Alphonse Capone is one of the most infamous names in American criminal history.

Al Capone, as he was more popularly known, ran a crime syndicate during the 1920s and 30s, raking in millions of dollars, and no matter what the authorities did, they could not get him on anything. To this day, even though the common belief is that he was responsible for the St Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, no one knows for sure.

Tax evasion charges

It didn't help that many of the policemen in Chicago back then were probably on his payroll so there was no real enthusiasm to investigate the case. Still, the United States authorities managed to hold him, try him and imprison him. How did they do it? They indicted him on tax evasion charges.

Fast forward 70 years to this little island of ours and what we see is the existence a number of 'Al Capones', so-called dons, who live in lavish homes and drive expensive vehicles and yet they are not called upon to explain their lifestyles.

Money extorted

To me nothing hurts more than seeing people living in the lap of luxury bought by money extorted from hard-working people, both rich and poor.

So, if Government is really willing to solve the crime problem we now face, in addition to the amendments and Acts now before Parliament that for the most part call for draconian measures that go way beyond the mere violation of our civil liberties, why don't they look at amending and simplifying some - make that all of our tax laws, and go after the criminal lords' bank accounts?

Significant jail terms

Those laws should include significant jail terms of up to 25 years and the seizure of assets of an equivalent value to the amount of taxes owed which should amount to everything these criminals own since they pay no taxes at all.

That money would be beneficial to the national coffers and could be used to provide much needed equipment for the police, com-pensation for the families of those who fell in the line of duty and the general repair and maintenance of police stations and such.

The way I see it, if you take away the money from these organised gangs, you literally take away their life blood and it then gets much easier to nab the foot 'soldiers' who will end up running around like headless chickens because they will have no direction and most are not very bright.

Cleared of the riff-raff

Crime would go up for a little bit but then it would fall dramatically as the streets are cleared of the riff-raff.

And to hell with those among the so-called 'law-abiding', who would oppose such amendments to the tax laws. If they fear those laws will be eventually turned against them, if they pay their taxes they have nothing to worry about.

The way I see it, we will never be able to bring these crime lords down because nobody is going to testify against them and it is very likely that they have on their payrolls senior policemen who can make critical files and evidence vanish into thin air so Government has to directly go after them.

Of course, we know that there are people in government who are corrupt but I am sure we can still find enough people who are honest enough to get the job done.

Special squads

This has to be a better way than what are trying to do now. I really don't know how many more special squads we can create before we realise that they really don't do that much.

I will admit that the Kingfish approach is refreshing and has been relatively successful but for the most part they're still not taking down the major players in the criminal underworld.

In many ways it's like picking sour oranges off a tree hoping that no more will grow when what you really need to be doing is uprooting the tree. The reality is that as long as the tree remains rooted in the soil, it will forever produce sour oranges.

And none of us like sour oranges. Personally, they set my teeth on edge.