Rethinking the Approach to Crime and Development

By: Claude Robinson

The report documents well known, if somewhat unpleasant, facts: Jamaica has the highest homicide rate in the Caribbean and the third-highest murder rate worldwide in recent years, with about 60 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. Only El Salvador and Honduras have higher rates, with 66 and 82.1 murders respectively per 100,000 people. Also, Jamaica has the highest number of youth convicted of crime in the region.

Direct cost of crime was US$529 million (J$46.5 billion) in 2005; missed tourism earnings was just over US$91 million. These, and other costs, amounted to as much as 3.21 per cent of Jamaica's gross domestic product (GDP).

Jamaica was not alone. "Overall, youth crime is costing Caricom countries between 2.8 and four per cent of GDP," stated the report, as it noted that the number of criminal gangs operating throughout the region is on the rise. Over the past 12 years, gang-related homicide has been increasing in all territories studied, with the exception of Barbados and Suriname.

Latin America and the Caribbean, home to 8.5 per cent of the world population, accounted for 27 per cent of the world's homicides.

The human and material cost of crime in the region is catalogued in the UNDP Caribbean Human Development Report 2012, launched in Port-of-Spain, capital of Trinidad and Tobago, last Wednesday. It was the first time that the UN Development Programme (UNDP) focused its human development lens on the Caribbean.

The report, which draws on the expertise and experience of academics, researchers and policy makers across the region, includes findings from a large-scale survey among 11,555 citizens in Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago, the seven countries in the study.

A key message of the report is that Caribbean countries need to focus on a model of security based on the human development approach, whereby citizen security is paramount, rather than on the traditional state security model, whereby the protection of the state is the chief aim.

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