We Support The Non-bailability Of Armed Robbery

NO CRIME IN Liberia is currently so pervasive and alarming and is claiming more casualties than armed robbery. This heinous pandemic preying nearly every Liberian and community has taken the most villainous posture in recent weeks. It has become a multifaceted crime: It is robbery. It is murder. It is rape. It is burglary. And you name it. In fact, from testimonies of perpetrators, the crime is also going vindictive, as social rivals are using the pandemic as a smokescreen via which to settle scores against each other. It would not be a surprise in days ahead when testimonies begin to come out that politicians are also using the crime to strike their real or imagined rivals.

UNDER PRESENT SOCIAL, economic and judicial circumstances, the crime and its perpetrators have found fertile ground from which it not only anchors its strength and unprecedented notoriety, but also attracts more doers as well as victims. Most ordinary Liberians, the prime victims of armed robbery, are poor and therefore cannot afford the luxury of private security guards, unlike counterparts in the mainstream of a government. This gives the armed robbers more latitude to have a jamboree over the persons and properties of the people, since government which took oath to defend and protect the people, either out of nonchalance or lack of means or both, is left to merely lament the growing waves of the crime. Then there is the judicial system whose canons and modus operandi are incommensurately weak, impotent or obsolete to effectively pin down and reverse the galloping specter of armed robbery in the county.

LIBERIA, AS THE folksong singer says, was not like this. This country was largely a land of armless people. The days when vehicles and other items of value were left on the highway without watchmen or other forms of protection and remained whole until the owners returned are no more. Pickpockets and “money doublers” who were the principal robbers of the past have given way to bands of bloodthirsty militias, hardcore murderers and rapists. Every rogue or burglar now carries guns, clubs, machetes and the villainess of rebels; these harmful instruments which they carry not for the sake of carrying, but which they unleash with the heart and ferocity of a demon. Gradually, the criminals are triumphing over the powers of the state. They strike whenever and wherever they deem fit, without any resistance and with utmost precision of their targets. And strangely, the criminals are boasting, speaking freely and loudly, about their misdeeds and the bedlams they are causing for the society. They are taunting their helpless victims, who have no option but to be recoil in their grief and anguish.

THERE IS ONE tramp card that fundamentally patronizes armed robbers and their consolation in criminality: bail, or what we call the bailability of the crime. When the armed robbers had broken into homes, chopped or murdered the occupants, raped females therein and made away with bundles of the occupants' valuable properties, if grabbed, charged and imprisoned, our laws provide that the crime is not sufficient to keep the “accused” behind bars until the termination of guilt or acquittal. Notwithstanding the pregnancy of the armed robbery charge with murder or attempted murder, burglary, rape, etc, a defense lawyer comes over and files a bond; and there you have the villain back in the community and often back in action.

WHILE WE AGREE that the current specter of armed robbery in Liberia is rooted in other social and economic factors, bailing and bonding, constitute the most prominent cause. It makes the crime attractive to the already crime-prone elements and cyclical and incurable. It would therefore be an understatement to say squashing bail from the statute for armed robbery is one of the most effective ways to nib the pandemic and give Liberians and others within our borders the security and peace they justly deserve. And this is why we fervently and unreservedly support the unbailability of armed robbery.