Improving criminal justice system

Where are the “experts” who have ostensibly benefited, generously so (in many instances, from State-funded training and paid leave at the expense of manpower shortage), to strengthen the institutional capacity of criminal justice and its main branches of law enforcement, adjudication and corrections/ rehabilitation? For all of these investments into our human capital, we seem to be woefully failing in managing our increasingly morphing crimescape.

Abysmal prevention, detection, apprehension and solve rates, little trust and respect in the relationship between police and public, a lawyers’ millionaires club, thriving jailhouse entrepreneurship enabled by a few crooked and certainly reckless prison officers working in tandem with innovative inmates have succeeded in making recidivism more attractive than rehabilitation.

“Justice on Time” is merely a catchy-sounding tagline for a million- dollar transportation niche because the real wheels of justice are still, in large part, being cranked by the random output of a computer (program) whose algorithm has long been cracked. Or is it hacked? This coupled with the seemingly concerted attempts at erosion of the lines that are supposed to separate politics and the Judiciary where some operatives seem more motivated about circumventing, beating or dismantling “the system” than about the long-term self-destructive impact their actions have on national progress. One must wonder: is it all part of a strategy of calculated chaos? New fleets of SUVs, state-of-theart structures and other tools of trade will inefficiently and ineffectively serve the operational tier of the criminal justice management pyramid without strategies and tactics that are, among other things, current, coherent, integrated and strategically applicable to a big(ger) mission that is competently led for national good.

Skills and resources in the right placement and combination require will in the equation if meaningful, forward progress and success are our goals.

DEBRA J JOHNSON via email