The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

While the Prime Minister is to be commended for announcing (and hopefully soon enacting) stronger laws and policies to counter the entrenched gang culture that is menacing our society, I fear that government’s efforts will come to little if they do not address the one matter that is at the heart of it all: the extremely light sentences that are handed down by Bahamian courts for the possession of illegal firearms.

It matters not how aggressively the police pursue offenders and enforce the laws when those offenders subsequently go before the courts and are given a year or two sentence, only to end up re-offending (often for murder, the logical sequential step after gun possession).

For reasons known only to them, our courts clearly regard illegal firearm possession as a petty offence, and have in that way helped to normalise it among a troublingly large cross-section of our population.

During the pandemic, a man convicted of stealing food (who claimed to be starving) was sentenced to a lengthier term than almost all sentences handed down in The Bahamas for firearm possession – even for repeat offenders.

And it seems that no circumstance is considered by our courts sufficiently aggravating to put gun offenders away for the kinds of lengthy terms that would be considered normal in comparable jurisdictions.

Last year, a person on bail for murder who admitted to subsequent firearm possession was sentenced to only two years imprisonment. If being on bail for murder is not considered a sufficient circumstance to demand increased circumspection (and hence to aggravate the crime of illegal gun possession) one must seriously question what is.

Damningly for our courts, if you look into the criminal histories of the majority of repeat murderers (including those who seem to continually “beat” the system), you will note that many, if not most of them, have previous (often multiple) convictions for gun possession which they have served only to emerge and reoffend (often in an escalation to murder) within the timeframe that they would still have been locked up in most of our sister jurisdictions.

Appropriately lengthy sentences for firearm possession are particularly effective at bringing down murder rates for two simple reasons.

Firstly, because, since trials for that offence involve neither juries nor civilian witnesses, they tend to carry a very high conviction rate, unlike murder.

And secondly, because the people carrying guns around tend to be the same ones murdering people, lengthy sentences mean that many would simply never “graduate” to murder if they served out their remaining youthful years in prison.

That is why Jamaica and Barbados recently followed the United Kingdom and the Cayman Islands in introducing 10 to 15 year statutory minimum sentences for firearm possession (in Barbados, the second offence carries life imprisonment!).

If we are serious about tackling our atrocious murder rate, it is time we followed suit.

ANDREW ALLEN

Nassau,

January 15, 2024.