CMOC To Review National Consensus on Crime

The Crime Monitoring Oversight Committee (CMOC) will be reviewing the National Consensus on Crime.

According to Chairman of CMOC, Lloyd Distant, the review is necessary to account for the feedback from its stakeholders to improve the focus of the initiative.

“With these types of things, you always need to re-evaluate where you are and what you may need to do differently or what you may need to do to improve the focus of the initiative. What we identified is that there are three primary areas that we need to focus on,” Mr. Distant said.

He explained that the initial consensus focused on medium to long-term initiatives with the aim of measuring a sustainable reduction in crime.

“It didn’t really focus on the immediate concern of most Jamaicans, which was the violent crimes that we have been experiencing, and so we are taking the opportunity with the new consensus to look at immediate concerns.” Mr. Distant said.

He told JIS News that the CMOC has gone through the consensus with the majority of its stakeholders to drill down on how to improve it, adding that that process was done in 2022 and early 2023.

“What are those agreements, initiatives, programmes or activities that specifically expedite the reduction in violent crimes. We want to pull out a set of areas and get agreements around those things that we can expedite to achieve the reduction in violent crimes,” he said.

He added that with the consensus being two years old, some dates under the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will also need to change.

Mr. Distant said with the review, the CMOC will ensure that the new priorities of Government are reflected.

“The Minister of National Security highlighted that there were priorities of the Government of Jamaica that were not necessarily in the agreement. The agreement, while comprehensive, would not have captured everything that was a priority to the Government. We certainly wanted to ensure that the government priorities were all captured in the new agreement,” Mr. Distant noted.

He said as KPIs are achieved, CMOC will need to focus on how each initiative will be effective in addressing the issue of crime.

Mr. Distant said the CMOC also wants to update how the entity functions, especially in relation to how they engage with ministries, departments and agencies.

“We have to ensure that how CMOC operates and interfaces with the Government and agencies, that we’re able to get the best engagement. We may need to have targeted teams, having the conversations or subject matter experts coming to the fore to add dimension and further insight for each of those areas,” he told JIS News.

Mr. Distant said after all consultations are completed, inclusive of a final discussion with the Prime Minister, then an official summit will be held this year.

He said at that summit, CMOC will have another official signing ceremony similar to what took place in August of 2020.

The CMOC, which was established in 2020, is an independent body comprising nonpartisan stakeholders from the private sector, civil society, academia, and the political directorate, with a mandate to set goals aimed at mitigating crime and report to the public.