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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Jamaica cracks down on domestic violence with new laws aimed at better protecting victims

by

Newsdesk
393 days ago
20240122
Prime Minister of Jamaica Andrew Holness

Prime Minister of Jamaica Andrew Holness

Ja­maica adopt­ed Mon­day stronger do­mes­tic vi­o­lence laws as the gov­ern­ment aims to bet­ter pro­tect vic­tims on the is­land where peo­ple are re­luc­tant to re­port such cas­es to au­thor­i­ties.

Pro­tec­tion or­ders now in­clude ha­rass­ment and prop­er­ty dam­age, and the penal­ty for vi­o­lat­ing a pro­tec­tion or­der has in­creased from $65 to $6,450 and a po­ten­tial sen­tence of up to one year in prison.

The spouse or par­ent of a per­son be­ing threat­ened, as well as so­cial work­ers and chil­dren’s ad­vo­cates if they’re fil­ing an or­der on be­half of a child, can now re­quest such or­ders.

All these amend­ments were in­clud­ed in a bill ap­proved by Ja­maica’s Sen­ate in late De­cem­ber.

The gov­ern­ment al­so plans to ex­pand a hot­line, open more do­mes­tic vi­o­lence shel­ters across the is­land and pro­vide spe­cial train­ing to po­lice.

Of­fi­cials said that the hot­line, which be­gan op­er­at­ing in Sep­tem­ber, has dealt with more than 7,400 cas­es on the is­land of 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple. Of those cas­es, more than 5,200 were from fe­males and more than 2,200 from males.

The gov­ern­ment said a re­cent health sur­vey found that four in 10 women in Ja­maica “ex­pe­ri­ence some form of in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence.”

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