Deployment of SOEs and ZOSOs done little to alleviate national homicide rate

Durrant Pate/Contributor

Jamaica’s use of states of emergency (SOEs) as a crime fighting tool is coming in for more questioning, as its efficacy is being challenged by Assistant Professor at Howard University, Jermaine Young.

Young, who teaches and researches on the nexus of emergency powers (martial law, SOEs, and zones of special operation (ZOSOs) and criminal justice in colonial and post-colonial Jamaica has cited marginal results from its use of SOEs in the island.

Last month, the Andrew Holness government declared a new round of SOEs in seven out of Jamaica’s 14 parishes. This latest declaration is another episode of the government’s intensified use of SOEs in conjunction with other quasi-emergency measures like ZOSOs to dampen the perennially high homicide rate.

Lack of effectiveness

In spite of the measures, Jamaica still registered the highest murder rate in Latin American and Caribbean for the second straight year in 2021. Since late 2017, both SOEs and ZOSOs have been declared numerous times across the island.

These approaches have normalised emergency powers as a criminal justice tool. Young argues that the deployment of SOEs and ZOSOs has done little to alleviate the national homicide rate, despite a small decline from the 2017 zenith of 1647 homicides to the 2021 tally of 1322.

Instead, he contends that the SOEs function as stop-gap measures deployed consistently and paradoxically as part of the new “normal” criminal justice toolkit of government. “Consequently, the much-publicized SOEs of 2018-2020 (with some parishes being under SOE for over two years) have produced marginal results, at the national level at least,” the Howard University educator posited.

Despite aspects of past SOEs being deemed unconstitutional by the island’s Supreme Court in 2020, the Holness administration has not relented in declaring SOEs in November 2021 and again in 2022. The court cited as unconstitutional the SOE’s extended detentions violating constitutional liberties and the declaration being vague as to what constituted an “emergency”.

Reliance on SOEs is problematic

As such, Young argues that the Government’s reliance on SOEs is problematic and has implications for both the Holness government and Jamaican citizens. The University Howard assistant professor expressed the view that the “Jamaican state has repeatedly shown that ‘collateral damage’ seems more relevant than catching the real criminals. This is why a number of Jamaicans, especially from less affluent areas are often confused as to why they have to sacrifice their constitutional rights to ensure the state has an appropriate policy response, especially when state abuses are clear and present realities.”

With waning public support for SOEs, Young declares that it is high time for a bipartisan approach be put on the table to fight crime, one which focuses not only on reactive solutions to law enforcement, but a proactive one that examines a plethora of issues that facilitate crime on the island. These included the lack of socio-economic opportunities, limited technological improvements and training for the police, and substantive prisoner rehabilitation to curb recidivism.

He concluded by saying that the Holness administration’s reactive approach has watered down the intended purpose of an SOE as a tool of last resort. Instead, it has become the primary policy tool