RJRGLEANER/DON ANDERSON POLL
CHOKING ON CRIME
Clayton warns against taking eye off corruption as poll results show Jamaicans’ concerns heavily focused on violence
Published:Monday | February 24, 2025 | 12:13 AMKimone Francis/Senior Staff Reporter
Crime continues to be the single most crippling concern facing Jamaicans, with the high cost of living a distant second, the latest RJRGLEANER-commissioned Don Anderson opinion poll has found.
The findings are almost identical to those determined four months ago, in September 2024, with a similar 48 per cent or nearly half of Jamaicans indicating that crime and violence is the biggest problem facing the country at this time even as the police report an 18.6 per cent decline in serious crimes.
The cost to live in Jamaica, which has been a hot-button topic for several months, is the main problem for 13 per cent of respondents, two percentage points fewer than the 15 per cent of respondents who held the same view in September.
Eight per cent of Jamaicans believe that “too much corruption” is the biggest problem in the country, a one percentage point decline when compared to four months ago.
A similar eight per cent identified unemployment and underemployment as the main issues – reflecting the same figure for September – while three per cent said a lack of opportunity for youths, rounding out the top five issues. Last September, seven per cent of respondents noted that Jamaican youths having no opportunity was the biggest issue facing the country.
Anderson’s Market Research Services Limited team polled 1,201 Jamaicans aged 18 years and older and who are registered to vote between January 29 and February 13.
The survey has a sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points at the 95 per cent confidence level.
No surprise
“This doesn’t surprise me,” said Anthony Clayton, professor of Caribbean Sustainable Development at The University of the West Indies. “The only thing that is slightly anomalous is the fact that only eight per cent chose corruption because corruption is so deeply woven into our problems with crime and violence.”
Clayton, who served as deputy chairman of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) Operational Reform Oversight Committee, asserted that corruption is the reason the country is without the schools and public infrastructure needed to divert youth away from gangs and a life of violent crime.
The JCF is reporting, up to February 22, a 27 per cent decline in murders year on year, a 19 per cent decline in shootings, a 73 per cent decline in rape, a one per cent decline in robbery, and a 10 per cent increase in break-ins.
At the same time, Jamaica has fallen four places on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) Country Rankings, placing 73rd out of 180 countries compared to 69th out of 180 countries in 2023.
However, Jamaica’s CPI score of 44 out of 100, where zero means ‘highly corrupt’ and 100 means ‘very clean’, has remained unchanged from 2023. The CPI score of 44 continues to stand as its best score ever and was previously attained in 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Clayton said that for greater positive impact, social intervention is needed for families where children are abused or exposed to violence as well as significant investments in schools and troubled communities.
“If we could do all of that then we could start to address the root of crime and violence. But the problem is a lot of people don’t understand that that is what corruption is costing us. They don’t make the correlation,” said Clayton.
“But research has shown us when you compare different countries, you see in the highly corrupt countries the government spends much more on construction and public works and much less on education,” he added.
The reason for this, he said, is that the money goes into construction because that is where opportunities are for multiple kickbacks.
“If the construction is done poorly then the contract goes out again, and corrupt public officials and politicians can get another kickback. So that’s like the gift that goes on giving, whereas the money going into education is money that actually gets spent on our youth,” he said, adding that it creates fewer opportunities for corruption.
“This is one of the reasons corruption is so deeply implicated in our problems with crime and violence. They result in a systematic diversion of funds away from where they would actually help to address the deep roots of violence in society,” said Clayton.