The Economic and Societal Costs of Sexuality Based Discrimination in Jamaica
Any country which wants to
maximize the productivity of its
workforce, and to harness the full
potential of its people towards economic
growth and development, must proactively
reduce or eliminate discrimination against
groups of people who are excluded
from full participation as a result of that
discrimination. In Jamaica, where discrimination against
LGBT people is rife and amply documented,
such discrimination results in a senseless
waste of human potential, with negative
implications for the country’s economic
growth prospects. This report examines
the landscape of sexual orientation and
gender identity discrimination in Jamaica,
and how that discrimination can be
directly and indirectly tied to negative
economic and social outcomes and
thwarted developmental prospects.
The report finds that sexual orientation
and gender identity discrimination,
together with the criminalization of male
same-sex intercourse, and the absence
of comprehensive anti-discrimination
legislation, hinders Jamaica’s economic
growth and developmental prospects.
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Guns Out: The Splintering of Jamaica's Violent Gangs
Gangs, organized crime, and violence, and the nexus between them, are Jamaica’s biggest citizen security challenge. With the second highest murder rate in the Latin America and Caribbean region in 2019, Jamaica’s extreme violence is often attributed to gangs. Between 2008 and 2018, gang-related violence was responsible for 56 percent of murders in Jamaica, with a high of 78 percent in 2013. Jamaica is a violent country in other ways, with extraordinarily high rates of domestic violence, including intimate partner (IPV) and gender-based violence (GBV). Jamaica’s violence problem is so pernicious that the country has come to be described by academics and policy makers as having a “culture of violence.”
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Searching for Lessons from Two Decades of Anti-Violence Interventions in August Town
Jamaica’s extraordinarily high levels of violence undermine citizen
security and retard economic growth. Over the past two decades,
dozens of state and non-state actors, in a desire for peace, have
initiated several violence-reduction/intervention programmes in
August Town, a poor, violence-plagued community in Kingston.
So when, in 2016, the community recorded “zero murders,” all of
Jamaica took note. After decades of extraordinarily high violence,
with a homicide rate of 120 per 100,000, how did August Town
achieve this? With reference to August Town’s “zero murders” in
2016, this study explored the various theories with the objective
to distil “lessons” from August Town’s experience, particularly
as it regards anti-violence interventions, with the aim to build
knowledge on the different approaches to reducing violence in
high violence settings; and ultimately to inform GoJ decisions
regarding the direction of and investment in violence prevention
intervention programmes in violence-ridden communities.The study found that the panoply of anti-violence/violence reduction interventions was not sustained, and in the absence of consistent, quantitative programme impact evaluations, there was no way of truly knowing what effects they have had, whether positive or negative, or if they had any effect at all. Broadly speaking, there was no quantifiable evidence of any of these interventions having had any effect on the social, economic, and violence indicators for the community, which remain unchanged.
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Scamming, Gangs, and Violence in Montego Bay
Murder and extreme violence are at crisis levels in Montego
Bay. Montego Bay is also the birthplace and centre of the lottery
scamming industry and its offshoots, an industry that generates
millions of US dollars a year, and is thought to be connected
to the high murder and shooting rates in St. James. This study
considered the purported nexus between lottery scamming,
gangs, and the high murder rate in St. James by situating St.
James’ violence problem in its socio-economic context, and
reviewed the measures that have been taken over the past decade
to tackle both problems.
The birth and growth of scamming are a result of a confluence
of factors: enabling technology, extant criminal entrepreneurial
systems, foundations laid by decades of political violence,
high societal tolerance for criminality and violence, and an
environment of material scarcity. It has flourished because of
the poor social conditions, the inefficacy of law enforcement
and the justice system, the lack of legal income-earning
opportunities, and the large amounts of money that can be easily
“earned.” The scamming enterprise itself may be incidental to
the embeddedness of the corruption, criminality, and violence
that characterize St. James and its environs; another criminal
enterprise could supplant scamming, with similar effects, just as scamming supplanted the illegal drug trade.
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