What is it that $5.1705 billion, already allocated this fiscal year to the Ministry of National Security, can't do that an extra over quarter-billion dollars ($289 million) will accomplish, other than heaping a greater financial burden on citizens? The solution to curb crime can't be to throw money at the problem.

Do citizens want to spend hundreds of millions more on ideas that billions already have not been able to fix? Are 5,000 new, full-time State watchmen the cure for crime? Jack's special reserve police plan is nothing more than make-work jobs for people who didn't bother to treat with the problem of crime, though they freely volunteered their services to the task as re-

serve officers. They will no doubt

prove a good expense producer.

Very shortly, months or years from now, these 5,000 pseudo-police officers are going to start clamouring about how hard they work, how patriotically, fearlessly and valiantly they give their labour to the State and how little they get paid in return.

The unions will enter the picture as defenders of the working class. They will vow to fight to the bitter end for better wages and work conditions for the 5,000 holding the make-work policing positions. They will vow to fight for more police vehicles and security safes for each police officer to store their personal cache of weapons and their State-issued guns and bullets at home.

Taxpayers will learn that for their safety, more money will be allocated to increase the pay of all arms of national security. Crime will still be, for without crime, how can shortly the largest allocation of the budget justifiably stay with National Security? Without crime, how can 5,000 new pay cheques per month, for distribution to make-work police officers, come to be affixed to the State's recurrent budget?

Normally, when solutions are successful at returning a system to equilibrium, less effort and resources are pumped into running the system. With National Security, every announcement of success over crime is followed by insistence for more money and resources to buttress the success, with a reinvented high-cost strategy. If crime does indeed go into sharp decline, how will the country silently dispense with its inflated police force? Does the private sector have need of 5,000 extra watchmen?

B Joseph

via e-mail