance of respect for human life, empathy, civility, and kindness…”

Such a campaign, once successful, would not only combat hard core criminals, but also antisocial behaviour, including irresponsible road use — a major source of death, maiming, and economic loss.

It is beyond annoying that a values and attitudes campaign launched while Mr Patterson was prime minister in the mid-1990s aiming to achieve the very ends outlined here, fizzled, and was eventually killed off, largely because of partisan politics.

Since then, leading voices of all persuasions have endorsed a revival of that campaign which was orchestrated by a People’s National Party Government.

Another former prime minister, Mr Bruce Golding, who led a Jamaica Labour Party Government for four years between 2007 and 2011, has unambiguously endorsed culture change as vital to overcoming crime and antisocial behaviour.

He told an audience in Mandeville in 2021 that “we reap what we sow”, and further that “We don’t need to engage any high-priced consultant… We don’t need any social anthropologist; it’s a simple thing. It’s called socialisation…”

He added: “Socialisation is something that you can’t avoid.”

We have to start now at home, in our schools, churches, on our street corners, everywhere.

What are we waiting for?