THE relentless bombardment of news stories about murders, shootings, kidnappings, and other forms of violence leaves many of us wondering if Jamaica is a haven for criminals and violence producers. Many will find this question debatable. However, it is clear that criminal organisations, gangsters, and others of similar ilk have a fertile cultural environment in which they have embedded themselves.

Jamaica has a subculture of violence, one which is feeding destructive behavioural patterns of rampant murders, shootings, gun crimes, and acts of human destruction. The mainstream culture is now being overtaken by an insidious set of mores and values that glorify and provides succour to violence. This subculture disfigures the Jamaican society, and if we continue to leave it unchecked, I fear it will rip the country apart. The crisis of violence has seeped into parts of the nation’s cultural DNA with disabling and destructive costs.

Homicide data from the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) illustrates the horror violence is wreaking on citizens. The JCF notes that murders up to October 1, 2022 stood at 1,171. For some regional context, Haiti, a country besieged by political chaos and State collapse had over 900 murders connected to gang violence up to July 2022. In Trinidad and Tobago, the number of murders passed 400 in September 2022. Jamaica, however, has consistently ranked in the top five most murderous countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region for the past five years. Countries with similar homicide rates to Jamaica are Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, and South Africa.

Professor Anthony Harriott, in his research and public scholarship, describes some features of this violent subculture: hypersensitivity to insults, reprisal and revenge killing, and a strong love for guns and badness. Similarly, the popular social media personality, who goes by the anonymised name of Sir P, on his YouTube channel Politricks Watch consistently argues that the high rates of homicides, violence, and gang wars in Jamaica is fuelled by a culture that reveres badness and romanticises gangsterism. Sir P’s describes Jamaica’s cultural affinity for violence as an “acidic culture”. The costs of this subculture of violence are numerous; however, I will zoom in on the fear and anxiety that is expanding and gripping all sectors of the Jamaican society.

THE COST OF FEAR AND ANXIETY

Gangs, dons, lottery scammers, and other violence producers in Jamaica have created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. They have left residents in several communities, rural and urban, suffering from post-traumatic stress and other anxiety disorders. The fear and anxiety among scores of Jamaicans is different from the panic of financial insecurity and the problems of high cost of living. It is a kind of existential fear, one that leaves people asking: Will I be next? Will someone I know be next?

To be clear, the majority of people impacted by violence from gang wars, reprisal killings, gun crimes, and conflicts among lottery scammers are concentrated among the poor and working classes. However, the cancer of violence is quickly spreading. Middle-income communities are increasingly feeling the sting of death, and the anguish from Jamaica’s gangsters and their henchmen (and women). Residents in police divisions in Kingston, St Andrew, St Catherine, St James, and Clarendon are nervous about walking the streets of their neighbourhoods late at nights and taking public transportation (especially taxis).

Small and medium-sized business operators (shops and bars, for example) live in perpetual dread from gangsters who prey on their establishments with extortion, theft, and the use of deadly violence as a means of compliance. Residents remain silent when they witness a crime or if they know the whereabouts of gangsters and scammers because they are aware of Jamaica’s unwritten code of silence, “informa fi dead”. The fear and anxiety that grip these communities have now diffused across the nation, poll after poll indicates that crime and violence is a national crisis.

This fear is also felt among Jamaicans in the Diaspora. I frequently hear Jamaicans here in the United States say, “Bwoy, mi fraid a Jamaica, and if I go home, I just go to a resort quietly and leave quietly.” Scores of Jamaicans want to return home to establish business in retailing, construction, transportation but they are afraid. The fear of criminals using violence against them is preventing many of the nation’s best and brightest overseas from returning and contributing to the island’s development. Anxiety and fear has left Jamaicans, home and abroad, questioning the adage that is “only people who mix up and involved” are victims of gang violence, reprisal hits, or contract killing.

The latest political polls all indicate that Jamaicans are increasingly losing faith in the State to keep citizens safe and to discipline and punish violence producers. As a result, Jamaica’s political culture, that is how people feel, think, and act in relation to government and politics, is being scarred by the subculture of violence.

The authority and legitimacy of Jamaica’s law enforcement agencies, Members of Parliament (MPs), and the prime minister are perceived to be anaemic and ineffective in successfully prosecuting and imprisoning gang members and preventing the mushrooming of crime and violence. The State must reassert itself and use its institutional muscle and resources to help realign the nation’s values and attitudes away from the destructive cultural tentacles of violence.

THE FIX

There is no single strategy to fix the crisis of violence in Jamaica. As I have laid out above, the cultural adhesive that holds the Jamaican State and society together has been infiltrated by values and mores of badness, criminality, and gangsterism. Criminals, gangsters, and violence producers are too comfortable in Jamaica. The culture of honouring badness has become too pervasive, it’s in our music, in our places of entertainment, in our schools, online, and in even in the ways we communicate and interact with our fellow Jamaicans.

In the short to medium term, policing and the firm establishment of law and order is critical in this fight to save our society from the insidious and toxic subculture of violence. Institutions can influence and help to shape values, attitudes, and customs. The Jamaican Government must make security and, more specifically, the punishment of criminal gangs and violence producers its number one priority. New laws such as the Firearms Act of 2022 are steps in the right direction by lawmakers to tackle the culture and practice of gun violence.

This challenge of violence is bigger than economic growth, tourism, and the boom in construction and development that is taking place across the country. If this culture and practice of violence is not systematically addressed and given prevalence by the Jamaican Government, the benefits of development and growth will be difficult to enjoy.

The current rates of brain drain and Jamaicans migrating is, in part, attributable to the island’s environment of insecurity. Giving more resources and training to the police is necessary and invaluable in this battle against crime and violence. Honduras, for example, was able to turn its crisis of high homicides and crime around by making important investments in their police. More equipment, better use of technology, better entry requirements, more on-the-job education and training will help the JCF with its mandate of “being a force for good”.

In the medium to long term I am suggesting that the Jamaican Government creates a bipartisan agency that has legislative and policy recommending powers on violence prevention. This body should comprise of MPs and/or senators from both political parties; representatives from violence prevention non-governmental organisations; representatives from the private sector, police, and military; and researchers of crime and violence. Here I am thinking of a similar format to the Economic Programme Oversight Committee (EPOC) established in 2013.

This violence prevention entity’s role is not to provide reports, we have plenty of those gathering dust. Instead, it should be empowered to make quarterly parliamentary reports that monitor crime and violence but also make evidence-based recommendations and strategies on preventing violence, diminishing criminal gangs, and punishing violence producers. Such an agency should provide modern, up to date, and relevant research and policy outcomes on how to conduct risk assessments of potential violence producers. In other words, we should be able to forecast which individuals are likely to be at high risk for being recruitment by gangs or becoming violence producers.

MAINSTREAM CULTURE

Jamaica is not a gangster’s paradise; however, there are spaces across the country where these violence producers have managed to carry out their acts of destruction despite policing efforts and strategies. Cities such as Kingston, Spanish Town, Montego Bay, and May Pen have become breeding grounds for violence and criminality. It is time for the State and the society to stand together and say no more to rogue actors and groups that are defacing our culture and identity. It is time for the State machinery, through its law enforcement apparatus and the political class, to reassert its authority and control over the spaces where gangsters and scammers have usurped its legitimacy. More importantly, it is time for Jamaicans to stand up for the nation’s legitimate mainstream culture. It is time to reject, in all its manifestations, the subculture of violence that glorifies badness, gangsterism, “informa fi dead” customs, gun violence, badman talk, revenge, and reprisal attacks.

Jamaica is seen as a cultural icon across the globe. Its people, food, music, and the geographic beauty of the island is loved by many. The acidic culture of violence threatens what Jamaica truly is and, even more ominously, many Jamaicans are losing their lives because of it.

Dr Damion Blake is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Policy Studies Leadership, a faculty scholar, and faculty fellow for race, ethnicity, and diversity at Elon University. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or dblake3@elon.edu.