Source : Loop Caribbean
Andrew Holness, Prime Minister of Jamaica, is calling for reform of the justice system to fight crime.
Speaking at Regional Symposium: Violence as a Public Health Issue – The CARICOM Challenge, Holness said the Caribbean’s laws and jurisprudence were not designed to treat criminal threats facing the region.
“We must reform our legislation to match the growing sophistication, scale, and nature of the threat. Our jurisprudence must incorporate measures which will support enhanced security operations, which will support the use of emergency powers, and which will support preventative action to disrupt and control the space in which criminals operate before they commit the act of violence,” he said.
Speaking about the illegal flow of guns into the region, Holness said in Jamaica they seized 8,036 illegal firearms over the last decade.
He said criminal organisations and gangs have been able to acquire these illegal guns with ease even though they were not manufactured in the region.
“As a matter of regional security and foreign policy we must coordinate and strengthen our efforts bilaterally with the United States and multilaterally with the UN system to control over the illegal export of small arms and light weapons to our region,” he said.
Holness said in the same way the Caribbean supported the US war on drugs, they, too, must support the Caribbean’s war on guns which are killing our children.
“Our children are just as valuable as the children in North America. There has to be equal energy, effort and attention paid to preventing illegal guns from coming into our country as we paid effort, energy and attention to illegal drugs going to their country. In fact, the war on drugs will continue to be infected unless there is an equivalent and consummate war on guns,” he declared.
Holness urged regional leaders to put their money where their threats lie and increase capabilities and capacity to scan goods coming into the ports, buy offshore patrol vessels, and have offshore patrol surveillance.
He said the region cannot depend on outside forces to do the work for us as they will only report what is in their interests.