The Impact of Organized Crime on Governance in Developing Countries
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Getting Smart and Scaling Up : The Impact of Organized Crime on Governance in Developing Countries 216 A Desk Study of Jamaica June 2013 Dr. Enrique Desmond Arias NYU Responding to the Impact of Organized Crime on Developing Countries CIC Annex VI - THE IMPACT OF ORGANIZED CRIME ON GOVERNANCE: A DESK STUDY OF JAMAICA1 About the Author Enrique Desmond Arias is an associate professor at the John Jay Collefe of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: Trafficking, Networks, and Public Security (University of North Carolina Press, 2006) and he co-edited Violent Democracies in Latin America (Duke University Press, 2010). He has published articles in Comparative Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, the Journal of Latin American Studies, Policing and Society, Studies in Comparative International Development, and Qualitative Sociology. The United States Fulbright Commission, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Tinker Foundation have funded his research. 1. Ed. Camino Kavanagh (2013), Getting Smart and Shaping Up: Responding to the Impact of Drug Trafficking in Developing Countries, NYU Center on International Cooperation 217 NYU Responding to the Impact of Organized Crime on Developing Countries CIC Introduction escape. But with no place to hide, he soon surrendered and was extradited to the US He pled guilty to racketeering In May 2010, former Prime Minister Bruce Golding ordered charges in a New York court and in June 2012 received a Jamaican security forces to invade the neighborhoods of maximum prison sentence of 23 years.2 Golding, on the Denham Town and Tivoli Gardens in Kingston, Jamaica’s other hand, offered exemption from persecution to other capital, to execute an arrest warrant for Christopher “Dudus” prominent gang leaders across Kingston in exchange for Coke, the local “don.” Coke was the head of the infamous relative peace. Lower violence rates in late 2010 and early Shower Posse, a gang that controlled sizable portions of 2011 testify to those arrangements. There is little reason organized crime activity on the island and was accused to believe that violence rates will remain at lower levels by the United States government of drug trafficking and without more decisive action on the part of the state. racketeering. Gangsters from around the Kingston area Yet, in the political arena, efforts to address the intimate converged on these neighborhoods in an effort to protect ties between miscreants and government officials have Coke who ran a sizable and complex criminal operation in been scant. The only powerful figure to suffer from the his zone of control and who had important connections Coke debacle was Attorney General and Justice Minister to other local criminal organizations. Residents of the Dorothy Lightbourne who was forced to step down. community had turned out several days before to demand Still, for all its ignominiousness, the intervention of the government give up its efforts to bring Coke to justice. Bruce Golding provides useful insight into the complex Faced with considerable and well-organized armed relationship between organized crime and the Jamaican opposition Golding warned residents to evacuate. On political system. May 28th, troops entered the area and carried out a brutal operation killing some 70 residents, the majority of who This paper explores why Golding risked his own political 218 had no connections to criminal groups whatsoever. career and created difficulties for his prominent supporters to prevent the arrest of a thug running a criminal These events represented the culmination of eight operation in one of the poorest areas of Kingston. It offers months of intense political and diplomatic wrangling a detailed account of the nature of organized crime in following a request by the United States government for Jamaica and the process through which those political- Coke’s extradition. The Golding government had done criminal relationships evolved. The paper is organized as everything in its power and more to avoid arresting follows: the first section discusses the regional, political, Coke, including hiring a US-based law firm to lobby the institutional, and social context. It provides an overview Obama Administration to withdraw its request. When of four major phases marking the political-criminal Golding’s attempt to evade Jamaica’s international relationship in urban Jamaica before turning to the treaty obligations came to light, the country’s political prevalent norms of behavior such as widespread political establishment shuddered. Golding resigned as leader of corruption that have nurtured organized criminal activity the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP), potentially opening the and cemented political-criminal relationships in Jamaica door to new elections. His party, however, refused to over several decades. With the political-criminal nexus as a accept his resignation and the administration staggered backdrop, Section II analyzes the nature of organized crime onwards. The US government found innovative ways to in Jamaica, with specific emphasis on racketeering and pressure his government, including cancelling the US visa drug trafficking. Section III sheds some light on the impact of prominent JLP supporters, thereby creating significant of organized crime on governance, with a particular focus business difficulties and embarrassment for a portion of on state legitimacy and provision of basic services. The the Jamaican elite. final section puts forward a series of recommendations for responding to the impact of organized crime on Ultimately, the violent military incursion into Kingston governance in Jamaica. Western was unsuccessful in that Coke managed to 2. “Dudus Gets His Due,” The Economist, June 13, 2012, available at: http://www.economist.com/ blogs/americasview/2012/06/ organised-crime-jamaica. NYU Responding to the Impact of Organized Crime on Developing Countries CIC I. Regional, Political, Institutional, and borders in the region, many small Caribbean states have Social Context served as key staging areas for transnational trafficking, particularly in narcotics and firearms. The fact that the Regional Context Caribbean is also an important area of operations for the US’s “War on Drugs” policy, has exacerbated rather than The diverse Caribbean region has gone through myriad helped resolve many of the aforementioned challenges.7 changes over the past decades, with marked progress in Indeed, today, and despite huge investments in fighting heath and education in particular. Important advances organized (and ‘disorganized’ crime), the Caribbean boasts have been made on the political front too, not least in some of the highest murder rates in the world – 62 per relation to governance. Barring a few countries such 100,000 in Jamaica and 29.2 per 100,000 in Trinidad and as Jamaica, the Caribbean region boasts many stable Tobago – and “the problem is worsening,”8 to the extent democracies with high levels of political participation that one expert calculated it would take some thirty years and low and declining levels of elections-related political “of consistent effort to reduce the current homicide rate 3 violence. Growing stability has developed together with to single digit figures, i.e., a figure that would approximate the progressive consolidation of the rule of law in most the outer limit for advanced country status.”9 Violent crime countries. In particular, the “reduction of undue and is generally concentrated in poor urban areas; youth unlawful political influences on law enforcement and the constituting the membership base of violent gangs are the protection of the independence of the courts have been primary perpetrators and victims.10 major achievements in political development since the end of the colonial era.”4 Meanwhile, public confidence in the police across the region is low, and public confidence in political parties Despite these advances, progress in the region is beset even lower.11 Perceptions of structural corruption within 219 by high rates of violent crime and troubling levels state institutions remain high, as do perceptions that the of non-criminalized forms of social violence that are political and business elite remain above the law. Jamaica “typically directed at the members of vulnerable groups is no stranger to many of these challenges. that historically have been disfavored and discriminated against.”5 As in the case of Jamaica, much of the crime that Dangerous Liaisons: Crime in Support of Party is evident in the region is the outcome of the inequalities Politics of opportunity that restrict these choices among large sections of the populations of the region. Organized The Commonwealth of Jamaica is the fourth largest crime, particularly drug trafficking continues to hinder island in the Caribbean. It was primarily settled by the development and democratic governance across the Arawak and Taino indigenous people between 4000 and Caribbean. As in large swathes of Latin America, organized 1000 B.C. It was named Santiago by the Spanish, who crime has acquired new and more violent ways of operating, colonized the island in 1492, only to lose it to the British challenging the rule of law, and negatively impacting in 1655 who renamed it Jamaica. The country edged the economy. It has increasingly impacted on security, toward independence in the first half of the 20th century, upturning shaky political settlements, and undermining 7. Francis, June N.P. and Mauser, Gary A. (2011). Collateral Damage: The “War on Drugs,” and 6 the Latin America and Caribbean Region: Policy Recommendations for the Obama Administration. institutions that have yet to fully consolidate. Available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1739203. 8. In Jamaica, the rate is 121 per 100,000 for males between the ages of 15 and 44. Abuelafia, Emmanuel and Sedlacek, Guilherme (2010). The Impact of Jamaica’s CSJP Program. Inter- Geography also plays an important role.