US study cites improvement in local justice system
April 22, 2007
Despite constant and harsh criticism of Jamaica's criminal justice system by human rights lobby groups and Jamaicans at large, a pair of Harvard University researchers is commending the Government for acting firmly in the face of the monstrous crime wave.
Jamaica is said to be among the top three countries in terms of the incidence of murder, with an average of 51 murders per 100,000 population last year. Jamaica also has one of the highest rates of police killings in the world with 168 killings by the police in 2005 and a further 207 people last year.
Researchers Todd Frogglesong and Christopher Stone of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, produced a working paper focused on measuring the criminal justice systems of both Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. They found that while there was still plenty of improvement to be made, the governments were to be commended for their move to employ technology and modern methods of policing to collect and analyse data that would help them to better understand whether the criminal justice system was helping to reduce crime in their countries.
More social services needed
Lookingat a number of policing approaches used by the two countries, the researchers recommended that the governments move to incorporate more social services into the criminal justice system in order to lessen criminality in their societies.
"Innovations in governance should widen the circle of functions within the criminal justice system," Froggelsong and Stone suggested.
"Victim services, indigent defence, addiction treatment and other public health services might all be brought together in the service of reducing crime and violence," they continued.
They also outlined specific weaknesses in the strategies being used by the police to strengthen the criminal justice system. The clear-up rate, once measured, the researchers noted, was not monitored to reveal whether arrests would yield convictions upon trial in court.
"These same data on clearance rates would provide better measures still if they helped the police measure the equity in their policing and the strengthening of their adherence to certain human rights standards," Frogglesong and Stone argued.
Recommendations
They recommended that Jamaican police statisticians for example, develop a measure of equity between arrests made in poor versus affluent districts. The police could also calculate a ratio of arrests of suspects to death of suspects as to provide an indicator of compliance with human rights standards, the researches said.
On that note, they also criticised the use of force by the police in both countries as a means of controlling crime. Frogglesong and Stone said the strategy had not proven to have an effect on the rate of homicides and public safety and so needed to be controlled...
Author: Gleaner Reporter
Source: Jamaica Gleaner
