Armed violence is a threat, of epidemic proportion, to the entire Caribbean, so I wholeheartedly sympathise with our brothers and sisters in Trinidad and Tobago who ushered in 2025 under an unprecedented national state of emergency intended to stymie the violence they have been experiencing.

As in Jamaica, T&T’s escalating violence is driven by the scourge of criminal gangs, which have festered in and around urban informal settlements. In Port of Spain, the murder of five people in one incident last weekend echoed some of the gruesome multiple-victim incidents we experienced in Jamaica during 2024.

The Trinidadian authorities assessed that this gangland attack would spark reprisal killings amongst rival gangs, which would also endanger innocent bystanders, and opted to invoke emergency powers to save lives. Similar reasoning informed our declaration of states of emergency (SOEs) in Clarendon and east Kingston in 2024, after the multiple-victim incidents at Cherry Tree Lane and Rockfort, respectively.

The Duty to Save Lives

State of emergency is a tool in the national security toolkit, provided for under the Constitution of Jamaica. My Administration has judiciously employed that tool, based on the careful assessments of security force analysts, when it is necessary to stave off the imminent loss of lives. To do otherwise would be negligent in our duty to every Jamaican citizen.

Now, think of the lives that will be lost to violence this year. Even as the number of murders in Jamaica fell by 7.8 per cent in 2023, and then 18.9 per cent in 2024, and we expect the decline to continue, the reality is that hundreds of lives could still be lost to violence in 2025. However, this is not an inevitability. We can achieve more substantial reductions in homicides by deploying every available tool to disrupt the violent gangs responsible for the majority of murders. Around 70 per cent of murders in Jamaica are committed by gangs; remove them, and our murder rate would plummet as it has in El Salvador.

When our Administration assumed office in 2016, Jamaica faced an overwhelming crisis. Gang violence had expanded unchecked, with over 350 active gangs operating nationwide. The homicide rate had risen by 34 per cent over two years, and the national security apparatus suffered from years of neglect.

In our 2017 budget we tripled capital investment in national security to strengthen and modernise our security forces. We put in place a proper executive structure to develop and implementation policies, coordinated by the National Security Council. Those policies have been filtered mainly through the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency, and the Jamaica Customs Agency. In 2017, we also introduced zones of special operations (ZOSOs), whose effectiveness in reducing crime and revitalising communities in conjunction with localised SOEs has been widely recognised and studied across the region.

The Doublespeak over SOEs

The main challenge using the effective violence-reduction measure that is SOEs has come from the Opposition, and from those who do not understand its role in lowering the homicide rate, not just in the short term, but also in the medium and long term.

From the outset it was clear that the investments in the security apparatus and ZOSOs alone would not bring violence down to ‘normal’ levels by global standards. The SOEs were instrumental in making those additions maximally effective. We declared our first SOE in St James in January 2018, an important function of which was to detain the violence-producing members of active gangs, as identified by military and police intelligence, in the targeted area.

In March and September that year, we extended SOEs over the St Catherine North Division and sections of the Corporate Area, respectively. Throughout that year, the Opposition People’s National Party supported the measures by voting to support renewal of the SOEs in Parliament. By the end of the year, homicides had fallen 22 per cent compared to the previous year — the largest single annual decrease for over a decade prior. Yet in December 2018 the Opposition withdrew its support for SOEs, refusing to support the extensions requested by the security forces. One cannot help but wonder whether the Opposition, after having supported the SOEs through the year and observed their effectiveness, withdrew support to prevent the ruling party from gaining political capital from the success of the measures.

From 2019 onwards, the Opposition Members of Parliament would only support our use of SOEs in reaction to surges in violence, rather than a proactive measure to aid in a steady reduction in homicides. As a consequence, homicides began trending upwards again, increasing by 14.5 per cent by the end of 2021. When the governor general declared SOEs across seven policing divisions that November, the PNP again refused to support an extension after the initial 14-day period. Opposition Leader Mark Golding put forward the notion that pre-trial detentions, even of known violence producers, deprived those people of their civil liberties.

The Opposition’s primary argument, centred on civil liberties, ignores the lived reality of residents in gang-dominated communities. These residents, deprived of safety and freedom by gang violence, endure restrictions on their fundamental rights, including their right to life. SOEs restore safety, empower communities, revive commerce, and allow children to move and play freely — outcomes strongly supported by the very people living in affected areas.

Opposition Leader Mark Golding has also been inconsistent. In his 2024 Budget Debate he proposed legislation to facilitate pre-trial detention of known violence producers — a measure already achievable under SOEs. This approach reveals a disingenuous strategy: delay proven measures in favour of lengthy legislative processes, achieving the same result but at greater cost to lives and public safety. Meanwhile, the time wasted on political posturing allows gangs to regroup and violence to persist.

Pivot to Defeating Armed Violence

SOEs have demonstrated that clearing out violence producers is an effective measure in quelling armed violence in volatile areas, and is a necessary precursor for subsequent measures to hold the community, give the residents some breathing room, and then employ transformative interventions to build the community.

I want to take this opportunity to commend the security forces, and make special note of the efforts of the men and women of the JCF and the JDF. The significant and welcome fall in homicides last year, down to 1,139, is solid evidence that this strategy, carried out by their efforts, works.

Our policy of focusing on gangs using intelligence, investigation, and prosecution has resulted in the destruction of several major gangs, and cut down the number of these armed groups by more than half since 2016. We are now at a point where we expect that these strategies will continue to yield results. We will see fewer than 1,000 murders for 2025.

It is clear, though, that the criminal gangs are not only stubborn and persistent, they are also intelligence-driven and will adapt to the new inhospitable environment we have created. This means that we must continue to change strategy, to pivot to the next chapter in combating armed violence. SOEs will always be a tool to be applied in that fight. And the anti-gang legislation, though laborious, has been effectively used to wind up gangs. However, we need new legislation to proactively control, deter, and divert individuals likely to be involved in gang activity.

As such, central to the safety and security pillar of ASPIRE — our policy pivot to achieve inclusive national growth — will be the promulgation of the Enhanced Security Measures Act. This emergency legislation will formalise the power to interdict individuals who intelligence determines are of the greatest threat and to separate them from the communities affected by armed violence.

The Enhanced Security Measures Act is necessary because the Opposition’s inconsistent stance undermines the reliability of SOEs as a long-term tool for violence reduction. Without a unified approach in Parliament, our ability to use these emergency powers when and where they are needed remains precarious.

This legislation will eliminate reliance on short-term political approvals, providing the security forces with the clarity and authority they need to dismantle violent networks decisively, within the constitution and under judicial oversight. In the interim, we will continue to use the emergency powers under SOEs in a way that does not in any way impair or inflict undue harm to the rights of the Jamaican citizen.

My Administration remains steadfast in its duty to protect the lives and freedoms of every Jamaican, especially the most vulnerable among us. We will continue using every constitutional tool at our disposal, balancing security needs with the preservation of civil liberties. We will not rest until we build a safer Jamaica where children can walk to school without fear, that parents can build better futures for their families, and that businesses can thrive in peace. We will not rest until every Jamaican has a chance to live in peace and work to pursue the promise of a brighter tomorrow.

— Dr Andrew Holness is prime minister of Jamaica.