While we await the full out­come and re­portage of the de­bate in the Sen­ate on the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill, a com­ment is de­serv­ing on one point made by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Mar­lene Attzs. It re­lates to her state­ment in recog­ni­tion of the dra­mat­ic de­cline in crime, es­pe­cial­ly mur­ders, that the “ev­i­dence con­sis­tent­ly shows en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures may sup­press vi­o­lence in the short term, but rarely ad­dress­es the un­der­ly­ing dri­vers of crim­i­nal­i­ty.”

The whole coun­try, what­ev­er the po­lit­i­cal pref­er­ences of in­di­vid­u­als, must have ex­pe­ri­enced a mea­sure of re­lief by the suc­cess achieved in dri­ving down the killings. There is, though, no ev­i­dence which sug­gests that gangs are be­ing smashed, dis­lo­cat­ed and are not like­ly to be re­for­mu­lat­ed and re­turn to their das­tard­ly op­er­a­tions once the tem­po­rary se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures are re­moved.

It’s known that peo­ple held and re­tained in prison un­der a State of Emer­gency must be freed when the SoE is end­ed. How­ev­er, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge has es­ti­mat­ed that on­ly a few of those will qual­i­fy for au­to­mat­ic and in­stant re­lease. But even if the ma­jor­i­ty are charged, bail will be in the off­ing for those not on no-bail of­fences.

The crit­i­cal prob­lem will be to pre­vent a re-align­ment of the crim­i­nals who will nat­u­ral­ly at­tempt to re­vive their hu­man de­struc­tion oc­cu­pa­tion.

With that said, this news­pa­per and the coun­try must sure­ly ap­plaud Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her Gov­ern­ment for an im­por­tant achieve­ment. They came in­to of­fice and met a prob­lem of fright­en­ing pro­por­tions, one that has been build­ing over more than two decades. Over the first eight to nine months of be­ing in the Gov­ern­ment, mur­ders in par­tic­u­lar have been re­duced by an av­er­age of 42-45 per cent.

Min­is­ter Sturge, in his state­ment, hint­ed at the Gov­ern­ment hav­ing so­cial de­vel­op­ment plans which will at­tempt to slow, re­duce and/or pre­vent the cul­ti­va­tion of crim­i­nals. It must be not­ed, how­ev­er, that so­cial mea­sures of this kind have been talked about. To be cer­tain, there are pro­grammes which have been put in place but many have not in any way re­duced the growth in gangs and the num­ber of young peo­ple in par­tic­u­lar be­ing caught up in that sub­cul­ture. The lat­est num­ber re­leased in­di­cates that in 2024, there were an es­ti­mat­ed 180 gangs, a growth in num­bers.

What­ev­er the out­come of the Sen­ate de­bate on the ZOSO leg­is­la­tion, it must be said that re­cent at­tempts to bring in­to dis­re­pute the rep­u­ta­tion of the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors are deeply con­cern­ing.

These in­di­vid­u­als were ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic as peo­ple of in­tegri­ty and ca­pa­bil­i­ty who are not bound to any­one—not to the Pres­i­dent, the Gov­ern­ment, the Op­po­si­tion—and should there­fore be free of the in­sult­ing and di­min­ish­ing lan­guage as they go about their du­ties.

If the present arrange­ments are un­ac­cept­able, then the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­quire­ment for In­de­pen­dents should be changed.