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For despite their evil reputations as dens of iniquity and criminal havens, it's not clear that the majority of Jamaicans want garrisons abolished. Many seem to feel this would let the crime genie out of the inner-city bottle full force into the wider society.
The unspoken question is: are garrisons a form of social control? Are dons the bakra massas of our time, keeping the 'ghetto dwellers/field slaves' under control so the 'rest of society/plantation great house' can go on with business mostly as normal?
Unholy social contract
Maybe it's just another wild theory. But a friend insists that, no matter their origins, garrisons are now part of an unholy social contract. The uptown powers that be - politicians and businessmen - implicitly say "Don man, control downtown and do what you want. Just keep your gunboys from troubling us uptown". So the dons do as they wish, deal drugs and impregnate 12-year-old girls or whatever, but are never touched. Unless they get too big for their britches, when they are either eliminated or jailed - like Burry Boy, Feather Mop, Jim Brown, Willie Haggart and Zekes.
Why does Jamaica, despite being poorer and more violent, have nothing like Trinidad kidnapping problem? I know Trinidad businessmen who have relocated to Jamaica because of kidnap threat back home and the perceived lack of it here. Prominent businessmen in Trinidad and Tobago don't move without personal armed bodyguards. But even the biggest of the big shots here go about normal life on their own.
Is it that downtown dons don't want uptown big men to feel threatened? For if the 'powers that be' feel the social contract is no longer benefiting them, they might put an end to all garrisons and dons. Maybe that's why uptown upsurges of prominent crimes are so frequently followed by police or army garrison incursions. The message is clear - "Listen don man, get your fryers under control. Or we might decide to clean up the whole mess down there and wipe out your little kingdom with it."
Of the 1,570 Jamaicans killed violently last year, probably 1,000- plus were inner-city males under 30, meaning 1,000 less potential mates for their female counterparts. Which translates to 1,000 extra available young girls per annum for big men of all stripes - dons, businessmen and politicians.
Garrison society
It's unlikely our powers that be deliberately set out to create this diabolic state of affairs, or even consciously see it as such. But when a dynamic creates not only a safer environment for those in charge, but also an excess of potential sexual partners, well, it's certainly not in the interests of those who run things t the situation fundamentally.
Are garrisons how we manage realities like 85 per cent of out-of- wedlock births, less than 40 per cent of children with registered fathers, and 82 per cent of UWI entrants being female? Are garrisons society's way of dealing with our hordes of fatherless, uneducated, rootless young men, either by ruthless don control, or regular culling by police and internecine gang warfare?
The unspoken question is: are garrisons a form of social control? Are dons the bakra massas of our time, keeping the 'ghetto dwellers/field slaves' under control so the 'rest of society/plantation great house' can go on with business mostly as normal?
Unholy social contract
Maybe it's just another wild theory. But a friend insists that, no matter their origins, garrisons are now part of an unholy social contract. The uptown powers that be - politicians and businessmen - implicitly say "Don man, control downtown and do what you want. Just keep your gunboys from troubling us uptown". So the dons do as they wish, deal drugs and impregnate 12-year-old girls or whatever, but are never touched. Unless they get too big for their britches, when they are either eliminated or jailed - like Burry Boy, Feather Mop, Jim Brown, Willie Haggart and Zekes.
Why does Jamaica, despite being poorer and more violent, have nothing like Trinidad kidnapping problem? I know Trinidad businessmen who have relocated to Jamaica because of kidnap threat back home and the perceived lack of it here. Prominent businessmen in Trinidad and Tobago don't move without personal armed bodyguards. But even the biggest of the big shots here go about normal life on their own.
Is it that downtown dons don't want uptown big men to feel threatened? For if the 'powers that be' feel the social contract is no longer benefiting them, they might put an end to all garrisons and dons. Maybe that's why uptown upsurges of prominent crimes are so frequently followed by police or army garrison incursions. The message is clear - "Listen don man, get your fryers under control. Or we might decide to clean up the whole mess down there and wipe out your little kingdom with it."
Of the 1,570 Jamaicans killed violently last year, probably 1,000- plus were inner-city males under 30, meaning 1,000 less potential mates for their female counterparts. Which translates to 1,000 extra available young girls per annum for big men of all stripes - dons, businessmen and politicians.
Garrison society
It's unlikely our powers that be deliberately set out to create this diabolic state of affairs, or even consciously see it as such. But when a dynamic creates not only a safer environment for those in charge, but also an excess of potential sexual partners, well, it's certainly not in the interests of those who run things t the situation fundamentally.
Are garrisons how we manage realities like 85 per cent of out-of- wedlock births, less than 40 per cent of children with registered fathers, and 82 per cent of UWI entrants being female? Are garrisons society's way of dealing with our hordes of fatherless, uneducated, rootless young men, either by ruthless don control, or regular culling by police and internecine gang warfare?
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