Unit­ed States au­thor­i­ties have con­firmed that Ja­maican drug lord Christo­pher “Dudus” Coke, has had 17 months shaved off his prison time here.

Coke, 56, is cur­rent­ly serv­ing a 23-year sen­tence at Fort Dix Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al In­sti­tu­tion in New Jer­sey, fol­low­ing his con­vic­tion on charges of traf­fick­ing over three tonnes of mar­i­jua­na and 30 pounds of co­caine to the U.S.

His orig­i­nal re­lease date of Ju­ly 4, 2030, has now been ad­just­ed to Jan­u­ary 25, 2029, ac­cord­ing to the US Fed­er­al Bu­reau of Pris­ons (FBOP).

The re­duc­tion comes un­der the First Step Act (FSA), en­act­ed in 2018, which al­lows in­mates to earn time off their sen­tences for good con­duct and par­tic­i­pa­tion in re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grams. Un­der the amend­ed leg­is­la­tion, qual­i­fy­ing in­mates can re­ceive up to 54 days per year off their sen­tence for ex­em­plary com­pli­ance with in­sti­tu­tion­al reg­u­la­tions.

The FBOP, in a state­ment to The Sun­day Glean­er on Feb­ru­ary 18, ex­plained that fur­ther re­duc­tions are pos­si­ble for pris­on­ers who suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete ap­proved ev­i­dence-based re­cidi­vism re­duc­tion (EBRR) pro­grams and pro­duc­tive ac­tiv­i­ties (PAs). In­mates may al­so re­ceive cred­it for time spent in cus­tody be­fore sen­tenc­ing.

Coke, the for­mer leader of the no­to­ri­ous Show­er Posse, which op­er­at­ed in Ja­maica, the Unit­ed States, Cana­da, and the Unit­ed King­dom, was ex­tra­dit­ed to the US in 2010. He plead­ed guilty to drug and gun traf­fick­ing, and rack­e­teer­ing charges in Au­gust 2011.

The Show­er Posse, which was co-found­ed by Coke’s fa­ther, Lester Lloyd ‘Jim Brown’ Coke, has been linked by US law en­force­ment to over 1,600 mur­ders. Jim Brown died un­der mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances in a fire in­side a Ja­maican prison on Feb­ru­ary 23, 1992, while await­ing ex­tra­di­tion to the US on sim­i­lar charges.

It re­mains un­clear whether the Show­er Posse still op­er­ates as a sig­nif­i­cant crim­i­nal en­ti­ty or has been dis­man­tled and law en­force­ment of­fi­cials have yet to con­firm if the gang re­mains among the 250 cur­rent­ly ac­tive in the coun­try.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Stephanie Lind­say, po­lice spokes­woman, de­clined to pro­vide de­tails on any in­tel­li­gence re­lat­ed to the gang, stat­ing that she would con­sult with the Counter Ter­ror­ism and Or­gan­ised Crime Di­vi­sion (C-TOC) be­fore re­spond­ing.

Mean­while, there are grow­ing con­cerns over the Next Gen­er­a­tion Gang, based in Coke’s west Kingston strong­hold of Tivoli Gar­dens. Ac­cord­ing to top po­lice of­fi­cials, the gang has been ex­pand­ing its in­flu­ence, with sev­er­al mem­bers of the Coke fam­i­ly re­port­ed­ly among its ranks. How­ev­er, au­thor­i­ties re­main un­cer­tain if Christo­pher Coke re­tains any con­trol over the group.

“My time in the west can on­ly speak to the in­flu­ence of the Tivoli Next Gen­er­a­tion gang, and cer­tain­ly, we are still see­ing ac­tiv­i­ties from the gang,” a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cial stat­ed. “I don’t know if he has any in­flu­ence over them or if there is a con­nec­tion with him and them.”

Coke’s ar­rest in June 2010 fol­lowed weeks of in­tense ten­sion in Kingston, trig­gered by the Ja­maican gov­ern­ment’s de­lay in ap­prov­ing his ex­tra­di­tion. A month be­fore his cap­ture, he mys­te­ri­ous­ly es­caped from Tivoli Gar­dens af­ter two days of vi­o­lent clash­es be­tween se­cu­ri­ty forces and heav­i­ly armed sup­port­ers. The bat­tles re­sult­ed in 69 civil­ian deaths and one Ja­maican De­fence Force of­fi­cer killed, mark­ing one of the dark­est chap­ters in the na­tion’s his­to­ry.

With his sen­tence re­duc­tion now con­firmed, spec­u­la­tion grows about Coke’s post-prison in­flu­ence and whether he will re­tain any hold over Ja­maica’s crim­i­nal land­scape up­on his re­lease.