Gov’t Crafting Laws to Strengthen National Security While Protecting Rights – PM

Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, says the Government is putting legislative measures in place to strengthen national security, while protecting the rights and freedoms of citizens.

He said that these laws will target criminals and violence producers in the society.

“Our laws need to take into account our current situation; it is a delicate balance that we must strike. We do not want to deprive ourselves of our freedoms, we do not want to change the liberal nature of our society and our democracy because we are confronted with a small but entrenched group of violence producers,” he noted.

“It is not beyond us, it is not beyond the society to preserve our liberal democracy and preserve our rights and freedoms and at the same time craft legislation that specifically targets those among us who use violence as a means of demonstrating their power, violence as a means of economic and social gains, and violence as a means of resolving conflict,” he emphasised.

Mr. Holness was speaking during the recent handover of a housing unit in Rogers Wood in Bartons, St. Catherine Southwest, under the Government’s New Social Housing Programme.

Citing the Enhanced Security Measures Act, which is being developed to, among other things, protect the country’s most vulnerable, the Prime Minister said the legislation seeks to target persons who are known to be involved in violence.

He noted that by virtue of having intelligence and going through a judicial process “the State can be empowered to act in such a way as to prevent those who we know are established producers of violence from actually using violence”.

The Prime Minister said that discussions are ongoing regarding the general terms and framework for the Act.

“In the interim, we continue to use the emergency powers under the State Of Public Emergency (SOE) in… a way that does not in any way impair, inflict undue harm to the rights of the Jamaican citizen,” he pointed out.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister said the use of the SOE has been effective.

“Every time we have used the SOE we have seen a reduction in murders… because the powers that we have used would have allowed us to act in a preemptive way. That is, it allows us to interdict those who we know are involved in crime and to separate them from the communities that are being affected by the crime and violence. It gives a period of time when there is a cessation of violence, and that has worked.

“What we are seeking to do is to have some of these powers, instead of being utilised in the State of Public Emergency, to be crafted in an emergency legislation which we call the Enhanced Security Measures Act, which can be used in a consistent way to target those criminals,” he noted further.

Additionally, the Prime Minister said penalties have been increased for persons who use illegal weapons, particularly guns.

“We are now seeking to increase the penalties for murder. We are going to make certain amendments to the Domestic Violence Act, to the Offences Against the Person Act to ensure that they reflect the challenges of the time,” he said.