Police, government and UN officials watched yesterday as half a ton of ammunition blazed in a furnace in Kingston, Jamaica. This followed the 2,000 pistols and revolvers that were melted down on Tuesday, as part of an effort to combat gun trafficking and corruption and reduce violent crime. Many of the firearms had been seized during police operations; others were decommissioned and being destroyed to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.
Jamaica’s new minister of national security, Peter Bunting, said the destruction of the guns was an important first step toward reducing trafficking and the risk of theft. “The removal will help to reduce the risks of these weapons possibly being diverted back into the illicit trade,” he said at the Jamaica Constabulary Force armory.
Jamaica has one of the highest gun-crime rates in the world. Criminal gangs—whose turf wars and fatal shootings make up the bulk of Jamaica’s homicides—often possess as much firepower as police forces. Their weapons are in large part smuggled in from the U.S., although corrupt Jamaican police officers willing to sell weapons to criminal networks have also been a concern. A report released yesterday by the UN found that Jamaica has the Caribbean’s highest murder rate—even though the 1,124 murders reported in 2011 represented a seven-year low for the country—and the third-highest murder rate (60 murders per 100,000 inhabitants) in the world, after El Salvador and Honduras.
The Caribbean Human Development Report 2012 (the UN’s first-ever dedicated to the Caribbean) also found that gang-related crime costs Jamaica $529 million a year in lost income—much of it from the tourism industry. On the whole, the total cost on the regional economy was estimated to be between 2.8 and 4 percent of GDP.
The report was based on consultations with 450 experts and leaders and a survey of 11,555 citizens in seven countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.
