A package of nine crime busting bills successfully made their way through the Legislative Assembly on Friday.
Amending bills to the Firearms Bill, the Bail Bill, the Court of Appeal Bill, the Criminal Procedure Code Bill, the Evidence Bill, the Information and Communications Technology Authority Bill, the Penal Code Bill, the Police Bill and the Prisons Bill were all passed.
The legislation covers a wide range of measures including ensuring that people convicted of serious firearms offences are jailed for at least 10 years.
It seeks, among other things, to deal with the use of bullet proof vests by criminals, to outlaw gang membership and to provide for longer periods of detention of suspects.
It also, in the case of specified serious crime, increases the period of mandatory incarceration before a prisoner can be released, to five ninths of the sentence.
Indeed, that part nearly proved to be a stumbling block at the committee stage when Opposition Leader McKeeva Bush indicated he felt that the five ninths period might be over generous to the criminal and should be increased.
But the legislation went ahead after Leader of Government Business Kurt Tibbetts told the House that a crime study would shortly be completed.
He gave a commitment that they could then all get together and go through the issue and could bring a further amendment if necessary.
Introducing the legislation to the House on Thursday, Attorney General Sam Bulgin said that, given what had happened recently, it was felt that a more robust approach should be taken in respect of penalties.
Society was coming under severe pressure from a few selfish people, he told the House.
The country’s resolve was being tested and its tolerance level was under pressure, he said
Large sums of money had been given to the law agencies and the Legislative Assembly was dealing with a raft, a comprehensive package, of legislation to buttress the effort, he added.
Minister Alden McLaughlin said the country found itself in a dismal and worrying situation.
There was a worrying trend in the growth of violent crime and the situation was getting worse all the time, with those committing crimes getting bolder.
Threats had been made which were believed to amount to seeking to intimidate the authority of the government and the judicial system, Mr. McLaughlin told the House.
The government wanted to take the fight to the criminals in society, he said.
Immigration procedures had to be strengthened and there had to be more careful scrutiny of those who came here.
One of the biggest contributors to the growing problem was the policy decision taken after Hurricane Ivan to relax immigration regulations and to allow all and sundry to come here without careful scrutiny, he said.
That relaxation of the regulations was a major contributory factor in the growth of crime and they were going to do something about that also, he added.
A new police commissioner and other specialists were on the way here.
If the country could not get a handle on crime, everything else would be for nought and the tourism and financial industries would be negatively impacted, he said.
MLA Lucille Seymour said she felt that parenting deficiencies had led to some young people becoming criminals.
Now it had been decided that ‘enough is enough’ and it was going to be made sure that the legislation was such that anyone committing the crimes was in for a shock.
The country had to made safe not only for the tourist but also for the people living here, she said.
Opposition Leader McKeeva Bush said no one needed to turn to a life of crime in Cayman. There was something for everyone to do here, an honest living, if they wanted it.
He said that checks were made on people coming here after Hurricane Ivan but they had had to get things moving quickly at the time.
When, he wondered, were people going to stop blaming Jamaicans, Hondurans and others for problems.
People always wanted to blame someone else and Cayman did have its own criminals, he told the House.
He said he believed in capital punishment and added that a life sentence did not mean life any more.
He wanted to see some crimes carry a mandatory life sentence with hard labour.
The mollycoddling of criminals had not benefited the country, he said.
He supported a curfew for children under the age of 17 and suggested bringing in a paramilitary group to help deal with crime.
Minister Arden McLean said the criminals seemed to have more bullet proof vests that the police and were using them in the commission of serious crimes.
Over the last few months there had been an increase in serious crimes against the individual by a handful of little punks.
It had been allowed to escalate and the time had come for it to be stopped.
The police force was the country’s only and last line of defence. The police had to be supported and needed every officer to be proficient in the use of firearms, he said.
There should be more patrols of the coast lines and there was a lack of good parenting, he told the House.
MLA Osbourne Bodden said they had to make sure that criminals knew there were consequences to their actions.
The country could not afford to lose its reputation of having a low crime rate.
There was a problem with a lack of good parenting and some young men wanted what they saw others had got and started on a life of crime.
There was a need to encourage technical studies and he urged parents to monitor what young people were doing.
MLA Alfonso Wright said there was no easy solution to the problem and it required a community effort to deal with it.
Family members sometimes protected criminals and many young men were falling by the wayside because they could not be reached academically, he said.
Something needed to be done about a witness protection programme and he felt that people in prison should not be able to use cell phones to contact people on the outside.
Prisoners had to be treated like prisoners, he told the House.
Minister Charles Clifford said boats that were bringing in drugs were also bringing in firearms and he said that funding would go to increased border protection.
Just providing the resources was not alone going to do the trick. They also had to deal with things like vocational and technical training and with rehabilitation, he said.
The new police commissioner appeared to be a very capable officer but without the cooperation of the public and their information he would be ineffective.
The country needed to understand that the responsibility for dealing with the problem lay with the community at large as well, he said.
MLA Rolston Anglin said foreign culture had had negative influences here.
Increasing penalties, without addressing other issues, was not going to solve the problem, he said.
The country had lost the ultimate threat of the death penalty and a lot of people were also saying that spanking was wrong.
But most Caymanians had been raised on the basis that if they did something bad, something bad was going to happen to them, he said.
The family unit was under attack and there was a need to support the national parenting initiative and have zero tolerance on crime, he told the House.
Sister Islands MLA Moses Kirkconnell said there was much work to be done to keep those islands relatively crime free.
They had to strengthen the protection of the coast line.
When a special operation was needed there they had to ask for help from Grand Cayman and that was not always available.
There was a need to invest in prevention and the Sister Islands needed to be included, he said.
MLA Cline Glidden said that often a child’s parents were both working and teachers had now been stopped from disciplining.
If there was no discipline at home or at school it was obvious that the child would grow up without any discipline.
There was also the issue of truancy to be considered, he told the House.
Minister Anthony Eden said the country was too soft on crime and was pussyfooting with criminals.
The public had to take a stand and parents needed to take responsibility for raising children in the right manner.
He was also asking for more support for the National Drug Council.
The people had to take these islands back from the criminal element and that could only be done if everyone worked together, he said.
Chief Secretary George McCarthy said the country should not be timid when it came to dealing with crime but also had to look at prevention, punishment and rehabilitation.
People had to be brought back into society if possible and it was up to all to work together and bring about rehabilitation.
Major expenditure would have to be considered for Northward Prison in the future. People could be locked away but it was very costly, he said.
MLA Captain Eugene Ebanks told the House that he was giving his support to all the bills being considered.
He said he felt that penalties for the crimes were too lenient.
Financial Secretary Kenneth Jefferson said they were attempting to make a difficult situation a little better with these bills.
He said he was saddened they were not able to have the death penalty.
Hardened criminals understood tough language and action, he told the House.
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