Andrew Holness | Pressing the gas on dismantling gangs

What was to be a day for honouring our heroes and our highest ideals as a country ended with yet another manifestation of the organised criminal violence that plagues Jamaica. The murder of five people in east Kingston blighted Heroes Day for the victims’ families, the community, and the entire country.

That terrible incident disrupted over a year of relative peace in Pleasant Heights, Rockfort, which unfortunately has a history of volatility. Upon visiting the community the following morning, I was struck by the evident pride and investment the residents have put into their homes, no doubt reflecting their ambitions to prosper in peace. Notwithstanding the citizens’ desires for normalcy and freedom from fear and violence, Pleasant Heights, and communities like it across Jamaica, cannot know sustained peace as long as they are also home to organised criminal gangs.

Jamaica’s high murder rate, for which we have ranked among the world’s top-10 for three decades, begins and ends with gangs. In 2023, gang violence accounted for 68 per cent of homicides. Interpersonal conflicts made up about 20 per cent of the homicides, but even those overwhelmingly involve members of the same criminal networks. If we removed murders stemming from organised violence, the homicide rate for the general population would be about 4.3 per 100,000 people — lower than the world average.

TAKE HOLD OF COMMUNITIES

Gangs take hold of communities like Pleasant Heights, and the so-called “dons” present themselves as benevolent “elders” who protect residents; these are merely criminals and low-lifes who plan and organise acts of violence for their own benefit and ego. Violence is the means by which they compete with other gangs over turf, eliminate rivals within their own ranks, and terrorise and extort residents. The promise of power, money, and respect is how dons lure young men into throwing their lives away as foot-soldiers in endless conflict. We know this, not only because we live it, but the data bear it out: those involved in the ecosystem of organised violence, particularly young men, are 136 times more likely to be victims of homicide compared to the general population.

Jamaicans want the violence to cease. A recent national survey found that 48 per cent of Jamaicans believe that “crime and violence” is the biggest problem facing the country, far outranking any other issue. The Latin American Public Opinion Project regional survey finds that, for the past 10 years, Jamaicans have said that “crime and security” is the country’s most important problem. On the overarching problem of crime, the country has come a long way over that same period of time. Major crimes, such as rapes, robberies, break-ins, and aggravated assaults have continually declined for a decade; there has been a 60-per-cent drop since 2013. However, more than other crimes, the frequency of murders and shootings has the greatest bearing on our perceptions of security.

That is why we have been investing so heavily in the capabilities of the security and justice apparatus to counter organised crime. We have considerably increased the resources available to the security forces since 2017. Higher budget allocations for investments in upgrading and acquisition of facilities and equipment for the security forces to improve their visibility, responsiveness, intelligence capabilities, and, most importantly, their bite.

The government has spent on average of $9.7 billion on capital investments annually since 2016, tripling the average annual amount of the previous eight years. To augment the justice system’s efficacy in dismantling gangs, we passed critical amendments to the Suppression of Criminal Organisations Act—commonly referred to as the Anti-Gang Act— in 2021 to allow for members of a gang to be prosecuted collectively, not merely as individuals, making it possible to imprison entire criminal networks over a shorter period. The Law Reform legislation we passed in 2017 provides for targeted measures such as the zones of special operations.

These investments have yielded returns. When we assumed office in 2016, homicides were on an upward trend, having increased by 20 per cent in the previous year, and there were 350 active gangs in the country. Between that time and 2023, we progressively eroded those organised criminal networks down to 185 active gangs, and to 158 today. The murder rate is down by 20 per cent this year compared to the same period in 2023, which follows an 11-per-cent decline from the corresponding period in 2022. This represents sustained progress, and we are on track to record fewer than 1,000 murders by year’s end—fewer than we have experienced in 20 years.

NOT FEELING IMPROVEMENTS

We are not feeling these improvements, however. Despite Jamaicans being safer than they have been in several years, and less likely to report having been a victim of a crime than any other country in the region except for El Salvador, the climate of insecurity remains; nearly a quarter of the population feels unsafe in their neighbourhoods. Exacerbating those feelings of insecurity is the shock value of mass shooting events, which have been on the rise since last year.

Beyond progress revealed in the statistics, our goal is a Jamaica in which we all feel secure, so there is still more work to do. 158 gangs are 158 too many. A thousand murders are a thousand too many. We will continue doing what we know works—states of emergency for short-term stabilisation and pacification, and targeted anti-gang security operations. In the short and medium term, continued strengthening of the security forces and the justice system.

Going forward, we must also advance efforts to transform communities, such as Pleasant Heights, so that, after we dismantle the gangs present in the area, new ones cannot take root. Residents of these communities must reject the gangs unequivocally, and they must feel assured that the government is there to protect them. Moreover, Jamaicans generally should support the security forces in their efforts by providing information where possible and being respectful of the hard work they do on our behalf. That is how we, as a country, arrive at a place where all communities become inhospitable to gangs, and there will be no safe haven from justice.

Our priority, our focus, is eradicating gangs, within a broader commitment to dismantling the entire ecosystem of organised violence. The dream of a Jamaica that is one of the more peaceful countries, and not one of the most violent, is achievable and it exists at the end of that campaign. We cannot afford to change course, or slow down. We must press forward.

Andrew Holness is prime minister of Jamaica and member of parliament for West Central St Andrew. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com