If you consider that, in a free society, a capitalistic society, the two being synonymous, a government’s role is to:
1) Protect the people’s right to pursue happiness (but not to provide that happiness)
2) Protect people’s right to trade (but not to interfere with or stifle)
3) Provide the defense of the realm on behalf of those people against those from other realms who would abrogate these rights by force (or to abrogate those individual rights themselves)
And if you accept that the people must be taxed to provide for these basic rights, then at this point we should acknowledge that successive governments have failed:
Crime is rampant;
Justice is absent;
Other jurisdictions are putting “trade” agreements before us to force compliance with their own philosophies of not just trade but of governance.
I find it interesting that, public servants are calling for “partnerships” in the fight against crime, and are seeking the public and private sectors “help” in tackling our most pressing social problem.
Crime of course does indeed impinge upon our lives including for far too many, having their lives taken. Some blunt questions about the state of affairs in our country must be asked, not to question the causes, but to recognize the responsibilities where they exist. Both assigned and intrinsic.
The Royal Bahamas Police force is the enforcing arm of the law, with the objective of the law being the maintenance of peace in society. For those who disregard the law, or breach it in any regard, the law of the land is there to contend with them.
A police officer can intervene himself if he sees the law being broken or he has proof or is given information that the law has been broken.
In the former, immediate action can be taken by the peace officer, with respect of issuing tickets (i.e. traffic offence) or taking suspects into custody, to be arraigned before a Magistrate ( i.e. civil disobedience or theft) or Supreme Court justice (i.e. murder).
In the latter, he must go before a Magistrate, present his evidence in order to obtain a warrant to arrest or investigate.
If the officer did not witness the crime himself, how is he to know a crime has been committed? This is where the public comes in.
The victim of crime, can report the wrong perpetrated against themselves, or witnesses to the crime can report what they have witnessed, and based upon information given, investigation can be commenced.
Being that most crime involves the use of force against another, be it breach of contract, theft, assault, robbery, murder, traffic accidents, the job of a police officer is one of inquiry, with the purpose of seeing the law applied to those who breach it.
Police officers do not have the right to arbitrarily get into your cool aid or harass an individual, unless you have spilled it or are acting against the law, to use a local euphemism.
Every law of the Bahamas is equally important, with the penalties having been developed to provide suitable punishment for the severity of the crime committed.
So, for example, to be caught driving an unlicensed car on the public roads, is breaking the law, as much as committing murder is breaking the law. The crimes are different, and the punishments, if found guilty, are suitably severe. There is no “almost in breach of” or “not quite breaking” the law.
These laws that have existed for decades, having been developed over the course of centuries have worked well in the past but seem to not work today. Yet the laws have not changed, nor have the rules governing the police duties and responsibilities or even the rules of the courts.
So what has changed? Something must have, so let us identify what has changed, and find the causes.
The Citizen.
That’s right, the average citizen has little understanding of the written law, or moral law for that matter. So it follows that if one does not even know the rules, how can one play or live by them? Any Judge will tell you, “ignorance of the law is no excuse” and usually just before he hands down your sentence, and has finished hearing all of your justifications and excuses for doing whatever you did to break the law.
The responsibility to know the law is the intrinsic responsibility of every man and woman, and the responsibility is theirs to apprise their children of the law of the land, and Moral law also, but I’ll leave that alone for now.
Civil Servants and police officers and even judges are no exception either, and a significant number of them are also ignorant of the law, which they must also live by, and also enforce. How is one to enforce the law, if one does not know it? Impossible.
In fact, most law enforcement officials do not even know their own “rules of engagement” further confusing the issue. The word for those who do not know either is negligent.
Political Interference.
Those who we have elected to serve our interests, the guardians of our laws and constitution, are no exception, and have demonstrated an even greater propensity to be ignorant of, and break the law. To add further injury they also interfere in the administration of justice, specifically through the Attorney Generals office.
Ours is a small country, where a great percentage of the population is known to each other, which has created a system of “governance by favor” which has obliterated governance by rule of law. Favor is gained and utilized by means of supplication and by means of guilt, and through the means of force. We the people have elevated our so called leaders to a state of being “above the law” which they are all too ready to exercise and do all too often.
If we accept the premise, to quote Ayn Rand that:
A politician or public servant may do only that prescribed by law, A private citizen can do anything but that which is prohibited by law,
Then we must ask how we have arrived at this situation where they, the politicians and civil servants seem to do anything they wish, including breaking and mis-applying the law, and the private citizen can do only that which they allow?
And it follows that, if we observe our politicians and keepers of the rule of law, ignoring the law, why then should we, the members of the ordinary public, observe or be guided by it?
It would be relatively safe for us to breach the law, as they do, and if caught out, we appeal to them to judge us, the guilty, by their standards and not to judge us by the written law. And usually they acquiesce.
Therefore, we no longer possess any standards, and anarchy follows, not in one fell swoop, but in an ever accelerating progression towards a feudalistic, self immolating state of being, which is happening before our very undiscerning eyes.
A final word on the subject of crime is this:
“Society”, an oft used word should not be used by anyone addressing crime, as a “society” is simply a collection of people living as a group, following some basic infrastructure of self governance. “Society” does not commit crime, People do. Not everyone in society is committing crime, or are criminals. A large percentage of our society no doubt are breaking the laws of the Bahamas, but it is these who must be prosecuted, for breach, large or small, without fear or favor, for peace to reign over this land, as it once did.
We, the public, must compel the police force, that branch of public servant, to do that, without fear or favor, which they are charged with doing by the constitution of the Bahamas. Our elected officials must stand clear, and let them do their job, the job they are paid to do by a public who funds them, and who should support them by taking our own obligations seriously. Our judiciary must follow the rules of engagement, and apply the law as written, without regard of political will or coercion, or by degraded standards.
One is either part of the solution, or a part of the problem. In a situation or with a subject like this, there is no middle ground. If one is going to point fingers, the fingers must be pointed at people.
