Capacity building
Arrested development: the political origins and socio-economic foundations of common violence in Jamaica
Assessing violence in Jamaica
Authors:
I. Duncan-Waite; M. Woolcock
Publisher:
Brooks World Poverty Institute, University of Manchester, 2008
Drawing on extensive field research in Kingston’s garrison communities, this paper argues that Jamaica generally, and Kingston in particular, experiences high levels of common violence. This is because Jamaica is in fact neither “cohesive” nor “democratic”, displaying instead important context-specific sources of social division and institutional weakness.
The authors argue that a powerful regional political economy clearly constrains Jamaica’s policy options. However given its nascent democratic institutions, external and domestic development actors alike can best assist efforts to lower common violence by recognising and rewarding what Jamaican civil society organisations are doing already. The Jamaican case is qualitatively unique, in that its origins and persistence lie squarely in Jamaica’s distinctive democratic politics. Competing groups in Jamaica are killing one another for control of the state, and with it its corresponding prestige, patronage, and power. As economic opportunities have declined in the private sector over the last decade, the stakes for control of the public sector have only intensified. Unlike elsewhere, Jamaica’s violence is not driven by disaffected “rebel groups”, disenfranchised “minority groups”, or disillusioned “civic groups” seeking to topple an autocratic or illegitimate regime using, terrorism, extortion, strikes, civil disobedience or the military. Rather, the two major political parties are locked in a deadly domestic war of attrition.
The following recommendations and conclusions are provided:
- weak governments, mismanaged economies, and divided societies do indeed fuel violence in Jamaica as elsewhere
- more attention needs to be given to the importance of understanding how, and by whom, policies might be implanted
- expand and strengthen community consultative committees, and legislate their terms of reference
- encourage the private sector to form active partnerships with poor urban communities through a national Adopt-a-Community program
- launch a “Death Swap” program, in which guns would be swapped for education and job credits
- improve police effectiveness and police-community relations.
