Stalag in Kingston

The crime rate in Jamaica had skyrocketed. Armed gangs roamed the streets of Kingston, filling the night with the sound of echoing gunfire. Reported shootings had risen 1,500% in ten years, and it seemed that crime was vying with tourism as Jamaica's No. 1 industry. Now all that has changed under a tough --some say unconstitutional--nationwide antigun campaign.

No Bail. Prime Minister Michael Manley and Jamaica's Parliament finally had enough last March after four prominent businessmen were shot to death. Manley sponsored two new laws aimed at meting out "swift, sure and irreversible punishment" to anyone caught carrying a gun illegally. Under the Suppression of Crime Act, army troops cordon off areas of the 4,411-sq.-mi. island while police conduct intensive house-to-house searches without warrants. Anyone caught with an unlicensed gun or even a single bullet is tried under the provisions of a second law, the Gun Court Act. Under the terms of this draconian legislation, trials of gunmen are held in a special court, proceedings are closed to public and press, and there is no bail while the accused await trial. If convicted, prisoners are sentenced to indefinite detention at a specially designed rehabilitation prison.

Within days of Parliament's action, construction began in the heart of Kingston on a conspicuous compound containing both trial chambers and prison cells. With its guard towers and barbed-wire fences painted bloodred, the "rehabilitation center" looks like a Hollywood back-lot version of a World War II concentration camp. Some Kingston residents even refer to it as "Stalag 17."

The grim-looking stockade is the brainchild of a group of Jamaican psychologists, psychiatrists and sociologists. It is supposed to convey the message that crime does not pay--and apparently it has succeeded. According to police statistics, there were only eight murders by gunfire during the first three months after creation of the gun court, compared with 29 in the previous three months.

But if the gun court's effectiveness is beyond dispute, its constitutionality is not. The Jamaican bar association is calling for repeal or at least amendment of the Gun Court Act. R.N. Henriques, a lawyer who is conducting the appeals of the first four gunmen convicted under the law, argues that Parliament acted unconstitutionally in setting up a special court that operates outside the normal judiciary system.

Manley insists that the only important consideration is the reduction of crime. If the gun court is ruled unconstitutional by Jamaica's court of appeal, the Prime Minister warns he will devise another means of keeping pressure on the gunmen. His position is unequivocal: "There is no place in this society for the gun, now or ever."

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