Jamaica’s Murder Rate Increases Over Last Year’s Numbers

As Jamaicans, it seems that wher­ev­er we live out­side our native Jamaica, we tend to make par­al­lels with Jamaica on every issue we discuss.
Crime has been one of the most top­i­cal issues dis­cussed among Jamaicans in the dias­po­ra and at home. For mem­bers of the dias­po­ra who gen­uine­ly have an inter­est in a crime-free Jamaica, the steep­est hill to climb is the con­sis­tent push-back from our con­tem­po­raries at home who con­tin­ue to argue that (crime de every weh), trans­la­tion, crime is everywhere.
As such, the ever-increas­ing vio­lent crime sta­tis­tics have not engen­dered dis­gust, revul­sion, or the will to fight back. The pop­u­la­tion has set­tled into a dan­ger­ous state of accep­tance, a new nor­mal of how things are.
So much affects how we can bring this mon­ster under con­trol, includ­ing whether there is a desire to in the first place because there is mon­ey involved for the play­ers or whether the dias­po­ra has the stand­ing to demand change in our country.
I would posit that the dias­po­ra does have the stand­ing, con­sid­er­ing that it pours an incred­i­ble amount of finan­cial resources into the coun­try, mak­ing itself the num­ber two largest stream of for­eign mon­ey flow­ing into the country.
On that basis, the dias­po­ra does not only deserve a seat at the table; it needs to have sev­er­al seats at the table.
Money talks bull­shit walk! Those who think that because they were nev­er able to leave, left, and were sent back, or chose [not] to leave makes them patri­ots need to take sev­er­al seats to the side, not at the table.
Patriotism is not about where you live or whether you could leave, or whether or not you chose to leave.

Over the years, I have writ­ten sev­er­al arti­cles in which I said that a large part of the prob­lem Jamaica faces with crime comes from the nation’s high tol­er­ance for it.
As I said pre­vi­ous­ly, one of the more stri­dent argu­ments against my insis­tence that crime is far too high in Jamaica has been that.….…yup, “crime de every weh
Of course, they then com­pare the United States, crime sit­u­a­tion, which of course expos­es a sig­nif­i­cant mis­un­der­stand­ing of how crime sta­tis­tics are looked at, or even how mis­guid­ed that com­par­i­son is based on sev­er­al factors..”.
Two of the fac­tors that are not con­sid­ered are (a)the size of the American pop­u­la­tion of 320 mil­lion com­pared to its vio­lent crime sta­tis­tics when com­pared to ( Jamaica’s 2.8 mil­lion) and its vio­lent crime statistics.
(b)The size of the United States,3.8 mil­lion square miles (9.8 mil­lion square kilometers)compared to Jamaica,10,992 km² (4,244 sq mi).
When all of the data is tab­u­lat­ed in the United States and aver­aged among the American pop­u­la­tion of 320 mil­lion, it shows that though the United States is indeed a vio­lent coun­try, it is nowhere even remote­ly close to Jamaica when it comes to vio­lent crime.
Violent crime is expo­nen­tial­ly high in some areas of the United States while almost unheard of in some areas in the coun­try’s vast expans­es. Crime is indeed a top­ic of dis­cus­sion in America, not because it is an exis­ten­tial issue for the coun­try but because it makes good polit­i­cal fod­der for one side of the polit­i­cal divide, which would rather see the police have free rein to mur­der inno­cent black and brown Americans.

ACQUIESCENCE

Generally, when there is a high crime rate in a coun­try or parts of a coun­try, the root caus­es are that those who should stop it are com­plic­it in it. Nowhere is this more true than in the United States and Jamaica though not for the same reasons.
The high crime rate in both coun­tries may be attrib­uted to the same acqui­es­cence, lack of will, and com­plic­i­ty which I allud­ed to.
In Jamaica, though the present admin­is­tra­tion may be some­what bet­ter on crime than its pre­de­ces­sor, it is nowhere near where it should have been on this issue. Sure, they have upgrad­ed police sta­tions and changed oth­er ameni­ties; how­ev­er, the laws have not been strength­ened. Neither have the admin­is­tra­tion pledged the req­ui­site sup­port the secu­ri­ty forces need to do their jobs effectively.
It is near­ly impos­si­ble to explain just how impor­tant that sup­port is to the fight against vio­lent crim­i­nals and crime syndicates.
Jamaica’s nation­al mur­der toll of 755 is five per­cent high­er than the 716 tal­lied for the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od in 2020, one Jamaican dai­ly reports.

In the United States, with its 17,985 law enforce­ment agen­cies, the issue is not that there is the same kind of sup­port for crim­i­nal­i­ty through the var­i­ous lev­els of governance.
The issue for America is that the Constitution guar­an­tees in the sec­ond amend­ment that Americans have a right to bear arms. This is the only amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion that many Americans have feal­ty to.
Not the right to peace­ably protest, not the right to free speech, not the right to prac­tice one’s reli­gion, not the right not to have Government invade your pri­vate space with­out a war­rant, not the right not to have your prop­er­ty seized by the government.
None of that, only the right to bear arms applies-at least to the Republican party.
The right to bear arms for the Republicans is a gift that keeps on giv­ing because to its [fol­low­ers] (it is now a cult), it is their pro­tec­tion that will allow them to main­tain white suprema­cy, even if it means over­throw­ing the gov­ern­ment as they tried to do on January 6^th, 2021.
In both coun­tries, it is the lack of will to address spe­cif­ic areas that gen­er­ate vio­lent crim­i­nal activ­i­ty that con­tin­ue to cause or aid vio­lent crime producers.
Stop the wan­ton sale of guns in America and, as for Jamaica, give the police the sup­port they need, and vio­lent crime begins to trend south.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.