Criminals are always  ahead  of us, says DPP

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Jane Frances Abodo, has said criminals are becoming smarter.
Justice Abodo explained that crime has evolved a lot due to technology and that as prosecutors, they usually find themselves lagging behind while dealing with sophisticated criminals.

“The theme speaks to the emerging crimes, they usually say we are always a step behind the criminals, all of us and when I say all of us, I mean even the legislature, and we are always two or three steps behind.  The criminals are always so many steps ahead of us because something happens then it’s legislated,” DPP Abodo said last week during a media briefing ahead of this week’s 7th annual Joan Kagezi Memorial Lecture.

“The criminals are so fast, they are ahead of us, they read the headlines [of newspapers] like landslides in Bududa, they have already planned how they can get something out of this; famine in Karamoja, they exactly know what government is going to do and plan for it. So I think it is high time that we as prosecutors focus on upping our game. We know that 2026 is here, why don’t we focus on the common crimes that come up at such a time and prepare such that when they come up, they don’t shock us,” she added.

This year’s prosecutors’ symposium is running under the theme “Strengthening the capacity for the prosecution to counter organised and emerging crimes.”
The Joan Kagezi Memorial Lecture is slated for Thursday this week with President Museveni expected to be the chief guest.
Since 2016, the office of the DPP has been holding annual memorial lectures in recognition of Kagezi’s contribution to the fight against organised crime in the country.
Kagezi, then Assistant DPP, was gunned down in Kiwatule, a Kampala suburb, on March 30, 2015, by unknown assailants riding on a motorcycle as she returned home. 

She had just made a stopover at a fruit stall when the killers struck. At the time of the murder, Kagezi was prosecuting a high-profile case of terrorism that involved suspects in the 2010 Kampala twin bombing. 
The majority of the suspects in the bombing case have since been convicted by Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo, now the Chief Justice.
This year’s memorial lecture will come after the prosecutor’s symposium slated for today until Wednesday.

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