(VERY) SIMPLE ARITHMETIC!


Like most people in the country, I am very concerned about the crime situation and an hoping and praying that this state of emergency (SOE) really does 'break the backs' of the criminal gangs. And, like a lot of thinking people who do not have access to security reports, I am concerned because I cannot discern a clear strategy for what happens after the SOE is lifted and life goes back to 'normal' (whatever 'normal' was).

You see, I was doing some very simple arithmetic on the back of a napkin in a favourite watering hole at lunch time yesterday and came up with the following:

Let's say that we have a population of 1.5 million people. (In the absence of the publication of a reliable census we are all guessing ... I am assuming that the population is in fact larger than the 1.3 million everybody quotes. All the other figures too are simply assumptions/guesses, but hopefully you will get my point). Now, let's say that the African/Black population is a little less than half that figure ... say, 650,000. Now, let's say that of that figure approximately half are males ... so that would give us a figure of 325,000. Now, let's say that of that figure a little less than half live in the 'hotspots'. So that would give us a figure of approximately 150,000 African males living in the 'hotspots'. And of that figure let's say that approximately half are young enough/old enough to be the 'target age group' for gang membership. That would yield a figure of approximately 75,000. And finally, let's say that gang membership is confined to approximately 10 per cent of this 'target age group'. In other words, there are approximately 7,500 young, angry and dangerous men running around with various degrees of lethal weapons at their command.

Now, before anybody accuses me of some kind of racism because I am targeting only young black men, let me just say that the empirical evidence that has been presented to the population as a whole over the last few years is that the overwhelming majority of the criminal gang population appears to be composed of young black men. If this is not so, then please present your own evidence that proves or suggests otherwise.

So, back to my point, which is that it was announced in today's papers that the total number arrested was 820. This means that according to my figures ... which admittedly could easily be widely inaccurate ... a little more than 10 percent of the gang members have so far been detained! Assuming (as is entirely possible) that this figure doubles or even quadruples in the coming weeks, what happens next? I just don't see an 'exit strategy'. And this (the 'exit strategy') is probably even more important than just locking up all of these people for now.

The Government needs to understand that the citizenry is overwhelmingly on its side in this war on the criminals, and we desperately want it to succeed. We do understand that for obvious security reasons they cannot tell us everything, but we need to be told enough to stay on their side. So when, for example, the Attorney General says something like the names of those detained cannot be published for legal reasons... a statement which does not make sense at all ... it becomes difficult for those of us who wish the Government well in this SOE to defend all of their actions. And it allows people like Amery Browne to defend otherwise indefensible causes.

The Government must understand that at the end of the day, there will have to be a full and frank accounting. It will be to their eternal credit if they not only do that, but when they do they are able to demonstrate their success so clearly that even an idiot will have to acknowledge it and we will all be able to live in a country that once more belongs to all of us.