The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Some time ago, Justice Anita Allen informed the nation that the Court of Appeal had not yet defined what was meant by the “worst of the worst and the rarest of the rare”. There were remarks that suggested that there was a problem in attempting to conceptualise what this meant for the “learned men” who were charged with this responsibility.

I find this amusing as this phrase has been tossed around in a manner that suggested that those who used it so freely, knew what they were talking about.

At one end, we have a revolving door for criminals and at the other end we have persons charged with making decisions who are clueless in their ability to define an issue that is critical to the mandate they have been given.

So how are we to define the worst of the worst and the rarest of the rare? Do we need to see a kind of criminality where murder and mayhem rise to a level that is intolerable? Or should we look at a few of those gruesome movies and try to assemble a template or chart with check-points that can be noted?

The public is paying in many ways when you look at what is being allowed. I get the impression that those with the ultimate and final responsibility in the judicial system are not really serious about their duties.

Their decisions up to now, come across as an exercise in “coddling” as the public continues to experience the down side or consequences of an ineffectual judicial system, where criminals benefit and public suffering is on the increase.

Perhaps we should stop taking our cues from London, which allows those charged with judicial responsibility to use what is happening “across the pond” as an excuse for not making the hard choices. We are descending into another kind of slavery in the modern Bahamas; it is almost as if the slave masters of old have reached across the centuries and enslaved free men in a kind of convenient thinking that is creating a prison across the entire Caribbean. Perhaps we are not meant to be “free” and those who should have sense to define what is needed seem more content with keeping the status quo in check. 

This is going to take a while.

There has to be a lot more pain before we come to our senses on this issue, but in the meantime I would like to recommend a movie for viewing that would help with that checklist I referred to, “No Country for Old Men”.

EDWARD HUTCHESON

Nassau,

March 13, 2014.