Prime Minister of Jamaica Andrew Holness is calling for reform of the justice system to fight crime.
Speaking at Regional Symposium: Violence as a Public Health Issue – The CARICOM Challenge, Holness said the Caribbean’s laws and jurisprudence were not designed to treat criminal threats facing the region.
“We must reform our legislation to match the growing sophistication, scale, and nature of the threat. Our jurisprudence must incorporate measures which will support enhanced security operations, which will support the use of emergency powers, and which will support preventative action to disrupt and control the space in which criminals operate before they commit the act of violence,” he said.
Speaking about the illegal flow of guns into the region, Holness said in Jamaica they seized 8,036 illegal firearms over the last decade.
He said criminal organisations and gangs have been able to acquire these illegal guns with ease even though they were not manufactured in the region.
