Thu | Mar 28, 2024

Clayton: Economy paying dreadful price for crime, corruption

Poll shows criminality remains top of the mind for most J’cans

Published:Wednesday | March 8, 2023 | 1:09 AMKimone Francis/Senior Staff Reporter
Don Anderson, CEO of Market Research Services Ltd.
Don Anderson, CEO of Market Research Services Ltd.
Crime and national security expert Professor Anthony Clayton of The University of the West Indies.
Crime and national security expert Professor Anthony Clayton of The University of the West Indies.
Dr Christopher Charles, professor of political and social psychology.
Dr Christopher Charles, professor of political and social psychology.
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Crime and violence continue to be the Holness administration’s Achilles heel with almost half of those polled in the latest Don Anderson opinion survey indicating that it is the single-most significant issue facing the country. A total of 1,002...

Crime and violence continue to be the Holness administration’s Achilles heel with almost half of those polled in the latest Don Anderson opinion survey indicating that it is the single-most significant issue facing the country.

A total of 1,002 Jamaicans 18 years and older were asked what they felt was the biggest challenge facing the island at this time, with 49.1 per cent tagging crime and violence.

That response mirrors that of a similar question posed last July when 46 per cent of participants in an RJRGLEANER Communications Group opinion poll indicated that the inability to control crime and violence had been the biggest failure of independent Jamaica.

The latest survey, conducted between February 17 and 26, was commissioned by the opposition People’s National Party and has a sampling error of plus or minus three per cent at the 95 per cent confidence level.

Some 17.1 per cent of respondents indicated that unemployment in general was the overwhelming issue; 9.7 per cent pointed to the high cost of living; 8.7 per cent said corruption; and 4.3 per cent pinpointed unemployment among youth to round out the top five issues.

All other responses, including poverty, bad roads, government bureaucracy, housing and bank fraud fell below the two per cent mark.

Pollster Anderson noted that crime and violence remains top of the mind for most Jamaicans.

“Close to half of all persons interviewed (49 per cent) spontaneously cited [crime and violence] as the biggest problem. It is spontaneous because no prompts or possible answers were given to the respondents. This was a totally open question and the interviewers recorded the precise answers that were given,” he said.

“This view was held equally by males and females and from an age perspective, mainly so by persons 45 years and over, where 61 per cent of the older persons – 55 years and over – cited this as the biggest problem,” said Anderson.

While 35 per cent of young voters between age 18 and 24 also noted that crime is the most pressing problem, it was not as glaringly singled out. Unemployment was also considered to be a big issue among this group, with 27 per cent citing an urgent need for more jobs.

Leading expert on national security and economic development at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Professor Anthony Clayton, told The Gleaner that the poll findings accurately reflect reality.

IMPEDIMENTS TO JA’S DEVELOPMENT

“Crime and corruption are by far the most effective impediments to Jamaica’s development and prosperity, and have been bleeding the country for five decades. The economy would be from three to 10 times bigger today if it had not been for the dreadful price we have paid for crime and corruption,” Clayton said on Tuesday.

Murder has been an albatross around the neck of successive administrations with the country’s homicide rate now at roughly 45 per 1,000 people.

Between 1962, when Jamaica gained Independence, and 2022, 44,728 Jamaicans have been murdered, data from the Jamaica Constabulary Force indicate.

Between January and March 5 this year, some 210 people have been killed, a 20 per cent reduction year-on-year.

Police Commissioner Major General Antony Anderson attributed 71 per cent of murders in 2022 to gang violence.

Clayton said that young men in their teens and early twenties are the main perpetrators and victims of violence, a vicious cycle all Jamaicans are caught up in.

“There is no one left in Jamaica who has not been a victim or does not have a friend or a family member that has been a victim of robbery, fraud, theft, or violence. The stress and the sense of threat that results from this is a major cause of the aggression and incivility that we all experience in everyday life,” he said.

Clayton said that while there have been many proposed solutions, crime and corruption are now deeply embedded in the Jamaican society and have resisted every attempt to bring about a permanent transformation.

This, he said, has left Jamaica in an increasingly isolated position, as homicide rates have been falling in most parts of the world for the last three or four decades.

Clayton noted that between 1990 and 2015, gang-related and domestic homicides in North America and Western Europe fell by 46 per cent, in Asia by 38 per cent and in Oceania by 22 per cent.

“There are very few countries that have not seen homicide rates fall over that time and, sadly, Jamaica is one of them,” he said.

Clayton said this indicates that there are strong social and cultural forces keeping the rate high.

“One of them is that we have not yet succeeded in targeting the facilitators; the corrupt politicians, attorneys, and businessmen who facilitate money laundering and the diversion of public funds to organised crime.

“Another is that many children are exposed to violence when young and are more likely to be violent themselves when they grow up. We will have to address all these issues if we are to free Jamaica of the intolerable, ruinous and deadly burden of crime,” the UWI professor said.

Professor at the University of Missouri in the United States, Dr Christopher Charles, told The Gleaner on Tuesday that the findings reveal “nothing new”.

He said crime, violence, and lawlessness have been plaguing the country for years across governments.

“The situation is so bad that just under one half of Jamaicans argue that the mayhem by criminals is the country’s biggest challenge. The people place crime above the high cost of living, housing shortage, and transportation problems which shows the seriousness with which Jamaicans view the crime problem.

“The best minds in the country with the relevant expertise have to come together with the support of Government and civil society and use a public health approach to address the crime problem,” he said.

kimone.francis@gleanerjm.com