News

Few women firing but many calling the shots in gangs, facilitating money, murder, mayhem

They may not be the ones pulling the trigger or bludgeoning those who dare test their authority. Still, women in Jamaica’s most organised crime syndicates play roles that are no less deadly, and heinous, and which continue to challenge law enforcement.

They operate under a different code; one usually buttressed by familial or intimate ties with Jamaica’s most ruthless. So, their loyalty is unshakeable, and so, too, is their silence.…

The Operation Restoration Christian school sits amid a line of patched-up housing blocks and streetside cookshops in Trench Town. In an area known as one of Kingston’s inner-city crime hotspots, it was founded as a haven for children caught up in gang violence.

Inside, boys in smart khaki uniforms and girls in yellow shirts and pleated burgundy skirts sit chatting in groups. The classrooms are adorned with images of Jamaican heroes, such as Marcus…

The Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI) has launched a digital platform that seeks to analyze the China diplomatic and economic projects in Antigua and Barbuda and the Caribbean region.

The China-CARICOM Portal, unveiled during an Inter-American Dialogue webinar, maps over 800 Chinese projects across participating Caribbean nations between 2013 and 2023.

“This tool will serve as an essential resource for policymakers and researchers to make informed decisions about engagement with China,” explained Alexander Coswell…

Upper school male students from eight secondary institutions in St. Thomas are the focus of the Angelic Ladies Society’s latest social project, ‘Echoes of Change – The Problem with the P’.

Through the engagement, the boys will participate in sensitisation workshops covering topics such as sexual violence, inappropriate touching, sex videos, the age of consent and healthy masculinity.

The organisation, which successfully executed a similar project last year focusing on young girls, has received European Union (EU) funding…

Jamaica’s budget scorecard has risen by two percentage points since 2019 to reach a still insufficient score of 41, according to the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI) which last Thursday evening presented the results of an open budget survey assessing the openness of the Government of Jamaica’s 2023 budget.

Jamaica’s average score of 41 resulted from scores across three categories – Transparency (50), Participation (18), and Oversight (54).

The score ranks Jamaica at 55th out of the 125 countries assessed in the…

Horace Chang, deputy PM of country with highest homicide rate, praises US attorneys generals’ support for legislation.

Jamaica’s deputy prime minister has welcomed a campaign by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, to push through new measures and legislation to tackle gun trafficking from the US to the Caribbean.

Horace Chang, who is also Jamaica’s minister of security,…