Caribbean Crime

06 Apr 2008

Jamaica Observer, 6th April 2008
 
Jamaica has long worried about its level of crime. But crime is now casting a shadow across the entire Caribbean. The English speaking Caribbean is now the world leader in violent crime, outside of countries where there are actual wars going on. Guyana has had two massacres recently. Jamaica has the highest murder rate in the world but Trinidad and Tobago is catching up fast. And the security crackdown in Jamaica has driven drug-trafficking and related crime to the rest of the Caribbean particularly the Eastern Caribbean states including  Anguilla; Antigua and Barbuda; Dominica; Grenada; Montserrat; St Kitts and Nevis; Saint Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines. The BBC Caribbean service recently had a phone-in about crime. It attracted a record number of calls from people all over the region concerned about the issue.

There is a lot of talk about moral break-down being the cause of the crime wave in the region. But the real driver is the drug trade and the collapse of traditional agricultural production, which has led to the break-up of rural communities and a steady flow of unqualified young people to the cities. And it is the Caribbean's misfortune to be located at a crossroads between steady streams of illegal narcotics flowing north from South America to the United States and guns (mainly from the US) flowing south. To make matters worse Caribbean countries have big coastlines and even bigger territorial waters to police. But they do not have the resources to do it properly, so the drug flows through the region are huge. According to a report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), around 216 tonnes of cocaine pass through the Caribbean, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana every year en route to the US and Europe, accounting for one-half of the US's cocaine imports and one-half of Europe's. The economic importance of the drug trade was estimated by the UNODC as equivalent to around 3.5% of GDP in the region overall, and to 7.5% of GDP in Jamaica.

If the rise in crime is partly a response to economic circumstances, it also has considerable economic costs for the region and potentially produces a dangerous downward economic spiral In a 2006 World Bank survey, 39% of business managers in the Caribbean said that they were less likely to expand their business because of crime, while 37% responded that crime had discouraged investments that would have improved their businesses' productivity. Then there are all the businesses who do not invest at all because of fear of crime.

The World Bank study estimated that security costs for private companies in Jamaica amount to an average of 2% of revenue (higher for small companies and lower for the largest firms). Additional security costs include the installation of fencing, grilles and alarm systems, and the hiring of additional private (and frequently armed) security staff.

Much of the Jamaican Diaspora settled in Florida would come home to Jamaica if it was not for their fear of crime.

Crime is also potentially damaging for the tourist industry. Until recently tourists rarely got attacked in Jamaica. But the murder of an English woman Barbara Scott-Jones, just outside Montego Bay, has been front-page news in the British newspapers. Inevitable there has been a lot of adverse comment on the competence of the Jamaican police and talk about how crime in Jamaica is "spiralling out of control" A recent Amnesty report on crime in inner city Jamaica has not helped the country's image either.

High crime rates also carry indirect costs. Rising insecurity is driving educated workers to leave their home countries at an alarming rate. According to the World Bank, the seven countries with the highest emigration rates for college graduates in the world are in the Caribbean. The report estimates that if Caribbean countries were able to reduce crime levels to those of peaceful Costa Rica their rates of economic growth would increase notably. In the cases of Jamaica GDP growth would be boosted by a massive 5.4% annually.

Caricom leaders are scheduled to discuss crime at a special meeting in Trinidad this month. Let us hope that they come up with some answers

 



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