Conflating Crime In Jamaica With Crime In Any American State Is Grossly Ignorant…

Leading up to it’s forced separation from Great Britain and a brief period up to the early 1970’s Jamaica experienced it’s greatest period of peace and prosperity. Sure there were problems with racial and class inequality, poverty, and the raft of problems which plague most countries . As a matter of fact those problems still persist, no not just in Jamaica but in America, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany , Japan, and most of the developed societies across the Globe, so Jamaica has no monopoly on social or societal ills.
To some degree those problems are transcendent in all societies and may have to be addressed by every generation into perpetuity.

What the Island did not have was ram­pant and whole­sale mur­der of Jamaicans by Jamaicans. Jamaica has always been a soci­ety as long as I remem­ber, wary of author­i­ty. A coun­try with a sup­posed free spir­it and a more than ordi­nary dis­re­gard for estab­lished laws and norms.
Flouting laws is not frowned on in Jamaica it is a prac­tice which brings endear­ment and fame.
The Island’s peo­ple have always had a deep affec­tion for fig­ures who defy author­i­ty , infa­mous fig­ures like Three-fin­ger-Jack, Rigen, Natty Morgan, Coppa, Sandokan, Duddus, Zeeks, Dog-Paw, and the long litany of oth­er immoral mur­der­ing scump-bags which have formed part of the Island’s pop culture.

There is a sick per­vert­ed desire to align with, or live vic­ar­i­ous­ly through the most despi­ca­ble of these life forms even when their ulti­mate objec­tives are anti­thet­i­cal to the good of the coun­try, which is always.
What pass­es for Media on the Island glee­ful­ly engages in the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion and pro­mo­tion of those who do the most harm to the Island’s cul­ture and well-being.
Much of what pass­es for music these days is noth­ing more than mur­der lyrics laced with praise and ado­ra­tion for depraved murderers.
The media active­ly cheer-leads the clown pro­ces­sion as the Island slides deep­er and deep­er into rot , much like the fic­tion­al Hans Christian Andersen’s pied Piper led the chil­dren away nev­er to be seen again.

It is in that envi­ron­ment that the report­ed 1000 to over 1600 homi­cides occur each year while pompous Jamaicans nuance and come up with laugh­able met­rics to demon­strate to the world that the Island is not a dan­ger­ous place to live.
People who are dis­mayed are char­ac­ter­ized as “hav­ing a shaky grasp” of the Island’s crime sit­u­a­tion. Others obsti­nate­ly and unin­tel­li­gent­ly talk about crime being in America as well, as if crime in America makes crime in Jamaica defensible.

These self appoint­ed elit­ists have ran out of ratio­nale in the defense of crime, one per­son remarked on social media that crime is quote ‘out of con­trol” yet in the next line he pro­ceed­ed to tell me that crime is only cen­tered in small pock­ets of the Island.
That insane­ly sil­ly and inane state­ment defines the mind­set which has been Jamaican’s all along. Crime is only a Kingston thing, then it was Spanish Town thing, Then it was Montego Bay , Then it’s May Pen, .……
They make these absurd and ridicu­lous state­ments while holed up in homes which look more like pris­ons than places where peo­ple actu­al­ly live. I can’t tell you how many homes I have been in over the years where the own­ers have grill for­ti­fi­ca­tions sep­a­rat­ing room from room.
“Yea mon Jamaica nice no raas”.

Oh while we are on that note, I have heard many Jamaicans com­plain that when they return home they are treat­ed like for­eign­ers . I have also seen a cer­tain degree of that creep­ing into the ver­bal dis­course as well .
There is a mis­guid­ed notion that one has to live on the Island to be a patriot.
I guess that teach­ing is the lat­est bit of gob­bledy­gook to come out of the University Of the West Indies.
Where is Wilmott Mutty Perkins when he is needed?
Where on plan­et Earth is geog­ra­phy the defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic in Patriotism? What an absurd con­cept? Who died and made these nit-wits God?

I recall when my grand­dad would invite peo­ple who had noth­ing to eat to come to our lands, they would leave with their don­key laden with bread­fruits , avo­ca­do pears, Jack-fruits, oranges and oth­er good­ies . Those pro­duce would end up in the Linstead mar­ket where they were sold . My grand­fa­ther did not care about the protes­ta­tions from friends who told him to sell the pro­duce to the peo­ple because they were sell­ing it and mak­ing mon­ey. My grand-dad did not care, he believed peo­ple should not go hungry.

My grand­fa­ther’s men­tal­i­ty was that which char­ac­ter­ized our small towns and vil­lages once upon a time. Our small Country was a Conservative Christian Nation which believed that it took a vil­lage to raise a child. That is the way I was raised, hav­ing to be respect­ful to every­one , because every­one had the right to dis­ci­pline the chil­dren , includ­ing Mister Wilson’s wiry lit­tle grand-son.

Don’t recite to me sta­tis­tics about killings in American cities or school shoot­ings as if they jus­ti­fy the insane shed­ding of blood in Jamaica.
The United States is approx­i­mate­ly 3,794,101 sq mi. This is equiv­a­lent to 9,826,675 km². The pop­u­la­tion at present is around 308 mil­lion people.
Jamaica is approx­i­mate­ly 4,411 square miles with a pop­u­la­tion of 2.7 mil­lion people.
When we con­sid­er crime com­par­i­son and seek to con­flate the two coun­tries and their crime sit­u­a­tions we must first under­stand the geog­ra­phy , then we must con­sid­er the effi­cien­cy of law-enforce­ment response when they are needed.
The state of California alone , one of the largest states and one with high­er crime sta­tis­tics as of 2008 had 509 law enforce­ment agen­cies employ­ing 79,431 sworn police offi­cers, about 217 for each 100,000 residents.

I had one real­ly smart per­son tell me this morn­ing that crime in Clarendon for exam­ple is con­fined to the areas around May Pen. He went on to tell me that “if yu jus passin thru di man dem nah gu jus shoot yu su”. Oh thank Jesus I am eter­nal­ly grate­ful for that.
Any way I remind­ed him that over twen­ty five years ago I was active­ly engaged in being air­lift­ed to places in Clarendon like Hayes, Savannah , Kraal, Lionel Town and envi­rons to put down upsurges in crime. He respond­ed that those areas are around May Pen. You real­ly can­not make these things up.
My response to him was that I under­stood his point, as long as you bur­row your­self in a hole away from civ­i­liza­tion you are okay to a cer­tain degree.…

I write fre­quent­ly about the affin­i­ty of Jamaicans to explain crime away or to make state­ments which could eas­i­ly be con­strued as sup­port­ive of crime. The fact is that not always are they sup­port­ive of crime but they believe no one should crit­i­cize any­thing Jamaican .
That includes crime.
They stead­fast­ly and unwit­ting­ly hold to the sil­ly notion that crit­i­ciz­ing Jamaica’s crime sit­u­a­tion is crit­i­ciz­ing Island Jamaica or brand Jamaica. There is no brand Jamaica if these crime num­bers are not addressed as a mat­ter of priority.
The parish of Clarendon Jamaica’s third largest parish is a mere 1,196 square km, not square miles mind you.…
In real terms a healthy man can stand at one cor­ner and piss over the entire parish[sic] .…There are no safe havens in an Island that infin­i­tes­i­mal much less a parish for that matter.
If no one was going to “kill yu su” why on earth are lit­er­al­ly all the house grilled like prisons?
Why are tourists being large­ly con­fined to all inclu­sive des­ti­na­tions, lit­er­al­ly cut­ting out aver­age Jamaicans from the ben­e­fits of the tourists vis­it­ing our Island?
Lets dis­pense with the blovi­at­ing bull‑s**t and face the stark real­i­ty that the Island has a seri­ous and bur­geon­ing crime problem.
Denying it only helps those engaged in or ben­e­fit­ing from crime, peo­ple are not fools. Putting beau­ti­ful wall-paper over a ter­mite infest­ed wood­work is not going to fix the ter­mite infes­ta­tion. Soon the whole damn struc­ture will be com­ing down .
The only per­sons fooled by this con­sis­tent deni­a­bil­i­ty and faux pro-Jamaican aggran­dize­ment are those so engaged .

Suggesting that it’s okay to live in such a small space with the atten­dant homi­cide num­bers is insane­ly juve­nile. Seeking to con­flate those crime stats with crime stats from any American state is just high­lights the lack of knowl­edge of the vast­ness of the American space and the effec­tive­ness of her law enforce­ment responses.