Senator backs 15-year mandatory minimum, warns against weakening Firearms Act

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Government Senator Abka Fitz-Henley says any perceived or substantive effort to diminish the strength of the Firearms (Prohibition, Restriction and Regulation) Act, which was approved in 2022, should be strongly resisted. Fitz-Henley says a removal of the mandatory minimum penalty of 15 years, which is being advocated for by some groups, would represent a weakening of the legislation. Fitz-Henley, who is state minister in the Office of the Prime Minister, is also rejecting as inaccurate a suggestion by some stakeholders that the empirical evidence does not indicate a corresponding reduction in the number of gun-related offences or cases brought before the Gun Court since the passage of the Act in 2022.

On the contrary, he says, there has been a reduction in the number of new serious gun-related cases since the passage of the Act. Fitz-Henley says aspects of an impact analysis of the amended Firearms Act in Jamaica and new cases presented to the Gun Court, which took into consideration official judicial statistics, confirm that, following the enactment of the Firearms Act in November 2022, new gun-related cases entering the formal justice system have noticeably decreased. The government senator stated, “When new case filings within the High Court Division of the Gun Court are used as the definitive institutional proxy for serious firearm offences, the statistical record provided by the Court Administration Division (CAD) provides a direct answer to the core inquiry: whether the legislative amendment coincides with a distinct contraction in gun crime incidence placed before the court.

There have been approximately double-digit declines.” Fitz-Henley says data from the CAD reveal that, when the immediate pre-legislation benchmark of 2021, when there were 403 new cases brought before the Gun Court, is compared to the first post-amendment calendar year in 2024, when there were 363 filings in gun cases, the Court registered an initial intake reduction of approximately 10 percent. The senator notes that this confirms a nearly double-digit decline in the number of people prosecuted and brought before the Gun Court following the passage of mandatory minimum penalties of 15 years in relation to particular gun offences. He said the data provided by the CAD also confirm double-digit medium-term systemic contraction, or declines in…