Addressing the crime conundrum

I am calling out to both the Prime Minister, Dr Andrew Holness, and Leader of the Opposition Mark Golding. All of us, individuals, groups, and countries, make mistakes, some few and some many.

Jamaica has made its fair share of mistakes and may still be making some. And with all that being said, when mistakes are discovered or identified, the most common follow-up action is, usually, the assignment of blame.

However, the most important thing is to focus on finding, developing, applying, and sustaining the best solutions that will address the consequences of the mistake instead of focusing on the blame.

In my thinking, the greatest mistake Jamaica has made as a nation is the one that led to our current crime situation. We all know how this crime situation came about and the murder rate we now have as a result.

A few statistics for consideration:

– In 1962, Jamaica’s murder rate was 3.9 per 100,000, one of the lowest in the world.

– In 2005, Jamaica’s murder rate was 58 per 100,000, the highest globally.

– In 2024, Jamaica’s murder rate was 49.4 per 100,000, the third-highest globally.

– In 2025, Jamaica’s murder rate was 23.7 per 100,000, the 13th-highest globally.

For the first six months of 2026, Jamaica’s murder rate has dropped by 22.5 per cent, comparing the same period year over year.

If this continues, the total for 2026 will be roughly 530 murders, with a homicide rate of 18.7 per 100,000, or about the 17th-highest globally. Clearly this is an improvement we will all welcome, but 17th out of 195 countries is still nothing to be proud of. As stated above, in 1962, we had one of the lowest murder rates in the world. Our goal, in terms of crime and violence, must be to return to that level.

Minister of State Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn recently asserted that violence has been shaped by “years of inequality, inconsistent enforcement of the law, breakdowns in family and community structures, limited economic opportunity, and unaddressed trauma”. Clearly, these will encourage any existing crime situation, but they are not the root causes of crime in Jamaica. The root cause, our greatest mistake, is the nurturing that crime received through the formation of politically aligned gangs.

After six decades of that relationship, inter-party collaboration, even if it exists in no other area, is absolutely critical for a successful initiative to dismantle crime. This has been demonstrated over the years, and the Gun Court Act of 1974 and subsequent years have shown that successive governments have not achieved sustained success by themselves.

One possible approach is for MPs and councillors from both major parties in Jamaica’s 63 political constituencies and 229 political divisions to pool all the information they have on gang activity in their regions. This can be collated into organised data for each party, and party representatives could then bring that information to a joint committee where, along with other interested groups, a programme could be developed for dismantling gangs and transforming members into healthy, productive citizens.

Outlined above is simply a suggestion, and other methods can be developed. But whatever the method, sustained inter-party collaboration will be absolutely critical. One suggestion regarding vulnerable, unattached, and unemployed youth is to examine and organise a conscription programme into our infantry, coast guard, or air wing, in tandem with an ongoing parallel social rehabilitation programme.

There are numerous other considerations, but a meeting of minds of our very talented social psychologists should be able to devise a system that is on target, implementable, and that will achieve success.

The attitude of the country towards crime also needs to be adjusted somewhat, and prevention needs to take precedence over punishment, while transformation needs to win over physical elimination.

Also, a critical part of the process must be a well-worked-out prison-reform programme, and this is not a bleeding-heart statement. Prisons, while continuing to serve as a form of punishment, must also serve to facilitate reform and transformation and not become a place that simply hardens and confirms the criminally minded, a concern long expressed but hardly tackled.

It has often been said that the true essence of any country is revealed by the state of its garbage dumps and its prisons. I wonder where that puts us.

We need to become a nation saturated with an active abhorrence of crime and violence. Or will we allow the colonial powers to continue to say, with conviction, “I told you so. Look how peaceful Jamaica was when we left, and look at it now.”

David Abrikian is a civil engineer. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.