1. The distinction between communal and criminal violence. Much of Jamaica’s community violence is the work of delinquent youth. They exhibit a brand of delinquency unlike, for example, the North American in political background, duration, ability to challenge the police, establishment of community courts and other respects. Many of these youth can be reached by caring social workers or pastors. Many have been reached by the PMI, and the PMI’s efforts have brought many police (and others) to respect the distinction in policing methods, to accept that is that community violence should not be treated the same as hard criminality.
At the same time, application of the distinction is not easy, given the uniqueness of every community. In addition, as a result of the failure of the state to take decisive developmental action in the inner city, some of those involved in the community violence have been undergoing a process of criminalization. This may be the result of a difference among the delinquents between a hard core of regulars known as “gunmen” and those drawn into conflicts on an ad hoc basis known as “shottas”. The former are the ones probably being criminalised by prolonged economic hardship and other factors. Whatever the causal factors, the fact of such criminalizing makes the application of the basic delinquent/criminal distinction even more difficult.
2. Sustainability, which requires beyond mediation developmental measures in a wide range of areas –sport, skills training, employment, economic projects, parenting, cultural activities, and community organization/decision-making. Each of these areas has its specific contribution to make to human development. In Jamaica the cultural sphere of music, song and dance, along with sport, has had special relevance in the work of the PMI. The success of a non-governmental organization (NGO) known as S-Corner Clinic in a depressed section of Kingston supports this point. The efforts of this Clinic over 15 years in health, sanitation, education and own-account projects are what have given credibility to its peacemaking and drawn combatants into a community-building mode. Clearly such efforts require persistence over a period of time: conditions and attitudes built up over generations cannot be changed overnight.
3. Respect for lower-income community people and those involved in conflict as essential for winning their attention and acceptance. This is critical given that the
social exclusion imposed on inner city people is interpreted as disrespect, which indeed it is, a profound disregard for and demeaning of their human reality. The
mere show of interest by a state-appointed group from the “outside world” (its chairman bishop in particular, known from his television appearances), coupled
with its genuine commitment to help to the extent that modest means allow, was enough to bring cooperation. S-Corner achieved similar results by incorporating
well-known stage-show artistes in its team of mediators.
4. In a developing country with a weak (though strengthening civil society), in order to spur politicians to act against their short-term interests, the probable need to
move beyond dialogue to actions of protest extending to civil disobedience. The politicos will come to meetings. They will talk the talk endlessly. The problem
has been to get them to take remedial action, to give priority to social need (rather than, e.g., to improving their offices, or to grand highway or airport projects).
Protest in the form of road blocks by citizens angered by a police killing, or by some other form of perceived injustice (e.g. neglected roads or water supply), has been a regular feature of Jamaican life over the past decade. In 1999, over a fuel price increase, it shut down the country for three days; and obviously, such an unplanned and spontaneous outburst can happen again. It is possible also to view the community component of the homicide rate as a kind of angry protest. For years inner city leaders and observers have been predicting that the guns would be turned against the up-town politicians and people, if nothing was done about their conditions. Increasingly, indeed, are there episodes of gunmen shooting at the police and one recently at a politician’s car.
On the other hand, by no means are Jamaican inner city people articulating the need for road-block, civil-disobedience protests over homicides in their communities. Nor does it enter into any of the mediation efforts of the PMI. I am raising the point of civil protest neither to counsel in favour of usage –though in some situations this might well be appropriately encouraged –nor to make predictions but only to argue the inadequacy of dialogue, in Third World contexts, to bring about the meaningful change which alone can prevent the current violence from continuing.
While integration is absolutely essential for any true or lasting peace, the inescapable reality of racial and class divisions would seem to require from time to time the pressure provided by confrontation for some of their worse effects to be removed. Viewed from the side of the underdog, confrontation without violence, though challenging and difficult, is entirely possible, as Martin Luther King, civil rights marchers and many others have demonstrated. It is the oppressing class or race that has at its disposal, and readily turns to, the use of violence.