Government’s recent presentation of a flurry of bills on security and law and order has quite properly raised concerns.
The first was the haste with which the tabling was done. It has been argued in the past that the government must have a well-paced and structured legislative agenda for each session of Parliament. One doesn’t expect that in the days just preceding the annual recess that substantial bills such as the ones on wire-tapping and paper committals for trial would be suddenly parachuted into the assembly for debate in a matter of days. There is no apparent emergency that would justify the late tabling of these bills and the opposition quite properly objected to any hurried debate. Moreover, the debate would have encroached on the annual recess which would have necessitated some special reason. The manner in which these bills have been steered is discomfiting and the Parliamentary Management Committee should consider this at its next sitting.
Aside from the actual content of the bills, it would seem that the government is convinced that passing them will have a significant impact in the fight against crime. The public remain unconvinced. This is the same environment in which despite over a decade of efforts and broken promises there has not been a single, substantial prosecution of a drug lord or even one of his/her minions under the law currently on the books. The law remains unresponsive and malformed. An upgraded anti-money laundering law which would allow asset forfeiture and stiffen the fight against the drug trade has not yet emerged from the select committee of Parliament that it was entrusted to. This experience is enough to warrant soul searching about whether there is real intent behind the passing of some of these laws or they are merely meant to be window-dressing so that empty assurances can be given to those in the international community and diaspora.
Third, the bills are being promulgated in an environment that is not conducive to their healthy development and maturation. Given the degraded state of law and order in this country and the depredations of a spectrum of gangs one would put some of the proposed laws such as wiretapping in a different class of crime-fighting tools and ones that would not likely improve the crime fight here at the moment. The government is presently engaged in a security sector reform programme with the United Kingdom and a series of other initiatives including the Citizen Security Programme with the IDB which at various levels are trying to restore policing to its core principles and professionalism.
When the force has been brought to the state in which it can undertake intelligence-led policing, confidently carry out interception missions such as the one at Christmas Falls that was unfortunately botched, establish effective control over crime hotspots, eliminate shocking dereliction of duty such as the escape of the murder accused Jermaine Charles, convince the public that it isn’t engaged in extra-legal interrogation or beating of prisoners and dampen down corruption in the force then it would be appropriate to consider taking the crime fight to the next level and empowering law enforcers to possibly intercept electronic transmissions. Otherwise these laws would be open to abuse and corruption by the same persons who are entrusted to uphold them. Moreover, a wide remit to intercept not only telephonic communications can be suborned for political and other purposes by a government which has not shown itself unwilling to intervene in these matters for very narrow reasons.
The sharpening of the crime fight will not emerge from `big brother’ reading emails sent from Kwakwani. There will be greater benefits derived from getting back to the basics in the force: improving core policing concepts and mastering tools such as ballistics. These are the areas which the government and law enforcement should be working overtime to enhance so that abominations such as a prisoner being found with a gun and bullets in the Camp Street jail are not permitted to occur again.
That aside, there are serious civil liberty issues at stake in the wire-tapping bill in particular. There is no reason why in cases of extreme emergencies citizens should not be willing to voluntarily suspend some cherished rights. However enabling sweeping surveillance as envisaged by the bill at clause 2 where “intercept” for the purposes of telecommunication covers “monitoring of transmissions made by fibre optic cable or any other forms of wire line, by wireless telegraphy, voice over internet protocol, internet and all other forms of electromagnetic communication to or from the apparatus comprising the systems” is completely unwarranted and could lead to unsavoury consequences. Presumably this bill will be automatically consigned to a select committee of Parliament whenever the second reading is scheduled. Thereafter, it would be most appropriate for public hearings to be summoned on it and for careful consideration of what may exist in the Commonwealth Caribbean in particular and under what circumstances these provisions are utilized. Those hearings and expert testimony should then be distilled and the bill amended to reflect such.
The bill for paper committals could immeasurably help to improve the disposal of indictable cases which drag on endlessly in the lower courts. However, the major concern would be to ensure that no part of the process disadvantages an accused. The bill for the registration of SIM-card and phone instrument information has been long urged considering the ubiquity of the technology and its availability to criminal planning. Cell phones with a wealth of information but no identifiable owner have turned up at crime scenes since 2002.
As important as these pieces of proposed legislation are they are attended by ramifications of all sorts which must be carefully and adequately dissected.
