Jamaica has had one of the highest murder rates in the world for years, ranking third after South Africa and Brazil in the latest U.N. estimates, despite its reputation as a happy-go-lucky island of sun, sand and reggae. Overall, 505 people have been slain this year, most of them young, unemployed men who belong to heavily armed drug gangs that compete for turf in poor neighborhoods in and around Kingston. A total of 185 people were killed in May and June, most of them in the capital (Koyaleski 1999).
According to Hyacinth Ellis (1988), reported criminal violence against the person represented by recorded murder and manslaughter statistics was consistent but relatively low during the 19th and 20th century. Up to the mid-1950s the annual average for murder and manslaughter was 33 cases. The period from 1972-1979 showed an annual average of 366 cases, while for 1980 alone, 943 cases of murder and manslaughter were recorded. Shooting with intent, this appeared in the records for the first time in the 1950s, totaled well over 2,000 cases in 1980. This is very appalling as the murder and manslaughter rates are increasing as time passes, with no sign of a significant decrease.
According to Robert D. Putman social capital is destroyed by crime and violence. Social capital refers to features of social organization, such as trust, norms, and networks that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions. Crime and violence have devastating effects on social capital. The norms of trust and reciprocity are replaced by the ‘war of all against all’. Organizations that are based on the community and other social networks, which are increasingly deemed as critical for growth and poverty reduction, suffer gradual wear down. One of the clearest impacts of violence in Jamaican communities according to a World Bank study done on poverty is the social fragmentation that results, social capital. Community members are affected by crime and violence which does not allow them to associate with one another. Many recreation centers, dance halls, youth clubs, and sports facilities no longer function because of crime and violence. The study found that the increase in crime and violence makes it increasingly difficult for any sort of community organizations not based on fear and coercion to function.
Crime and violence unfavourably affects the stock of physical capital in several ways. The most obvious is the outright destruction of the physical infrastructure, like roads, public facilities (through acts of vandalism), and major installations such as electric power generating facilities. Beyond that, crime and violence have a negative impact on the overall investment climate. They can contribute to a reduction in investment in physical infrastructure. The stagnation of the tourist industry in Jamaica is often attributed to the lack of new investment in hotels and other tourist infrastructure caused by increasing crime and violence. In the October 26th issue of the Business Observer Jamaica’s crime was put on the forefront. A British Foreign Office travel advisory, warned UK citizens about violent crime in Jamaica, which appeared in the pages of two of the country’s major newspapers, raising fears that British tourists will be scared away from the island. Therefore here we see that Jamaica’s crime and violence can affect the tourist sector of the island.
Crime Trends reports done in Jamaica identified poverty as a primary cause of gang violence, since low income in the family can lead to the separation of children from their loved ones. Poverty is also said to be the reason there are children working as sex slaves in the islands tourism sector. It may also be responsible for juveniles transporting drugs on behalf of South American cartels. Overall, poverty increases the vulnerability of both children and adults to commit criminal activity.
Another factor that contributes to the high levels of crime and violence in Jamaica is the high unemployment rates. Unemployment rates in Jamaica are high averaging around 15.5%. It is difficult for unskilled youths, especially school dropouts, to enter the labour force because of the high unemployment rates. Many of these unemployed youths have dropped out of the education system and are left with large amounts of free time, no skills, and few prospects for employment. This has led many, particularly male youth, to become involved with drugs and criminal activity. Several recent studies done in the Jamaica, show that the perpetrators of most crime are males between 16 and 34 years of age. Many are unemployed or unskilled labourers. Over the last year, Jamaica has lost at least 11,000 jobs, largely in the financial and manufacturing sector, and some say that the unemployment rate is closer to 20%.
In November 2002, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released a report on “Crime Trends in the Caribbean and Responses” noting that the Jamaican drug culture has been a contributed factor to the increasing crime rate. Cocaine originating from Latin America cultivation centers is transported to North America by various routes, many of which pass through the Caribbean islands, including Jamaica. The boom in transnational narcotics networks resulted in an explosive expansion of drug-related crime in Jamaica and the evolution of more sophisticated “white collar” crimes such as money laundering and computer-assisted fraud. The report also concludes that a strong correlation exists between narcotrafficking and the spike in the homicide rate.
So the question now is can this crisis be resolved by social psychology? Crime and violence is tied in some ways to many sociological concepts. Prejudice and discrimination, which includes racism, sexism and heterosexism, can be used to explain many of the crimes that occur in Jamaica. Prejudice can be defined as an attitude (usually negative) towards members of some group based solely on their membership in that group. Discrimination refers to negative actions detected towards those individuals. A large amount of the crimes that happen in Jamaica are connected to racism, sexism and heterosexism. Too many times we hear on the news that people were killed because of crimes of prejudice against race, sex and sexual preferences. Racism as we know is the discrimination of a person our group based on their race. Sexism is any attitude, action or institutional structure that subordinates a person because of his or her sex. Heterosexism is defined as a system of cultural beliefs, values, and customs that exhaults heterosexuality and denies, denigrates and stigmatizes any non-heterosexual form of behaviour or an identity. This is true of the Jamaican society in which heterosexism is viewed as an abomination.
Another sociological concept that may be a causal factor in the high levels of crime and violence in Jamaica is social influence. Social influence is the exercise of social power by a person of a group to change the attitudes or behaviour of others in a particular direction. Thus social influence leads to people conforming, obeying or complying with perceived group pressure. This can be good and bad, because if in a violent setting, such as being in a gang, one can conform to acts of violence.
Solomon Asch performed a study on conformity. Asch and many other psychologists believed that a person’s behavior can be manipulated by applying group pressures to conform. In this experiment the visual material consisted of pairs of cards with three different lengths of vertical lines (called comparison lines) on one and a single standard line the same length as one of the three comparison lines on the other. The subject would arrive at the experiment room on time and find seven other subjects already seated in a row. The subject would sit in the empty chair at the end of the row. The experimenter would reveal the pairs of cards and then ask which of the three comparison lines is the same in length as the standard line. The seven subjects that arrived first were in fact confederates of the experimenter. The procedure of the experiment was to see if the one subject would conform to the group when the answer was obviously not so. Approximately 75% of them went along with the group’s consensus at least once. Subjects agreed with the group on the incorrect answer about one-third of the time. Therefore, the powerful effects of group pressures to conform were clearly demonstrated in Asch’s study. If an individual was willing to conform to a group of people they hardly know about a clearly incorrect judgment, how strong would this be in a real life setting.
Another experiment which involves obedience, and probably is the best example of obedience, was done by Stanley Milgram. This experiment consisted of ordering a naïve subject to administer electric shocks to a victim. It is important to note that the victim was an accomplice of the experimenter. A simulated shock generator was used, which had voltage levels ranging from 15 to 450 volts. The experiment basically involved a subject (there were 40 males in this experiment), administering electric shocks to a victim (accomplice) if they answered a question incorrectly. In the event that the victim answered the question incorrectly the experimenter would instruct the subject to administer the electric shocks, which increased in voltage with every wrong answer. Results showed that there was a consensus among the respondents on the expected behaviour of hypothetical subjects. All respondents predicted that only an insignificant minority would go through to the end of the shock series, that is, 450 volts of electricity. They also predicted that few if any subjects would go beyond the designation Very Strong Shock, which is 195 to 240 volts. The result of the experiment deviates radically from the predictions made. A total of 26 subjects administered 450 volts and all respondents went beyond the Very Strong Shock. Therefore more than half of the subjects went all the way in administering the shocks.
This experiment yielded very surprising findings. The first is that subjects have learned from birth that it is a fundamental breach of moral conduct to hurt another person against his will. Yet, 26 subjects complied with the experimental commands. Therefore we can assume that the individual who is commanded by a legitimate authority ordinarily obeys. Obedience comes easily and often. It is a ubiquitous and indispensable feature of social life. Hence, if persons can obey when told by an authority figure to administer electric shocks to an innocent individual, then we can assume that a person may obey an authority figure if told to commit a crime or an act of violence.
So, in conclusion we see that the phenomenon of crime and violence is a widespread problem that Jamaica is facing right now. For twenty years crime and violence in Jamaica has increased without any decrease in strength. There are many factors that contribute to crime and violence in Jamaica, poverty, high levels of unemployment and drug trafficking and use. Also shown in this paper is that social psychology can be used to combat the evils of crime and violence in Jamaica. Experiments on prejudice and discrimination and social influence shows that there are ways we can understand the backgrounds of crime and violence, so we can then try to eliminate this problem that is plaguing or country.
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