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Dated data' - Cops question Ja's world murder ranking
BY COREY ROBINSON Sunday Observer staff reporter robinsonc@jamaicaobserver.com
Sunday, October 16, 2011
LOCAL police are questioning the currency of a United Nations study which ranked Jamaica has having the fourth highest homicide rate in the world.
The 2011 Global Study on Homicide, published two Fridays ago, ranks Jamaica behind Honduras, El Salvador, and Cote D'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in West Africa.
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In 2010, there were 82.1 homicides per 100,000 people in Honduras, 66 per 100,000 in El Salvador, and 56.9 per 100,000 in Cote D'Ivoire.
Jamaica recorded 52.1 murders for every 100,000 persons, the study revealed.
"The murder rate from last year would be significantly different from what it would be from January 1 to date. We would have significantly turned our rate around," said Deputy Commissioner of Police Glenmore Hinds, head of police operations.
Hinds suggested that the study — conducted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) — is aged as it would be based on the data collected in 2010. Findings using that data cannot reflect the country's current position, he said.
Homicides decreased from 1,682 in 2009 to 1,428 in 2010.
"2010 data would show a different murder rate than the 2011 year-to-date figure. We would have reduced murders by close to 300, year-to-date," explained Hinds. "To the extent that that [study] is [based on] 2010 data, that [ranking] would be so, but I suspect that if you were to use the 2011 data, Jamaica's murder rate would not be the fourth highest. It would be much lower than that," he argued.
However, while he's challenging the UN ranking, Hinds sees evidence of a level of achievement in the data.
"We were at number one; so it is an improvement," he said. "We are turning it around. We never got to where we are overnight. What we are proud of is that we have made a commitment to turning it around."
He attributed the change to tougher anti-gang measures such as those which followed the 2010 West Kingston unrest sparked by the security forces' effort to arrest former Tivoli Gardens don Christopher 'Dudus' Coke.
"Over the past five years, we have consistently seen where gangs are responsible for 70 per cent of our murders. We have demonstrated our willingness to tackle the gangs and to defeat them," said Hinds. "The more we begin to dismantle, disrupt and defeat our criminal gangs is the more we are going to see our murder rate trending down."
Despite repeated attempts, the Sunday Observer was unable to get a response from Security Minister Dwight Nelson or from his communication officer for this story.
A different picture was painted by Dr Herbert Gayle, anthropologist of social violence at the University of the West Indies. Gayle theorised that Jamaica's homicide situation may be more drastic than projected by the UN study.
"We have the highest murder per capita on average since the year 2000. So the fourth place; it's worse than that. Fourth place is probably the nicest way to say it," Gayle said.
"Our average murder rate since the year 2000 is 51 per hundred thousand, that's average. The average for El Salvador is about 47, as high as El Salvador is. South Africa and Colombia, their averages since the year 2000 are somewhere between 37 and 38," explained Gayle. "The average murder for Jamaica is 51, and that is the highest since the year 2000, the new millennium, for any country in the world."
Gayle, who has been conducting studies on violence and the Jamaica society -- some under the stewardship of the late Professor Barry Chevannes -- since 1994, downplayed what he called "the fuss" that police have been making about crime reduction.
"While the JCF is making all this fuss the people still don't feel safe. Nuh care wah unnuh a do right now we cyaan feel safe," bemoaned Gayle.
"If your murder rate was 64 and we come down to 53, how the hell do you expect anybody to feel safe? All of this pressure for people to say that they feel safe is like literally begging people to tell a lie on themselves, and it's ridiculous. Once your homicide rate is above 30 per hundred thousand you cannot feel safe," he argued.
"It does provide a kind of [good] message for the JCF and the other persons who are making this thing into a political propaganda. But while propaganda serves the purpose of making some people feel better about themselves, we have to focus on long-term planning, long-term results, and we have to teach the population not to expect the propaganda but to be patient," said Gayle.
"[We have to teach people] to work with the JCF and whichever government over a long or at least medium term to see how we can put the necessary things in place to reduce murder and violence generally," explained Gayle.
When a country reaches a point where its murder rate is as high as Jamaica's, he added, the population itself will begin to ask for a removal of people's human rights, and put pressure on the government to use brute force in order to regain control of social security.
These calls, he said, usually come from persons less affected by violence, and usually instruct the security forces to attack inner-city communities. The implications of this, he said, "are serious".
Like Gayle, Carolyn Gomes, head of human rights group Jamaicans For Justice, questioned the effectiveness of crime-fighting measures implemented by successive governments over the past decade.
"All the steps that have been taken to this point in time have proved ineffective in the long and medium term," said Gomes, who described the UNODC ranking as no surprise.
"All the recommendations for dealing with it (crime) as a long-term measure have been ignored by successive governments. They (government/police) spent the second half of last year boasting about the drop in the murder rate, and the drop in the serious crimes rate. For them, half the year was good and half the year was bad. So the first half of this year was looking good but now we have the predictable and predicted upturn in major crimes. This is because the holistic strategies have not been adopted," Gomes said, citing strategic reform proposals and community-based strategies as some of the crime-fighting measures the Government has not explored in any meaningful way.
According to the UN report, Jamaica's rate is affected by drugs and organised crime, the main factors blamed for the murder rates in Honduras, which recorded 6,200 killings in 2010, and El Salvador, which recorded 4,000 homicides in the same year.
BY COREY ROBINSON Sunday Observer staff reporter robinsonc@jamaicaobserver.com
Sunday, October 16, 2011
LOCAL police are questioning the currency of a United Nations study which ranked Jamaica has having the fourth highest homicide rate in the world.
The 2011 Global Study on Homicide, published two Fridays ago, ranks Jamaica behind Honduras, El Salvador, and Cote D'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in West Africa.
#slideshowtoggler, #slideshowtoggler a, #slideshowtoggler img { filter: none ! important; }
1/2 In 2010, there were 82.1 homicides per 100,000 people in Honduras, 66 per 100,000 in El Salvador, and 56.9 per 100,000 in Cote D'Ivoire.
Jamaica recorded 52.1 murders for every 100,000 persons, the study revealed.
"The murder rate from last year would be significantly different from what it would be from January 1 to date. We would have significantly turned our rate around," said Deputy Commissioner of Police Glenmore Hinds, head of police operations.
Hinds suggested that the study — conducted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) — is aged as it would be based on the data collected in 2010. Findings using that data cannot reflect the country's current position, he said.
Homicides decreased from 1,682 in 2009 to 1,428 in 2010.
"2010 data would show a different murder rate than the 2011 year-to-date figure. We would have reduced murders by close to 300, year-to-date," explained Hinds. "To the extent that that [study] is [based on] 2010 data, that [ranking] would be so, but I suspect that if you were to use the 2011 data, Jamaica's murder rate would not be the fourth highest. It would be much lower than that," he argued.
However, while he's challenging the UN ranking, Hinds sees evidence of a level of achievement in the data.
"We were at number one; so it is an improvement," he said. "We are turning it around. We never got to where we are overnight. What we are proud of is that we have made a commitment to turning it around."
He attributed the change to tougher anti-gang measures such as those which followed the 2010 West Kingston unrest sparked by the security forces' effort to arrest former Tivoli Gardens don Christopher 'Dudus' Coke.
"Over the past five years, we have consistently seen where gangs are responsible for 70 per cent of our murders. We have demonstrated our willingness to tackle the gangs and to defeat them," said Hinds. "The more we begin to dismantle, disrupt and defeat our criminal gangs is the more we are going to see our murder rate trending down."
Despite repeated attempts, the Sunday Observer was unable to get a response from Security Minister Dwight Nelson or from his communication officer for this story.
A different picture was painted by Dr Herbert Gayle, anthropologist of social violence at the University of the West Indies. Gayle theorised that Jamaica's homicide situation may be more drastic than projected by the UN study.
"We have the highest murder per capita on average since the year 2000. So the fourth place; it's worse than that. Fourth place is probably the nicest way to say it," Gayle said.
"Our average murder rate since the year 2000 is 51 per hundred thousand, that's average. The average for El Salvador is about 47, as high as El Salvador is. South Africa and Colombia, their averages since the year 2000 are somewhere between 37 and 38," explained Gayle. "The average murder for Jamaica is 51, and that is the highest since the year 2000, the new millennium, for any country in the world."
Gayle, who has been conducting studies on violence and the Jamaica society -- some under the stewardship of the late Professor Barry Chevannes -- since 1994, downplayed what he called "the fuss" that police have been making about crime reduction.
"While the JCF is making all this fuss the people still don't feel safe. Nuh care wah unnuh a do right now we cyaan feel safe," bemoaned Gayle.
"If your murder rate was 64 and we come down to 53, how the hell do you expect anybody to feel safe? All of this pressure for people to say that they feel safe is like literally begging people to tell a lie on themselves, and it's ridiculous. Once your homicide rate is above 30 per hundred thousand you cannot feel safe," he argued.
"It does provide a kind of [good] message for the JCF and the other persons who are making this thing into a political propaganda. But while propaganda serves the purpose of making some people feel better about themselves, we have to focus on long-term planning, long-term results, and we have to teach the population not to expect the propaganda but to be patient," said Gayle.
"[We have to teach people] to work with the JCF and whichever government over a long or at least medium term to see how we can put the necessary things in place to reduce murder and violence generally," explained Gayle.
When a country reaches a point where its murder rate is as high as Jamaica's, he added, the population itself will begin to ask for a removal of people's human rights, and put pressure on the government to use brute force in order to regain control of social security.
These calls, he said, usually come from persons less affected by violence, and usually instruct the security forces to attack inner-city communities. The implications of this, he said, "are serious".
Like Gayle, Carolyn Gomes, head of human rights group Jamaicans For Justice, questioned the effectiveness of crime-fighting measures implemented by successive governments over the past decade.
"All the steps that have been taken to this point in time have proved ineffective in the long and medium term," said Gomes, who described the UNODC ranking as no surprise.
"All the recommendations for dealing with it (crime) as a long-term measure have been ignored by successive governments. They (government/police) spent the second half of last year boasting about the drop in the murder rate, and the drop in the serious crimes rate. For them, half the year was good and half the year was bad. So the first half of this year was looking good but now we have the predictable and predicted upturn in major crimes. This is because the holistic strategies have not been adopted," Gomes said, citing strategic reform proposals and community-based strategies as some of the crime-fighting measures the Government has not explored in any meaningful way.
According to the UN report, Jamaica's rate is affected by drugs and organised crime, the main factors blamed for the murder rates in Honduras, which recorded 6,200 killings in 2010, and El Salvador, which recorded 4,000 homicides in the same year.
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