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The Jamaican Crime Problem: Peace Building and Community Action

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The Jamaican Crime Problem: Peace Building and Community Action CgCED CARIBBEAN GROUP FOR COOPERATION IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CONTROLLING THE JAMAICAN CRIME PROBLEM: PEACE BUILDING AND COMMUNITY ACTION DISCUSSION DRAFT Anthony Harriott Department of Government The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus CONTROLLING THE JAMAICAN CRIME PROBLEM: PEACE BUILDING AND COMMUNITY ACTION June 2000 Department of Government The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus Table Of Contents Page No. 1. Introduction............................................................................................1 2. Defining the Problem.............................................................................3 3. Sources of High Rate of Violent Crime.................................................12 4. Constraints on the Development of Policy ...........................................16 5. Some Possible Initiatives.......................................................................19 6. Community Crime Control and Peace Building...................................20 7. Community control and Reform of the Criminal Justice System.........22 8. Order in Public Places ..........................................................................26 9. Implementation Strategies.....................................................................28 10. Conclusion ...........................................................................................29 11. Endnotes...............................................................................................30 12. References ............................................................................................31 Tables Table 1 - Reported Property crimes vs. Violent Crimes 1977-98.............5 Table 2 - Rate of Violent Crimes (per 1000,000 citizens) .......................6 Table 3 - Gun Use in Most Serious Crimes 1988-98.................................7 - iii - 1. Introduction The problems of crime and the quality of justice have become central issues in public debate and important public policy concerns in a number of Caribbean countries. This problem is perhaps most acute in Jamaica which has acquired an unenviable reputation for having a high rate of violent crime. To better understand the crime phenomena in the region and to become more effective in the field of crime control, policy has to be better informed by research. There is however a huge research deficit as until recently little administrative attention was paid to the development of criminal justice as a social focus and as an area of academic research. For example, with regard to Jamaica, there have been no evaluations of existing policing, sentencing and correctional policies. Judges have considerable discretionary powers and may consider a varied sentencing menu, yet they and the policy makers have no idea what types of sentences work best for reducing recidivism. The rehabilitation programmes have never been properly evaluated, as a result no institutional learning occurs and no new innovations are developed to make these programmes more effective. These are profoundly utilitarian concerns to which some may object, but they are consistent with the primary purpose (of social defense) for which the criminal justice system claims it is devised. While the problems are becoming progressively more complicated, the institutions of the criminal justice system are largely working with the traditional tools and on the inertia of tradition. Indeed, in some cases there are no explicit and coherently articulated policies. It is now rather trite to suggest that crime and criminality are complex phenomena. This complexity is reflected in the lack of consensus in the field. It is perhaps still worthwhile making this point because while the idea of the complexity of crime may be readily accepted, it does not always inform our expectations in dealing with this phenomenon, nor even our appreciation of the magnitude of the research inputs and the institutional support that may be required to develop successful crime control policies. The purpose of this paper is to present some basic ideas on crime control in Jamaica- with a - 1 - view to stimulating the debate on appropriate policy responses to this serious problem. It tries to highlight some general principles that may be useful for policy development, to suggest an approach to the problem rather than a blue print for action. If a few concrete suggestions are made, these are intended simply to illustrate the general points or to provide material for further elaboration and refinement. Criminality is influenced by the interaction of complex sets of factors operating at the individual, situational and social structural levels, but crime rates are essentially products of societies. To lower crime rates thus entails focusing the necessary interventions at the societal level and making the society and polity less criminogenic. This does not preclude some attention to problem at the level of the individual; but this kind of micro treatment of the problem is simply not the focus of this paper. If this paper makes a worthwhile contribution, it is in trying to reconceptualize the problem of criminal violence. It seeks to assert that much of the violence experienced in Jamaica is simply a matter of ordinary criminality but rather the outcome of a profoundly political power dynamic and attempts to make the case for a more unconventional short- term response to this violence. First a brief description of the problem will be presented. This is followed by a discussion of some of the principles that I believe should inform policy development. - 2 - 2. Defining the Problem While policy should be informed by an appreciation of the problem involving at least an analytic description of it, policy elaboration need not await a definitive analysis of its sources or the causes. Such a definitive analysis could develop as part of a programme of intervention that is continuously subjected to critical scrutiny and proper evaluation. This is not to suggest that present policy is not informed by theory, but rather that it is only implicitly so informed. Like most criminal justice systems, the Jamaican system, is deeply influenced by classical rational choice theory and its derivatives. The basic idea of this theory is that as rational, utility-maximizing and free-willed subjects, individuals freely choose to commit crimes and commit to criminal careers. Such decisions, at both the event and career levels, are assumed to be shaped by the perceived benefits of crime weighted against its perceived costs, that is, Bentham’s “felicity calculus1.” Thus by structuring the cost of criminal offending, the state is able to deter crime. In the contemporary setting, this perspective is usually associated with a state centred approach focused on the manipulation of punishment - its certainty, celerity and proportionality. While there is perhaps some value in this approach, it has largely proved to be inadequate and ineffective. However, even within this framework, there is considerable scope for widening the types of intervention and going beyond the simple manipulation of punishment. For example, the theory does not logically exclude deterrence measures that increase the opportunity costs of crime by creating increased job opportunities and similar programmes that increase the stake in conventional careers, but this is not usually emphasized. More immediately, if policy is not to be informed by an explicit coherent framework, it should at least be informed by a factually correct definition of the problem. Since the mid-1980s, the crime rate in Jamaica has tended to decline. This is true of reported crimes as well as the real rate of victimization. Measures of the rate of victimization using survey methodology confirm the decline reported by the police.2 This decreasing crime rate is largely accounted for by a decline in property crimes. Between 1987 and 1998, the rate of property crimes fell sharply from 786\100,000 to 342\100,000.3 The rate of reported property crimes in Jamaica compares favorably with some developed countries such as - 3 - the USA and the UK and even with some Caribbean countries such as Barbados, which enjoy reputations for being fairly safe. For example, in 1996, while the rate of total reported crime in Barbados was 3966\100,000, in Jamaica, a rate of 2261\100,000 was recorded.4 In Jamaica, while the rate of property crime has been declining, for most of the last three decades, the rate of violent crime and particularly murder has been steadily increasing. In 1977, the rate of violent crime was 758\100,00, but by 1996, it had increased to 985\100,000 [see Table 1]. Policy development requires detail. The trends for the more serious violent crimes are therefore given in Table 2. The increase in rates for all categories of violent crime is evident and some positive association between some of these categories is to be expected. For example, it may reasonably be expected that the rate of shootings will be positively associated with the rate of murder. But murder, which is the most important problem, is not simply an outcome associated with the execution of other crimes. It is interesting that the generalized decline in violent crime began with the decline in the rate of robberies (in 1996). This corresponds with the period of rapid development of the extortion rackets in Kingston whereby commercial enterprises are forced to pay the “dons” of organized crime for “protection” against robbery and the related revival and proliferation of the informal community courts
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