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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Jamaica records historic 14 week decline in murders

by

Newsdesk
22 days ago
20250621

Ja­maica is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a sus­tained pe­ri­od of re­duced vi­o­lence, with week­ly mur­der counts re­main­ing be­low 15 for 14 con­sec­u­tive weeks since March 2025, the longest such stretch in 25 years.

Ac­cord­ing to Deputy Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Dr. Ho­race Chang, the cur­rent quar­ter – span­ning April to June 2025 – is pro­ject­ed to record the low­est num­ber of mur­ders since the Ja­maica Con­stab­u­lary Force (JCF) be­gan col­lect­ing struc­tured, dis­ag­gre­gat­ed da­ta near­ly 25 years ago.

“Based on cur­rent pro­jec­tions, Ja­maica is ex­pect­ed to close this year with a mur­der rate of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 24 per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion. This would rep­re­sent the low­est rate since 1991. To put this in per­spec­tive, it means that more than half of our pop­u­la­tion – that is per­sons, 34 years old and younger – is now liv­ing in a Ja­maica that is safer than at any oth­er time in their life­time.”

He was speak­ing dur­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the Ja­maica Con­stab­u­lary Force (JCF) ‘Trans­for­ma­tions – Peo­ple, Qual­i­ty and Tech­nol­o­gy Ex­po 2.0’ here ear­li­er this week.

Chang ac­knowl­edged the ded­i­cat­ed ef­forts of po­lice per­son­nel is­land­wide, high­light­ing, in par­tic­u­lar, the sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in mur­ders record­ed in St. James and across the wider Area One Po­lice Di­vi­sion.

“To­day, we have seen a 75 per cent re­duc­tion, and dur­ing the month of May, there was on­ly one homi­cide in the en­tire St. James Di­vi­sion,” he in­di­cat­ed.

The Min­is­ter em­pha­sised that these are not mere­ly sta­tis­tics to be re­cit­ed but, rather, his­tor­i­cal bench­marks that re­flect a piv­otal shift in Ja­maica’s pub­lic safe­ty land­scape.

“These are mile­stones for a na­tion that has grap­pled for decades with the con­se­quences of crime and vi­o­lence. These in­di­ca­tors tell us that Ja­maica is en­ter­ing a new era – an era made pos­si­ble by sus­tained and fo­cused in­vest­ment in law en­force­ment by the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica,” he added.

Chang not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment has un­der­tak­en de­lib­er­ate pol­i­cy de­ci­sions and strate­gic in­ter­ven­tions aimed at trans­form­ing Ja­maica’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus in­to a more mod­ern, in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven, and com­mu­ni­ty-fo­cused sys­tem.

These in­clude strength­en­ing the JCF’s ca­pac­i­ty through re­cruit­ment, mod­ern train­ing, in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment, and en­hanced mo­bil­i­ty; mod­ernising the leg­isla­tive frame­work for polic­ing to equip law en­force­ment with the le­gal tools and au­thor­i­ty need­ed to dis­rupt and dis­man­tle crim­i­nal net­works; and im­ple­ment­ing tar­get­ed, in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven strate­gies that en­hance pub­lic safe­ty and up­hold the rule of law, as well as a com­pre­hen­sive, da­ta-dri­ven, and com­mu­ni­ty-based mod­el of so­cial in­vest­ment tar­get­ing vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties and ad­dress­ing the root caus­es of crime.

“We chose trans­for­ma­tion and not min­i­mal re­form. We chose to be­lieve in the men and women of the Ja­maica Con­stab­u­lary Force and to equip them to meet the needs of mod­ern polic­ing,” the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter said.

Mean­while, the Min­is­ter said the JCF ex­po­si­tion re­flects the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s op­er­a­tions as a mod­ern law-en­force­ment in­sti­tu­tion.

“As the Ja­maica Con­stab­u­lary Force rolls back the cur­tains… to pro­vide the na­tion with a mean­ing­ful glimpse in­to its in­ter­nal work­ings, its tech­nolo­gies, its plat­forms, its com­mand cen­tres, and its in­ves­tiga­tive ap­pa­ra­tus – we must all be re­mind­ed that these tools have val­ue on­ly if they con­tribute to the fun­da­men­tal mis­sion of crime re­duc­tion and pub­lic safe­ty. The re­sults are vis­i­ble in our com­mu­ni­ties and neigh­bour­hoods, all across the coun­try,” Chang said.

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