Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer
A GROUP studying the performance of the Jamaican economy since Independence has fingered garrison communities as the epicentre of violence and criminality in Jamaica.
The researchers identify the 1970s as a "turning point" in the escalation of violence in the society, simultaneously with macro-economic instability.
"This is where the culture of violence and criminality developed, and it developed specifically through the garrison communities that were developed during the political upheavals at that time," reports Tres-Ann Cooke, a researcher on the Jamaica Economy Project, based at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona.
DEVELOPMENT OF THESE GARRISONS
"We found that the development of these garrisons led the way for the institutionalisation or entrenchment of that violent culture (which) has translated into this massive crime rate we are seeing now," says Cooke, a doctoral candidate in criminology at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. Cooke, the rapporteur for the crime group in the Jamaica Economy Project, and other overseas-based participants, recently updated Gleaner editors on the preliminary findings of the year-long project. The team was led by UWI economist Dr. Damien King.
Cooke dismisses the stereotypical view of Jamaicans being inherently violent. "Violence was developed. It was not something that was ingrained like the typical myth suggests," she posits. "The facts do not really support this. What we have found is that over time, our country, the culture of Jamaicans, has developed into one of violence."
But the researchers further charge that garrison communities drive the country's large informal economy in order to sustain themselves.
FUELLED BY DRUG-RELATED CRIMES
"From looking at the informal economy, we found that this was fuelled by drug-related crimes and from money laundering," relates Cooke. "Most of these are coming through the development of garrisons (whose leaders) over the years ... who established themselves and went out establishing and concretising themselves within the informal economy."
In an address to the Institute of Chartered Accountants last year, attorney-at-law Shirley-Ann Eaton estimated that the international narcotics trade was prepared to spend locally approximately US$10 billion of its world-wide US$500-billion enterprise. She added that Caribbean officials were receiving at least US$1.2 billion per year in political funding from drug traffickers annually to fund political machinery.
A committee of Parliament is currently reviewing the Proceeds of Crime bill, which Government hopes to pass into law in order to confiscate the assets of criminals. Other legislation has also been drafted to address extortion.
The Jamaica Economy Project researchers underscore that because the burgeoning underground economy is largely outside the tax net, it contributes to the country's chronic problem of revenue shortage.
