Here’s to a happy new ‘Yeh!’: Thoughts for Jamaica as 2020 approaches

Many people take the turning of the calendar from one year to another as a time when they should make all kinds of promises. The change from 2019 to 2020 has many taking this practice to another level–seen every 10 years–of celebrating a new decade. Well, let’s squash that straight away: a decade is a span of 10 years, so every year is the start of a new decade. Spoiler! Sorry!

So, let me move into what I want to see in the new year, and it’s in the form of new “Yeh!”, as in things that I want to be much better than before and hope to have more of in my life. I am not going to open up about my personal emotional wants, however, so if you were looking for a bit of titillation, time to change channels.

I live in the highly dysfunctional country of Jamaica, which I love like cooked food, as we say there, so my first ‘yeh’ would be to simply see and experience less of that dysfunction. What would that mean?

• • Sidewalks on most roads: I am honestly appalled that a country with so much foot traffic finds it acceptable that people have to manoeuver at best concrete paths that are uneven and incomplete, and at worst, just non-existent. How can we lament road traffic deaths and at the same time ignore the risks to most pedestrians are subjected to across the country?
  • Events with politicians who arrive on time, make short speeches and tell us things honestly and from their hearts. Wow! That’s a lot to hope for in one year, so let me just hope for the first. However, as a society, we pay too little attention to timeliness and the negative impact that has on so many things and so many people. If we opine about wanting to grow, progress and do better, then it could start at few better places than putting the right value on time and the cost it imposes when it is wasted. I’m sorry to say that many of our politicians almost make a sport out of not being on time. As many notice, they are often put to shame by foreign diplomats and business people who are both timely and apologetic if they are not. Being ‘fashionably late‘ is one of those elements of ‘brand Jamaica’ we should drop like a hot potato.
  • Days and nights when I do not feel that I am a prisoner in my own home, not least because my windows have bars on them and my doorways are reinforced by grills. I’m not one who takes politicians at their word most of the time, but I understand their need to give hope to their constituents, so when the current PM stated during the 2016 election campaign that we would be able to “sleep with our doors open” under a JLP government, I know many took him at his word in terms of the safer world over which he would preside. When he came back early last year (2018) with assurances that he meant this, the palpable descent into political paranoia was a marker, and when that was followed byhttps://twitter.com/AndrewHolnessJM/status/991443356843724805?s=20

    I didn’t know what to think. To me ‘aspirational’ is politicode speak for ‘another unfulfilled promise’, which has also been taped to the much heralded growth ‘objective’ aka #5in4 (5% GDP growth within 4 years).

    • Roads that are not potholed like the surface of the Moon, and roads that collapse soon after they are built. Why should a country’s taxpayers endorse such shoddiness and finance such nonsense year after year and no one be made accountable? When Michael Lee-Chin suggested dismissing permanent secretaries for failing as ‘CEOs’, I hope his mind included any public sector agency (and for completeness, seeing the private sector act as it should for poor management).
    • More accountability across the board. If the many complaints are true–and I have no reason to disbelieve them, we need to haul people over the coals for their shoddy and persist lack of control and oversight over their basic functions. In that box, I will put our National Solid Waste Management Authority (garbage collection), National Works Agency (road construction and maintenance), National Water Company (public water supply) and Jamaica Public Service Company (electricity supply). These have in common a persistent inability of deliver on their core activities. That private sector shareholders have similar woes is also appalling, and the name of National Commercial Bank ranks high (woeful system upgrade that left many still without the banking services they expect nearly 6 months after the ‘upgrade’ was made); the following shows that reality through October:

    

    Our mobile phone companies seem to have a terrible reputation amongst their customers, with dropped calls, intermittent Internet access, and high charges being amongst frequent complaints made to the Office of Utilities Regulation.

    • Squatter settlements that have robbed many of our urban areas of any sense of cohesion and truly exemplify a perverse interpretation of our national motto, ‘out of many, one people’. Like so many problems in Jamaica, these persist because they were not nipped in the bud, or more cynically, they served the political purposes of a few to the social detriment of the many, remembering that the practice of wide-scale land-capture dates back to emancipation times in the mid-19th century.

    My second ‘yeh’ would be to enjoy more of the things that Jamaica offers and Jamaicans do that are really better than in most other places. My daughter, who is now away at school, helped me focus on these:

    • Our food. Whenever people meet Jamaican food most times the reaction is ‘Where has this been all my life?’; the flavours are amazing and the simple settings in which it is often served adds to that. It’s what many of us yearn for when we are abroad. When I bucked up on this lovely ‘pop-up’ restaurant in Portland, during a recent visit there, it was both unbelievable and so ‘very Jamaican’. Thank you, Belinda! Jamaica is full of places like this, and we need to cherish them and let many experience them, as well as our flourishing brand of food presented in lavish ways, sometimes seen in restaurants and events. If ‘brand Jamaica’ means something then the good of that has to include our cuisine.
    • Our landscape, or as my kid says “all of the countryside, outside Kingston”. We’re blessed with some breathtaking nature in our midst. More people are finding this as they try to escape the pressures of urban life, taking hikes, or a few days’ break, showing it off to visitors, or whatever. I love our mountains, and am lucky enough to get to be there often, but I also love our waterways. So, I leave you with some scenes from a rafting visit to the Rio Grande on a recent lazy afternoon.
    • Our people, who display the ‘sparkle’ that is in many a true Jamaica. Most of us do well to survive a day in Jamaica without going crazy, yet within that we meet people all the time who are just warm and kind and considerate. In my most optimistic moments, I believe that these people far outnumber those who are cold, mean, and inconsiderate. Sadly, more of the good people might have withdrawn as things like crime has set fear higher in their minds and they cannot beat that back unless they are either alone or with their loved ones–not a bad thing, in a way, but also a bad thing because good things in life are better if shared.
    • Qualitative signs that some are committed to improving the country. I’m lucky to have friends who do so much to show off the better side of Jamaica. I love Thalia Lyn and Island Grill. I adore Jean Lowrie-Chin and what she tries to do through ProComm and the Caribbean Community of Retired Persons. I admire those who are rebuilding downtown Kingston through ‘Kingston Creative’, which is showing the power to transform space through an appreciation of its aesthetics.

    

    Much still needs to be done to rebuild the community and reshape the economic base of downtown Kingston, but it’s the kind of change that many need to see to wash away the many negatives that beat us each day.

    I could add in this vein some of the new architectural developments that seem well-thought out and designed, such as the AC Hotel and certain residential developments, which compete for attention amidst some really poor construction projects and the all-too-present squatter developments.

If Jamaicans were more anally retentive

My favourite dictionary defines ‘anal retentive‘ as ‘extremely or excessively neat, careful, or precise‘. Faster than a speeding bullet, most Jamaicans would recognize those traits as almost totally un-Jamaican. Much of the country and its people are, sadly, seen as untidy, careless and imprecise, at the least, and wWe could add traits like untimely, vague or dismissive of truthfulness. I’ve written before that Jamaica is often seen best from afar, ie from the air or looked at from a boat offshore. As one gets closer to the ground, literally, what’s in front of the eyes is really a series of horrible eyesores. Yet, if one goes into most Jamaican homes, the places are neat and tidy and clean. There’s something about public spaces, however, that leaves much to be desired. What’s odd about that is how rare it is that public space is treated much differently if its truly public (like road verges and parks) or open to the public (like shop frontages–the inside of many corporate entities is more like homes, but I can also cite many instances where the surroundings are slap-dash, if that nice). Why is there this attitude of ‘can’t bother’, or ‘it’s alright like that’ (when it really isn’t). But, to recognize the usual crappy look, give us a few days before a major holiday, and out come the bands of workers with cans of paint and brushes to ‘spruce up’ the place. How about every month, week, or even more frequently? Please don’t argue that we need to give road cleaners work to do! They try early every day to remove small amounts of roadside debris, but that doesn’t change what one faces once the sun is up and we are about.

One thing I’ve noticed from the various places I’ve lived or visited which people argue are desirable places to live or whose people are worth copying is the tendency for high degrees of orderliness. I recall vividly being told in Switzerland that I was not allowed to sit on the grass as it needed to be protected and that I should go and sit on a bench in the park. The Swiss are renowned for neatness and precision, much exemplified in their famed watch industry and the state of their railways, whose safety and punctuality are legendary.

People often look at Jamaica and say the people are lawless. But, I’ve often noticed that this is far from true. If one looks carefully, it’s easy to see that many Jamaicans are conformists. What Jamaicans do often, however, is to ignore rules which they know from experience or the attitude of enforcers to be meaningless–ie the rules can be broken without much, if any personal costs. That’s what we see most evidently on our roads, where in the extreme one can see transgressions in plain sight of police officers which are ignored by said officers. People often counter with the observed orderly behaviour at the US Embassy, when people are applying for visas. But, if they misbehave or literally go out of line, they will lose their turn (expensively obtained for US$160). We are more in fear of transgressions on the road, but unless your eyes don’t really see, only a small minority of drivers run red lights (possibly, the scariest of incidents), or don’t stop at junctions, or drive on sidewalks. Yes, we can find instances of that, but I defy anyone to track incidents thoroughly and tell me that this is common behaviour. We know a good number of PPV drivers have done and do these things, but even they are not all birds of a feather. What we have observed is that many of those instances happen because most people know that nothing much happens to those who try these stunts, and we are also in the midst of many who validate these actions by either ignoring them as passengers or, worse, urge them on, because personal concerns about time and convenience trump all others. We do not witness what I did when I first visited Germany, and acting as if I were still in London, decided to cross a road when I saw a gap in traffic. “Nein!” I heard from about 20 mouths around me. Shocked, I looked around at a see of wagging fingers and an old lady pointing to the crossing light, whose figure was still red, meaning don’t cross. Meekly, I stepped back, and waited with the others for the light to change. On the contrary, we teach our children to cross in the gaps of moving vehicles, and hope that a hand held high will be seen as enough to give us the pass we need. So, of course, as adults, that’s how we will proceed. Watch how people cannot navigate the new designated lights crossings in places like Barbican: same old, wait for a gap. Worse still, people will ignore the crossing area and just traverse where they want to. I often see school children walk from the Texaco gas station on Jacks Hill Road/Barbican Road and cross as soon as possible, rather than walk the 5-10 yards to the designated crossing. Admittedly, we have made life more complicated by some badly-thought out road designs, but our nature has been nurtured to do the wrong things.

If someone were to say that it’s because Jamaicans tend towards laziness, I’d have to hesitate to agree. What I would say is that most don’t want to spend time and effort to do things well, and the inevitable result is that we have lots of examples of imperfection. The night chart below shows what most will understand as a basic truth: that one has to spend time and effort to do things well. But, perfection isn’t really where one wants to be, but much better can be a far cry from where we are.

Many people talk about ‘cool’ Jamaicans, but many of my compatriots are people who love expediency, and we love to ‘get away with it’ as much as possible. Now, that’s cool when it involves, say, ‘getting something for nothing’, but it’s uncool when a worker does nothing (or little) and expects to be paid something. I wont use the examples we often see of several men standing idly by watching one digs a hole; we don’t know the work flow, so may misinterpret the roles that are being played. Instead, I will cite a few examples that I have experienced and I witness often.

• Inability to complete tasks (phone calls unanswered; promises not kept; unfinished building works; road completed but furnishings missing for months, maybe years; holes dug but not filled for weeks, even months–all examples of essentially the same problem). My worst personal experience was the doctor who kept my daughter and me waiting for nearly 2 hours one evening for an appointment, and when we said we would leave, around 6pm, promised to call us the next day to reschedule. That was nearly 4 years ago, now, and I have still not had that call. Fortunately, my daughter was recovering and we have had the ailment treated elsewhere.
• Low standards accepted as the norm (our roads are a good example, so are many of the associated elements, such as sidewalks–if they exist). At its worst, that low standard means the absence of provisions, because someone thinks that just because it’s the norm elsewhere, it need not be the norm in Jamaica. Exhibit 1 could be many restrooms, where taps that don’t function, no soap to wash hands, no towel or paper to dry hands, no receptacle to place trash, doors with no handles, tiling that must have been done by people with poor sight and no sense of balance, are common features. Exhibit 2 could be the inability to understand that information (especially signs) is literally the guidepost many need. I remember when I used to visit Jamaica and my father would take me somewhere in the country and we had to find the route through landmarks, not road signs. These were not journeys to uninhabited places, but either no one saw the need or it was assumed that anyone needing to go to these places would figure out how to get there. We’ve lost some of that mystery in Jamaica, but when I drove from Montego Bay to Mandeville via Trelawny, I don’t think I would have arrived in a day without GoogleMaps. In most countries with developed road networks, there is a hierarchy of road signs from the local through regional destinations. But, this inability or unwillingness to inform is so pervasive. I’ve often contrasted how so many of our road projects end up with worse traffic, but one of the reasons is that the agencies doing work rarely seem to give advanced notice (and I’m sorry, sending out a press statement, beforehand, isn’t the answer that could be offered by some well-placed signs on roads, and offers of alternative routes). Exhibit 3 would be our absent national waste management, which is a series of downward spirals that start with lack of adequate equipment, resulting in erratic scheduling, descending into garbage that is collected and dumped en masse not sorted in places that do not control waste and become hazards themselves, which at worst end up ablaze, sending noxious fumes into the surrounding area. When economists talk about ‘vertical integration’ it’s not normally about how one designs enterprises to worsen what they try to do, but our waste mis-management ought to be studied by some keen student for its reverse application of economic principles.

It’s sometimes hard to separate these two traits, as they often result in similar outcomes, which are poor quality whatever, or incomplete products or services whatever. I read a post, yesterday, from one of our esteemed economists, Dr. Damien King, about an experience at a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet:

Me: Western zinger, pls.@KFC Mona: Out of that.
Me: Barbecue zinger then.
KFC: No zingers.
Me: Alright, 5-pc krispers.
KFC: Don't have that.
Me: Ok, I'll have popcorn chicken.
KFC: Sorry, out of that too.
Me: Why don't you turn off the menu board & just tell me what you do have. pic.twitter.com/G3pODNo4CO

— Damien King (@DamienWKing) December 29, 2019

We often read or hear of complaints about the total absence of service, or interrupted services from many of our major utilities and phone companies. What is often odd is how these go on for years without real solutions. That leads to another trait:

• Empty promises. These work well in Jamaica because we have low degrees of accountability and often not good at following up on our own complaints, aka the ‘nine day wonders’. Politicians play on this trait a lot and have gotten away with it for decades, but that’s also the nature of politics in many places. We an understand how monopolies in the public sector get away with it–people have few choices of who can supply electricity and water. What’s odd is how, in the corporate world, we end up with companies that are supposed to compete but seem to compete for ‘first to the bottom’. Part of the oddity comes from the absence of true competition, so our two main phone companies are just oligopolies, and happily live high on the hog sharing out the misery. For all the failings that have been evident in Jamaica over the decades, our country is not littered with the corpses of dismissed executives or managers. On the contrary, one often reads of how some have fled the country and remain far out of reach.
• Giving a bly. This is a close cousin to the empty promise and is often founded on the notion that all should be forgiven, but especially if it’s someone well-known, or related, or just because our way is to say ‘give the person another chance’. Where we get this compassion badly wrong is that we give bly, upon bly, upon bly, with little or no sign that the offending behaviour has been corrected, let alone addressed. We had the absurdity of this attitude rammed up our noses earlier this year, when a motorist was pulled into public gaze for doing doughnuts in a fast car at a major intersection, which was caught on video. Instead of the police throwing the book at the alleged driver, they turned it into a PR moment and offered the driver the chance to become the face of ‘road safety’. Those with a keen sense of the absurd will note that the officer in charge of this ‘event’ is a ‘bishop’, whose name is ‘Welsh’ (which means fail to honor), and who felt that using his discretion was the better part of valour.

All friends together? Photo credit: Jamaica Observer

Of course, the story wasn’t so simple: the owner of the flashy car was one of our star cricketers (next to a deity, for some; the alleged driver was a man whose light skin tone is often seen as a pass through any Jamaican gate; the Commissioner of Police ordered a further enquirer into the whole affair, the police officer was ‘ relieved of his post’ and ‘reassigned’ to somewhere that has not yet been made public. Now, so much dust has settled that no one really remembers what happened, or for that matter now cares.

That is the state of affairs that would have many cast Jamaica as a failed state, incapable of seeing what it does wrongly so often so unable to correct it.

Jamaica and aesthetics are not often in the same sentence, for good reason. Our natural beauty stands in stark contrast to the monstrosity of a country we have built. The nursery rhyme about the crooked man who built a crooked house could be a metaphor.

Visitors from abroad come and tell us that we’re quaint, but that’s their way of trying to avoid hurting people’s feelings by saying “How on Earth do you people live like this?” When it’s blurted out plainly, we get into a hissy fit about how we are being disrespected, not seeing that we have showered ourselves in mutual disrespect.

Finally, we are the perfect illustration of ‘you are what you tolerate’. We were out driving yesterday in Nassau, The Bahamas, and passed a disused supermarket lot that is the perfect picture of urban blight, with dishevelled store, broken concrete in the parking lot, and other signs that no one cares. A woman and her daughter had erected a tent and were hanging clothes on it, presumably to sell. My mother-in-law gasped “What in the name of Jesus is this?” She was horrified that anyone would just put up a ‘store’ and start selling. Now, she knows Jamaica well and has a similar reaction when she sees our sidewalks overtaken by vendors, often under signs that state ‘No vending’, or narrow roads made impassable by the spread of ‘entrepreneurial prowess’ as she witnessed during a resultant traffic jam in Port Antonio last month. Now, The Bahamas is no paragon compared to Jamaica, but the reaction shows what is often missing in Jamaica, which is a sense that this should not happen, rather than the ready acceptance of its happening.

I can distill all of this into Jamaica being a place less desirable to live in than many, though it offers some of the best natural experiences that a country can offer: our quality of life should not be as low as it is. I can also distill it into a country that does much worse than it should more of the time: read the many stories of how ‘unprepared’ our sports teams are for events. One of my common themes is about Jamaica’s poor productivity record and it’s easy to see how this gets fed by much of what I have described.

So, where do we go? Hard though it will be for many, we need to stop tolerating the things that we say we don’t want to see. Friends and relatives and others can go hang and we need to not only call out this misbehaving and force changes because it’s not happening voluntarily–we’re too far gone in many areas for gradual measures. How can we? Well, that’s part of the tough ask. We each have to be ready to be the line in the sand.

Arguments for a cut in GCT: Dr Haughton has unfinished business

I’m personally saddened by my fellow economist, Dr Andre Haughton, retracting quickly his remarks about the merits of his party leader’s proposal that GCT be reduced by 2 percentage points (from 16.5% to 14.5). In politics, there’s nothing wrong with offering things as ‘bait’, especially when your party is not in power and in place to (yet) deliver: you have to have something to offer voters. However, he asked the right questions, about the costs and benefits. Unfortunately, he didn’t’ answer the questions, though his tone during his senatorial presentation suggested he thought it was on balance not beneficial.

I understand his need to draw back on the manner of his utterances–not having made himself familiar with ‘stated’ party policy and not running the ideas past the party hierarchy. However, those gaffes in protocol do not matter to the argument, as the Senator noted in a subsequent radio interview. Let’s put that down to ‘youthful exuberance’ (which can cover all manner of sins).

His questions are those that should be posed of any economic policy proposal, and it’s good to have shown that such considerations have been made, whether or not one agrees with the analysis. It’s exactly what previous finance ministers and their opponents did most recently in deciding whether to give Jamaicans a tax break (you must remember the J$1.5 million income tax relief proposal): imposing lower income taxes on people is the same numerically as reducing indirect taxes on them. Now, the current government has taken a policy position to move from direct to indirect taxes, so would be less likely to like the GCT reduction idea on those grounds, whatever the perceived costs and benefits. Results since that move show much better than expected results in tax collection.

What the good doctor did not explore was what may happen with a lower tax burden on Jamaicans at this time. Who are likely to be the gainers, and how will that affect other aspects of their behaviour? The general understanding is that richer people will save, while poorer people will spend tax relief. So, what is the expected balance between saving and spending? How will people decide to spend the tax relief, and on what, and will their spending be on domestic or imported goods? Will some of the saving turn into investment in other assets now seemingly more attractive and accessible? All of this goes to whether and how far the tax cut will stimulate other activities. Some have questioned the internal consistency of the government’s growth ‘policies’ that gave income tax relief but clawed that back by raising GCT, so a reduction in the latter would help to correct that. The sluggishness of GDP growth since the current government’s tax measures were introduced tends to suggest that domestic demand has been stifled and ‘putting money back into people’s pockets’ is what’s needed, especially as tax revenues have been overperforming for a considerable time since the switch to GCT.

GCT is not imposed on all goods and services, so the reduction of the tax rate (assuming it’s across the board) will make those goods and services that attract GCT more affordable absolutely and relative to goods and services that do not attract GCT.

Simply put, there are many economic consequences we need to consider before either running with, or dispensing with, any tax change idea. No kidding, it’s not necessarily an easy exercise, but it ought to be done, and I hope that the PNP has done, or is doing, some poring over the likely outcomes.

In the meantime, I’d suggest the senator-economist do a little more probing beyond looking at the estimated J$26 billion that the national treasury may lose and his casting the gains for individuals as paltry.

Jamaica’s crime monster looks like it’s grown much stronger and we’re all suffering because of it

I’d be lying if I said that reports of high crime levels and rates in Jamaica do not worry me. I’ve long held the view that years of permissiveness could only have one result, in higher crime, and it becoming harder to deal with. It’s hard to see murders getting down to much lower sane levels in the next 10 years, let alone, 5 or even 2 (taking the due date in 2021 of the next general election as a possible trigger date).

Three years ago I wrote about the lamentable state of local policing, despite a number of PR efforts (and I include in that measures like the ‘state of emergency’ (SOE) and ‘zones of special operations’ (ZOSO), that fundamental lack is still present. Now, I accept that a major problem for the police force is simply it is understaffed. Why do I regard SOEs and ZOSOs as PR exercises? I cannot find any logical reason to expect such measures to work if they are applied partially. It’s just simple common sense that extraordinary measures like these will tend to fail simply because they put a premium on moving misbehaviour to places where the measures don’t exist. When these measures were not in place, policing already took on a ‘whack a mole’ character with criminals looking to avoid it by literally ducking the heavy surveillance. While I wished crime would decline, I could find no comfort in the measures taken. Little by little, the areas covered have been extended, but they also now face what is also inevitable with many ‘extraordinary’ measures–fatigue. Underlying behaviour has not changed so the causes of crime have not been addressed, therefore, crime must continue to grow. It’s like weeds in a garden that are not dug out at their roots but only deheaded–they come back and often overtake the area because the plants desired cannot fight them off and those who are weeding run out of energy. So, I’m not surprised to see statistics showing that crime reduction in SOE and ZOSO areas has almost halted or even reversed (see October Jamaica Observer report Crime figures continue to climb despite SOEs). Not only has underlying social behaviour not changed, but proximate triggers such as gang feuds remain unaddressed; these have dynamics of their own.

The change in social behaviour is going to be a hard task made much harder by an economy that still appears to be limping along, which means that many can remain tempted to try to get faster and bigger gains by ‘floating their own boats’ or ‘stealing the boats’ of others that are meant to rise with a rising tide, to use the common metaphor. The absence of fast growth was always a likely massive hurdle to any crime plan, not least because higher growth numbers signal much more hope for the average person so help with temptations to not be patient. Again, with a water metaphor, who wants to wallow in a stagnant pool, when they see possible nicer times in water that runs freely? So, one of the byproducts of crime plus lower growth is the continued high demand to flee the country by migrating. But, let me move away from the macro-economic-social and look at some of the micro elements. The one that is really shocking is the state of policing.

In keeping with a country that has an appalling record of low labour productivity, the police force is a demonstrable example of how we have not understood how to do more with less. If anything saps the average person’s willingness to help others is seeing an unwillingness to help oneself. That is one of the major failings of our national police force.

Accepting the limitations of understaffing, what could be done? One of the best ways to deal with inadequate human capital (too few workers) is to supplement it with other capital resources. In this case, capital means things like vehicles and technology. But, for these additional resources to make any notable difference they must be applied sensibly and extensively. That’s where our police force seems woefully stuck. Since coming back to Jamaica in 2013, I have read and listened to reports about some of this extra ‘capital’ coming to the aid of the police, in the form of technology like electronic log books, body cameras, dashboard cameras, CCTV, but also in the form of new and better vehicles for our situation. Six years on, I’m still to see such things taken on board to any extent; we’re still in the ‘promise land’: just yesterday we got another one about the use of ‘tech to fight crime‘. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!

Jamaica is known to have an enormous ‘trust deficit’, and in the area of crime fighting this has become very low. Not only are people afraid that they may be victims of violent crime in their homes (you should feel safe in your ‘castle’ and be able to protect your loved ones), but that fear seems to be spreading to other (literally) walks of life, if anecdotally reported street crimes (muggings, assaults etc) are to be believed. Suspicion now spreads far and wide. Just a few moments ago, my neighbourhood ‘crime alert’ chat group was reporting concerns about possible scammers posing at workers for the National Water Commission coming to ‘check leaks’: it seems that no IDs were offered and the general reaction has been to not let anyone in. But, if these are criminals, they may already have gained much information from the failed encounters in terms of identifying residents and perhaps assessing their weaknesses. When does legitimate concern turn to paranoia?

People are taking measures to give themselves a few more layers of protection in prevention, such as alarms supplemented by CCTV and dashboard cameras in cars. All of which makes sense in country where more reports are circulating (some false) of kidnappings, or car seizures, or robberies on the road or supermarkets. We read some reports of licensed firearms holders fighting back and it’s not inconceivable that many more people are thinking of owning firearms (legally or illegally–not absurd in a country that cannot stem the flow of guns). Such incidents have dramatic impact on daily lives and what levels of precautions now seem standard.

That brings me to the other major concerns about personal safety. It seems that unruly behaviour on the roads (at least in the Corporate Area) has now crested an all-time high. Admittedly, we now have more ways to see and hear about this, but the examples are also egregious. While the police cannot be everywhere, the permissiveness that had taken hold is now reaping its massive harvest. One hopes that the examples set of taxi or minibus drivers being arrested and vehicles seized leads to more of that sector taking public safety into their concerns. But, truth be told, we are still are far way off from changing the risk:reward of not abiding by the laws. See this footage of my driver from the airport on Sunday afternoon, where a motorist clearly assessed the chance of running the red light and decided to do so. I state it this way to distinguish from cases where the light changes and it’s a sudden decision to stop or continue. Here we see a ‘calculated risk’ being taken. This time, no collision. But, next time?

Many have said that none of this will change or being properly addressed until when politicians find themselves victims. That’s not as cynical as some may think: we have a political class that tends to cocoon itself from the effects of crime, let alone many of life’s harsher daily realities, whether it be dealing with appalling public transport (when last did you see more than a chintzy photo-op of politicians riding any form of public transport?), or erratic or unavailable water and electricity or phone or internet services. We also know there’s a big elephant or two in the room as far as crime is concerned.

The pincer of weaker-than-expected economic progress and widening violent crime must have a big cost on Jamaica. In only a few of its member countries has the IMF felt the need to draw attention to crime as a constraint to economic progress, not least because it often isn’t of the order seen in Jamaica except in war zones.

So, Jamaicans ought to focus more on the fact this was done extensively in the 2018 staff report for the Article 4 Consultation (the annual or bi-annual ‘economic health check’ each member gets–see Figure 3 extracts above) that despite the country having been hailed as a kind of ‘poster child’ for economic policy success, it’s at near pariah status because of crime.

If Jamaicans want to lament the absence of ‘quality’ jobs they need only ask themselves what kind of investor would want to plant fresh or more capital into a country with our levels of violent crime. Because of such concerns, it’s still notable that relatively large investments continue to flow into the island, albeit in a narrow range of areas (eg hotels and property), but ones that are notable for building in higher levels of security.

While some politicians have acknowledged the direct costs of crime and crime fighting, it’s hard to assess its true economic cost in terms of actual dollars that could go to other important social development activities such as education and health.

Politicians can argue the toss over whether data series show poverty to be increasing or decreasing. The truth is that a country with our levels of violent crime that is not abating is a poorer place than it would be otherwise.