Mandatory Minimum debate rages on

Senator Abka Fitz Henley,  Minister of State in the Office of the Prime Minister, has declared that the administration strongly supports the 15-year mandatory minimum penalty under the Firearms Act and cautioned against efforts to diminish it.

Senator Fitz-Henley, in a statement on Friday, said any perceived or substantive effort to diminish the strength of the Firearms Act will be strongly resisted.

According to him, the removal of the mandatory minimum penalty, which is being advocated for by some groups, would represent a weakening of the law, and pointed to the fact that there has been a significant reduction in murders since the legislation was passed.

Noting that “there have been suggestions in the public domain that passage of the Act has not coincided with a decline in the number of cases brought before the Gun Court, Senator Fitz-Henley asserted that such suggestions are inaccurate, “based on information made available by the Court Administration Division.”

He said the data supplied “indicate that there have been consecutive years of double-digit decline in the number of new gun-connected cases brought before the Gun Court since passage of the Act in 2022.”

That, he said, “coupled with the almost 55% reduction in murders since 2022, present a compelling case that the draconian nature, including the mandatory minimum provision of the 2022 amendment to the Gun Court Act, should not be significantly disturbed.”

NIA disagrees 

But Dr Gavin Myers, Principal Director of National Integrity Action, has dismissed the assertion of Senator Fitz-Henley that there has been a corresponding reduction in the number of gun-related offences before the Gun Court since the passage of the Firearms Act in 2022.

The senator, he argued, “would know that correlation is not causality, and coincidence cannot be used as either.”

Dr Myers, speaking Friday on Radio Jamaica’s Beyond the Headlines, pointed out that, during the corresponding period, police shootings have also risen. 

“Would Senator Abka Fitz-Henley draw any correlation there? I'm very certain he would not. So it is very important that we do not compare apples to oranges or to stones.”

He argued that the circumstances under which the Firearms Act operates “is causing severe harm to certain people, and just a mere fixing of this can continue the strengthening of the act and also ensure that the adequate and correct approach to sentencing happens.”

“I'd love if we were using something that is based around what actually is fully available evidence rather than cherry-picking one data point,” Dr Myers said.