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Denying INDECOM prosecutorial powers will set Jamaica back, says JFJ

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Rodje Malcolm
 
Human rights group Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) says the decision to deny the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) prosecutorial powers will set back the country.
 
Justice Minister Delroy Chuck announced the government's decision not to grant the commission prosecutorial powers while opening debate on amendments to the INDECOM Act in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.
 
Executive Director of JFJ, Rodje Malcolm, says the decision will reduce the effectiveness of INDECOM in holding police personnel accountable.
 
"The taking away of any ability to act on those investigations, even if not to prosecute, but just to initiate criminal proceedings just like the police can, makes INDECOM really just an investigatory body at this point, and doesn't really address the issue that INDECOM was established to solve. So we're gonna take a few steps back in terms of history here and the country will have to figure what it does now that the teeth effectively have been taken out of any police oversight that we have here," Mr. Malcolm asserted Wednesday on Radio Jamaica's Beyond the Headlines.  
 
He said JFJ had hoped INDECOM would have at least been given the power to lay charges, in a similar way to investigative bodies such as the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA).
 
Mr. Malcolm said Jamaica could end up with no independent oversight of the police.
 
"Right now INDECOM actually wouldn't qualify as an independent oversight body based on how they now have to be operating... The issue was never if people could find out that police were abusing people, the issue was always how do they get held accountable and that missing piece is what, in all the fluff that politicians are talking about, is what we need to cut through and ask the question, 'With the result of this, who will actually hold those criminal and rogue members of the security forces...accountable?'"
 


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