IT has become fashionable these days for Government ministers with security responsibilities and top police officials in speeches, media releases, interviews and social media posts to now speak of ‘protecting’ or ensuring the ‘right to safety and security’ or the ‘safety and security of our citizens’.

Why fashionable? Because until the discussion on the savagery of the ‘runaway’ murderous criminality has begun to be framed in the context of the right of all citizens to safety and security and the duty of the State to give a guarantee to that right, as with all other fundamental rights, the discussion was being framed by officialdom as a ‘law and order’ issue, a public health emergency, etc.

Every citizen-by our Constitution, our society’s highest law-is to be guaranteed certain fundamental rights. Safety and security, like health, are uppermost, since without life, we can enjoy no other right. Crime and violent crime are now rampant. The perpetrators are increasingly brazen and acting with impunity, no longer even bothering to hide their faces; some daring to do crimes with no cover of darkness sought.

The news conferences and photo ops following every new outrage; the ‘gun talk’ and threats via traditional and social media by the top cop or her senior executive and police spokespersons-‘ We are coming for you’ or ‘Don’t come back in this area’-have all become too commonplace. Like the brazen acts of savagery, they’re received with little or no reaction by a population numbed by the regularity of crime and the realisation that nowhere is safe.

‘Keep safe’ has now become the customary parting words at the end of every social encounter by beleaguered citizens who see no light at the end of the tunnel but can only contemplate our descent into anarchy.

At his news conference on Monday, on his return from his assignments abroad, the prime minister was forced to address the ‘issue’ of crime and, in particular, the news report of some police having brokered a peace treaty among named gang leaders in the capital city.

Gang activity is criminality, he retorted. We have the anti-gang laws, he said.

Well, we have laws against murder, shooting with intent, illegal possession of weapons including high-powered automatic guns, illegal drugs, trafficking in persons, extortion and home invasions. Our statute books are well populated with criminal statutes defining a myriad of offences. We even have, of late, wealth legislation. Yet, for all this law, there is no order.

The prime minister repeated that the principal agency for fighting crime and ensuring those who break all those laws are ‘brought to account’ is the police (up to recently, it was also fashionable to speak of some nebulous ‘law enforcement’).

So, if we have so many laws, if we have a Police Service as the primary crime-fighting force, why are we still not having our right to safety and security guaranteed?

Well, the PM reassured us that we are buying more police vehicles to carry police whose ranks are to be increased by 1,000 in 2024; and soldiers, who we have called out for four months as part of ‘providing all the support’ that it is the Government’s duty to do.

But what about the efficiency and effectiveness of the police’s (and other related security apparatuses’) work in the fight against ‘runaway’ crime?

In the world of measurement of performance of either individuals or organisations, modern performance management uses several tools to quantify and analyse efficiency and effectiveness. An important standard of performance measurement is to begin with identifying Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and setting targets.

In measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of the performance of the police in combating crime, detection and conviction rates are important KPIs. How many of the reported offences are detected (ie, arrests and charges made and laid)? Of the crimes detected, how many of them end in convictions in the criminal justice system?

The police have repeatedly told us policing is intelligence-driven. They almost daily tell us of crimes and detection ‘compared to the same period last year’, and so on.

The police keep or are required to keep the numbers daily. There is even a branch responsible for compiling the statistics. The figures are further reported in the statistics presented by the Central Statistical Office, providing us with a panoramic view of the crime and detection rates from 1975 to present.

Clyde Weatherhead