By Carl Greaux
In ST. Kitts-Nevis the conservative generally agrees with the liberal that the legal code is a true representation of society's morals and values but differs in the perception of the offender. The offender is seen as an evil person who freely chooses actions and must be held accountable for them, not as a person influenced by forces beyond his or her control. The criminal is considered different from the innocent populace; criminals are evil and not worthy of the same protections of the law afforded the rest of us.
Conservatives see police as enforcers of society's moral; any attempts to weaken that role should be resisted. Court restrictions on the police powers or actions should be limited since criminals must be caught and punished in whatever way is most effective. Police are seen as becoming ‘soft’ or bureaucratized in recent years by the government. There may be a wistful element in the popularity of such fictional characters as ‘Dirty Harry’, who by passes due process to get criminals off the street.
In the conservative perspective, courts are the worst threat to society because they allow criminals to go free and cost the public money in increasing the national debt by forcing the country to provide expensive programs and luxuries for prisoners. Only the most punitively oriented judge and magistrate receive the conservative's approval; the majority of magistrates are seen as do-gooders who do not give prisoners the sentences they deserve. Probation which was being considered by a former Minister of Government would have been a slap on the wrist that only teaches the criminal that he or she can commit crime and receive no punishment as a consequence. If a criminal has served a prison sentence and then commits a crime on parole, the sentence should be twice as long because he or she didn’t learn the first time. In this view, the death penalty is used far too seldom here in St. Kitts-Nevis and, even when it is given, judges are much too likely to accept appeals. Criminals are believed to have too much rights and victims none.
According to the conservative perspective, too many correctional programs at Her Majesty Prison coddle criminals rather than give them what they deserve. All correctional programs, from education to group therapy, teach inmates that they will be rewarded and excused for criminal behavior. According to the conservatives, we should go back to the old ways of punishing with the prison's cart and cleaning up of the cemetery; that is actually doing hard labor when sentence to such. In those days, criminals knew they were being punished and they learned from it.
Conservative ethics would condemn those criminal justice practitioners who use their powers of discretion too freely. In this view, it’s unethical to plea bargain or to let criminals go because of some error in the proceedings. It is seen as unethical for police to ignore wrongdoing by informants and for criminal justice practitioners to give special privileges to rich or powerful criminals. Whenever the system is less than objective in meeting out punishment, as in the case of disparate sentencing (based on offenders’ characteristics), the conservatives concern for ethics is aroused. It is seen as unethical. For example, in Nevis, if two defendants committed the same offence and one is a Nevisian and the other a Kittitian, the latter normally gets a harsher prison sentence.
Herbert Parker in 1978 conducted a study which he described as a “crime control model” that stresses containment of criminal behavior in the most rapid and efficient way possible. This concept can also be used in our Criminal Justice System to represent the conservative’s interest. The objectives of this crime control model are, first, to detect, apprehend, convict and incarcerate offenders; second, to deter potential law breakers; and third, to create an orderly and stable society for St. Kitts-Nevis. So, in the administration of justice, let us look at all perspectives including the conservatives.
