Gangs in the Caribbean: Responses of State and Society

Not until the past decade have policymakers, public criminal justice officials and researchers begun to take seriously the existence of Caribbean gangs and gang-related problems. For example, not until the 1990s in Jamaica (Moncrieffe 1998), the mid-2000s in Trinidad and Tobago (Katz and Choate 2006) and 2008 in Antigua and Barbuda (Katz 2008) did those in authority take steps toward resolving these issues. Other island nations are just beginning to publicly acknowledge their gang problems and to explore possible responses (UNDP 2012), for – due primarily to media coverage – few of them can any longer overlook the fact that numerous local crimes are being perpetuated by gangs and that a growing proportion of homicides are being committed by gang members. Today, for instance, about three-quarters (74 per cent) of homicides in St Kitts and Nevis, half (52 per cent) of homicides in Jamaica and a third (35 per cent) of homicides in Trinidad and Tobago are officially recognized as gang related (Hill 2012).

Such startling numbers have captured the attention of Caribbean nation states and international development organizations that are considering the options for responding to the region’s different gangs, individual gang members and overall gang violence. Appropriately, their discussions are encompassing systemic social issues, such as unemployment, concentrated disadvantage, poor education and family problems, in an effort to isolate the conditions that are conducive to gang formation as well as the factors that motivate gang joining and lead to gang violence (UNDP 2012; Katz and Fox 2010; Katz, Maguire and Choate 2011). The discussions are beginning to yield thoughtful long-term strategic plans, but these will take years to implement, if not generations. Meanwhile, there remains an urgent need for more immediate action to mitigate gang violence in the short term. Relatively little useful research and planning have occurred on that level to date (Maguire 2012).

Attacking the short-term problems associated with gangs is a daunting prospect. To be effective, such an effort must begin with a systematic and region-­specific understanding of gangs, gang members and gang problems, a step that few policymakers and researchers have attempted to take. Caribbean police organizations historically have not had the capacity to systematically collect and analyse gang intelligence, and relatively few scholars have approached the issues with research methods well-grounded in the social sciences. (For exceptions, see Harriott 2008, 2009; Katz and Fox 2010.)

This book is intended to provide the kind of sound research that will stimulate data-driven discussions among criminologists and policymakers. Our intent is to use this opportunity to help shape the public dialogue in the Caribbean and to guide it in a constructive direction, given the relatively recent incitation of the problem. Public dialogue based on shared myths and perceptions that are grounded in fear and anecdotal evidence rarely lead to effective solutions to complex problems. Only through accurately diagnosed problems can we hope to design prevention, intervention and suppression strategies that will, in fact, work to address violence in Caribbean communities.

The book is broken into two sections. Section 1 focuses on the scope and nature of the Caribbean gang problem. It not only provides a cutting-edge description of the extent of the Caribbean’s gang problem but it also details differences between organized crime groups and street gangs, and how these differences impact the types of problems that communities face. Section 2 focuses on policies and programmes designed to respond to Caribbean gangs. It stresses the unique challenges in developing effective strategies and the promising strategies that have yielded positive results so far.

The purpose of this introduction is to set the stage for the following chapters by reviewing the current body of literature on gangs and the response to gangs in the Caribbean. We start by defining street gangs. This is followed by a cross-national approach to examining the scope and nature of the problem(s), the causes of street gangs and gang membership, and the current responses to street gangs throughout the region. The introduction concludes with a broad overview of the book’s content.

Defining Street Gangs

The tendency in previous manuscripts on Caribbean gangs, crews and organized crime groups has been to discuss them, regardless of type, as fundamentally alike. However, despite inherent commonalities, they differ in significant ways, and their distinctive problems require distinctive responses. Thus, differentiating between crews, street gangs and organized crime is critical in order to accurately and effectively diagnose and respond to problems associated with each group. Without question, organized crime produces enormous consequences for nations and deserves much attention. Derivative policies and action plans simply redirected toward delinquent youth in general and gangs in particular, however, are not only misguided, but also they are often poorly conceived and implemented, thus putting youth at risk.

We rely on the definition of a street gang as any durable street-oriented youth group whose involvement in illegal activity is part of their group identity (van Gemert 2005, 148). Durability means that a group has existed for more than a few months and continues to exist regardless of membership turnover. Street-oriented means that the members spend substantial time away from home or school, that is, on the streets and in parks and other public places. Youth refers to individuals who, on average, are in their teens or early twenties. Illegal activity is a level above disorderly conduct or being a public nuisance; it refers to criminal actions. Identity in this context means not one’s self-identity but a sense of the group’s characteristics apart from those of ­individual ­members (van Gemert 2005, 148).

Organized crime, on the other hand, is characterized by enterprise activity, the use of violence (actual and/or threatened) and corruption as typical means, and exploitable relationships with the upper-world (Harriott 2011, 6). Enterprise activity involves the provision of illegal goods or services; traditional examples have included drug, gun and human trafficking, as well as extortion. Organizational sophistication, generally in either corporate or relational form, is another feature of organized crime groups, a feature rarely or only loosely shared by street gangs. The corporate model is structured with a formal hierarchy and clear lines of authority while the relational model relies on personal and social networks such as those that often exist in a community or particular area (Harriott 2008, 31–32).

Consequently, street gangs differ from organized crime groups in several ways. Gangs typically lack organization and have a limited centralized leadership. Their members are more likely to be motivated by issues of status, while organized crime groups are often economically motivated. Street gang members are most likely to be operating on the ground, involved in neighbourhood-level drug sales, while organized crime groups manage the wider distribution and trafficking of drugs. Understanding these and other differences has practical implications for developing effective strategies for responding both to gangs and organized crime.

Few studies have examined the differences between types of criminal groups in the Caribbean. One of the few is the work of Horace Levy (2012) in his examination of youth violence and organized crime in Jamaica. Levy points out that in Jamaica there is no standardised and widely accepted usage of the terms corner crew, gang and criminal gang (p. 18). He then sets out to define the differences between these types of groups. On the one hand, he defines the term criminal gang much the same way we define organized crime groups above – as a group, not necessarily tied to any community, which engages in serious forms of criminal activity, often transnational in nature, that results in economic gain (pp. 15–23). On the other hand, Levy uses the term defence crew to describe what we define above as a street gang. Defence crews (or street gangs), he writes, are defenders of the community who use guns to protect their communities against violence from rival groups from other communities. He explains that they fight for turf, respect and street justice, and that their members develop a common sense of identity through belonging to their group and community.¹ His discussion of the differences between what we call organized crime and street gangs is an important first step in the Caribbean toward differentiating the features of these two types of groups. Further work in this area is needed not only to help develop a common terminology but also to understand the structural, functional and behavioural characteristics that differentiate them.

Scope and Nature of the Problem

The United States and, more recently, Europe have conducted considerable research on street gangs. Caribbean scholars, though, report that citizen insecurity in general and the gang problem in particular have received little public attention until lately, so it is not surprising that systematic research into Caribbean street gangs is lacking. What little we have learned about the prevalence of the problem, characteristics of street gangs and their members, and gang behaviour comes primarily from the two largest Caribbean nations: Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Prevalence of the Problem

Street gangs are active in much of the Caribbean region, according to multiple data sources, although the magnitude of the problem varies substantially across nations. Of several methods available for understanding the street gang problem, researchers most often collect and analyse official police data and self-­report data. Official police data capture information from those who come into contact with the police; this information tends to come from older and more criminally involved individuals (Katz, Webb and Schaefer 2001; Katz 2003).

In 2010, the Jamaican police identified 268 gangs and approximately 3,900 gang members (Hall 2010). In Trinidad and Tobago, police have identified 95 gangs and approximately 1,269 gang members (Katz and Choate 2006). Antigua and Barbuda law enforcement officials have reported 15 gangs and estimated between 264 and 570 gang members (Katz 2008). Barbados reported 150 gangs and 4,000 gang members² (although those figures are possibly inflated). Police estimates of the street gang problem in Guyana, Suriname, St Lucia and a number of other Caribbean nations have been unavailable, suggesting that those policymakers perhaps have not fully examined the extent of their problems.

Self-report data is possibly the more common source of information for examining the prevalence of gang-related phenomena. Self-report data has, in fact, proven to be a robust, valid and reliable method for collecting information from gang members by both researchers (Esbensen et al. 2001; Katz et al. 1997; Webb, Katz and Decker 2006) and the police (Katz and Webb 2003; Katz 1997; Webb and Katz 2003). Several researchers have used this method to collect data on the prevalence of gang involvement in Caribbean nations. This body of work, however, has largely been limited to cross-sectional studies examining school youth. As seen in table 1 below, while Fox and Gordon-Strachan (2007) reported relatively low rates (5.5 per cent) of Jamaican school youth reporting to have ever been in a gang, others have reported that 11 per cent or more of school-­attending youth have ever been in a gang (Ohene, Ireland and Blum 2005; Katz and Fox 2010). Other sampling strategies relying on community-­based samples, the general population, and recently booked adult arrestees have yielded divergent results as well (Wilks et al. 2007; Wortley 2010; Katz, Maguire and Choate 2011) which suggests that the Caribbean has a long way to go toward understanding the prevalence of the gang problem.

Table I.1. Proportion self-reporting gang association in prior cross-sectional research

Source: Appears in a previous version of this chapter: Reducing the Contribution of Street Gangs and Organized Crime to Violence, in Caribbean Human Development Report 2012: Human Development and the Shift to Better Citizen Security, 65–90 (New York: United Nations Development Programme).

Gender and Age Composition of Caribbean Street Gangs

Not a great deal is known yet about the socio-demographic characteristics of Caribbean street gang members. The early evidence from Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago indicates that among school-aged youth, males compose the majority of street gang members, although female members are prevalent as well. Katz, Choate and Fox (2010), for example, have reported that among a national sample of Trinidadian youth in urban schools more than 40 per cent of self-reported gang members were female; earlier, Meeks (2009) also reported a strong presence of females in Jamaican street gangs.

Data from the police also have suggested that gang membership is predominately male. A survey of police experts from the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (Katz and Choate 2006) and a later study comprised of police experts in Antigua and Barbuda (Katz 2008) found no female-dominated gangs in those countries. Considered together, these findings might suggest that Caribbean females are involved in street gangs but are not frequently coming to the attention of the police. Regardless, their numbers suggest a need to understand the impact that females have on Caribbean gang structure, culture and criminality, and the role they fill in the gangs.

This same body of research suggests that individuals join street gangs at a young age. Trinidad and Tobago school youth who self-reported gang membership claimed that, on average, they first became involved at twelve years of age (Katz and Choate 2006); surveys of Antigua and Barbuda school ­officials indicated that most gang members were between the ages of twelve to ­fifteen years (Katz 2008). From these preliminary findings, we could speculate that the regional street gang problem begins largely with young and possibly ­marginalized males.

Organizational Characteristics of the Caribbean Street Gang

The available research indicates that the organizational characteristics of Caribbean street gangs vary by nation. Data collected from law enforcement officers in Antigua and Barbuda, and Trinidad and Tobago, showed that street gangs typically had a group name, referred to themselves as a gang or crew, spent considerable time in public places and claimed turf. In Trinidad and Tobago, police gang experts claimed that most street gangs did not have symbols such as clothing, ways of speaking or signs (Katz and Choate 2006), but in Antigua and Barbuda, police gang experts reported that most street gangs did make use of such symbols (Katz 2008). The Royal Barbados Police Force suggested that street gangs in that country used symbols and initiation rituals.³

In Trinidad and Tobago, self-report data from self-identified school-aged gang members found that although most gang members stated that their gang held regular meetings (56 per cent) and had rules (52 per cent), fewer than half stated that their gang had a leader (45 per cent) or insignia (45 per cent) (Pyrooz et al. 2011), exhibiting relatively low levels of organization. Pyrooz et al. reported that gang organizational structure was positively related to delinquency – that the more structurally organized the gang, the more the members self-reported delinquency.

In Jamaica, street gangs appear to be more organized. According to Leslie (2010), gangs operated with a hierarchy and division of labour, typically having an all-powerful leader and an upper echelon, middle echelon and workers at the bottom. Jamaican gangs have been characterized by several different typologies that could be placed along a continuum with smaller, loosely organized gangs on one end and larger, highly organized gangs on the other. These characterizations are largely influenced by what academics and practitioners know about street gangs and organized crime groups and are then generalized to other criminal groups such as crews. With that said, most of the discussion about gang organizational structure in Jamaica has been focused on dons, the leaders of organized crime groups. Of the 268 gangs in Jamaica (Hall 2010), Harriott reported that about twenty of them were organized crime groups who were led by a don. Dons are typically male and historically have had broad and sweeping control over Jamaica’s garrison communities. Initially dons served members of parliament who used them as intermediaries to give out government contracts to their constituents and to facilitate their re-election (Harriott 2003).

Over time, however, dons became less reliant on members of parliament and exerted their own control through finances acquired from drug trafficking (Harriott 2003; Levy 2012). They provided food, education, electricity, water and housing for the most needy. Additionally, because of the weak formal social control mechanisms in place within garrisons – that is, no police protection and lack of justice in the courts – dons stepped into the void to exercise their own form of jungle justice whereby they implemented swift and harsh punishments to those who violated social norms (such as having committed robbery, rape) (Levy 2012, 22). (Harriott thoroughly addresses the gap in our understanding of dons and their relationship with the community in chapters 1, 7 and 8.)

Street Gang Violence

Perhaps the most publicly visible consequences of street gangs are crime and violence. Available data suggest substantial variability in the degree to which countries are affected by these consequences. In Antigua and Barbuda, for example, 2006–7 homicide data showed only one of twenty-nine homicides reported in that country to be gang related (Katz 2008). Meanwhile, in St Lucia, gang homicides appeared to be increasing, contributing to an increasing proportion of that nation’s homicides, yet no effort has been made to systematically examine the issue. Periodically in Barbados and Guyana there are news reports of gang homicides, but again, while the problem does not appear prevalent in these countries, its extent has not been systematically examined.

In Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, not only has the proportion of gang-­related homicides increased, but also the number of gang-related homicides almost doubled in each country from 2006 through 2009. In Jamaica in 2006, of 1,303 homicides, a third (32.5 per cent) were classified as gang homicides; by 2009, the number had risen to 1,680 homicides and almost half (48.1 per cent) were gang related. In Trinidad and Tobago in 2006, of 371 homicides, more than a quarter (26.4 per cent) were classified by police as gang related; by 2009, the number of homicides had increased to 506 of which more than a third (34.8 per cent) were gang related.

As concerning as they are, the figures above still might have under-reported the actual extent of the problem, according to prior reports. Several researchers in recent decades have pointed out the limitations of gang homicide data and the under-classification of homicides that are gang related (Maxson and Klein 1990; Katz 2003). Katz and Maguire (2006) conducted one such study in Trinidad and Tobago to examine the nature of one of the worst homicide problem areas in the nation, that of the Besson Street Station District. They determined that although police had classified about 25 per cent of the district’s homicides as gang related, a more accurate estimate was at least 62.5 per cent according to interviews and document reviews. This suggests that the gang homicide problem throughout the Caribbean could well be more serious than official police statistics and news reports might reveal.

During this period, the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago’s Ministry of National Security funded a study to diagnose the street gang problem (see chapter 6). The study, conducted in Trinidad and Tobago, examined official data, self-report data from school youth and self-report data from arrestees. All three data sources yielded similar outcomes, producing perhaps the best understanding we have to date of how street gangs pose a threat to the Caribbean. The official data found that when compared with non-gang members, gang members were twice as likely to have been arrested for property crime; three times more likely to have been arrested for a violent, gun or drug offence; and five times more likely to have been arrested for drug sales (Katz and Choate 2006). Self-­report data from school-aged youth determined that compared with non-gang members, gang members were about eleven times more likely to be involved in drug sales, seven times more likely to be involved in violence, five times more likely to be involved in property crime and three times more likely to have been arrested (Katz, Choate and Fox 2010). Similar numbers were reported by adult arrestees (Katz, Maguire and Choate 2011), with the additional findings that many gang members possessed a firearm (52.6 per cent) and carried it for self-­protection and defence (Wells, Katz and Kim 2010).

Causes of Street Gangs

Why do Caribbean youth become involved in street gangs? To answer that question, we need both to identify the causes and correlates of street gangs in the Caribbean and to examine the conditions that sustain them. Below, we review Caribbean social-structural conditions that give rise to these phenomena – issues such as community cohesion, social cohesion and informal social control – and their relationship to the concentration of street gangs. Next, we discuss the risk and protective factors associated with street gang membership.

Community-Level Factors

Community and social cohesion create an environment that fosters and enables shared goals and collective action. Collective efficacy, a term coined by Sampson, Raudenbush and Earls (1997), encompasses the willingness and ability of community members to develop and achieve shared goals. It includes cooperative efforts to define, monitor and condemn undesirable behaviours that occur within a community. In the absence of such social ties and relationships, communities are unlikely to exercise informal social control over their neighbourhoods. With the diminished capacity for control comes the risk of higher levels of crime and delinquency (Katz and Schnebly 2011). Prior research has found that factors such as community cohesion, social cohesion and informal social control are related to gang formation and other group-based criminal activity.

Where there is a lack of social and community cohesion with formal and informal social controls, a void exists that can readily be filled by street gangs. As well as posing risks, these groups fulfil some social purposes; they can become empowered by and engrained in the fabric of daily life of certain local communities. Indeed, in Jamaica, traditional formal and informal social controls and social and community cohesion have deteriorated to such an extent that some now rely on dons and street gangs to maintain a certain level of local order and services. (Harriott discusses this in more depth in chapters 7 and 8.)

Several years ago, Mogensen (2005) reported that in Jamaica citizens no longer believed that the police could effectively address crime and that, instead, they were seeking justice from local dons through kangaroo courts. Leslie (2010, 22) further notes that dons controlled criminal activity, enforcing discipline (often with beatings or executions) that to a certain extent was commensurate with the offence.⁴ Dons could, when they wished, also provide housing, food, medical assistance, policing services and even early childhood education for citizens who were loyal to them (Harriott 2008; Leslie 2010). They also controlled opportunities for political advancement for loyalists with political aspirations (Harriott 2009). Harriott (2008) noted that as a result of controlling the goods and services that could make life better for many, leaders of street gangs became the role models and mentors in some communities, thus perpetuating a community culture that came to value criminal organizations and their role in the community.

Although there have been very few studies examining the relationship between the presence of gangs and gang members and community levels of homicide, Katz and Fox (2010) reported a strong relationship after controlling for social-structural factors. The authors collected police data on the number of gangs and gang members in each police station district and linked that data with homicide and census data. They reported that for every one additional gang member in a community, the number of homicides increased by 0.4 per cent. Likewise, for every additional gang in a community, the number of homicides increased by 10 per cent. Substantially more research is needed in the Caribbean to understand community-level factors and their relationship to crime and gang-related phenomena.

Individual-Level Factors

The risk factor paradigm is another approach to explaining and understanding delinquent and criminal groups. In this context, risk factors are the characteristics or symptoms that increase the odds that an individual will become involved in problem behaviours. Conversely, protective factors are characteristics or symptoms that decrease those odds (Blum et al. 2003). The risk and protective model has been used extensively in the field of public health (for example, factors such as tobacco use, lack of exercise and family history increase the risk of heart disease and protective factors such as exercise and proper diet decrease that risk [Hawkins et al. 1999]), particularly as a basis for public policy for addressing cancer, mental health and other diseases. More recently, that model has been applied toward understanding the issue of gang joining.

Almost no research has yet been done on the risk and protective factors associated with street gang membership. Prior research in the United States and Europe, however, leads us to consider the relationship of gang membership to predisposing factors such as neighbourhood social disorganization, local levels of crime and drug use, lack of attachment to school and poor school performance, unemployment, poor family management, attachment to anti-social peers, and a history of delinquency and drug use. Katz and Fox (2010) examined school youth in Trinidad and Tobago and found several factors associated with gang involvement: (1) parental attitudes favouring antisocial behaviour, (2) residency in a neighbourhood with a high risk for mobility, (3) wide access to handguns, (4) early-age antisocial behaviour, (5) intent to use drugs, (6) ­antisocial peers and (7) peers who used drugs. Interestingly, they found that, for the most part, school-related risk factors were not significantly associated with gang involvement. Subsequent analysis using the same data, however, suggested that the ­Caribbean community might consider developing a unique set of items to measure risk and protective factors among Caribbean youth rather than relying on those developed in the United States, because there might be issues related to the construct and concurrent validity of measures created in the United States and then wholly imported for use in the Caribbean (Maguire, Wells and Katz 2011).

Responding to Street Gangs

Responses to street gangs can be varied and multidimensional. Domestic res­ponses can fall into five broad strategies: suppression; provision of academic, economic and social opportunities; social intervention; community mobilization; and organizational change and development. For this chapter, I ­discuss those responses that have been or could be implemented in the Caribbean to address street gangs under three strategic categories: legislation, suppression and prevention/intervention. Together, these could offer an integrated, ­balanced, locally appropriate and highly effective response to street gangs.

Legislative Strategies

The process of drafting legislation for addressing the Caribbean gang problem would involve offering a public forum in which to uncover the scope and nature of the gang problem and to define its terms. Thoughtful, well-articulated legislation would provide consistent law enforcement guidelines and national standards for documenting gangs and gang membership. The process could bring citizens into the discussion and, for individuals accused of gang crime, it would establish legal processes and rights under the law, such as the rights to review one’s own records and to appeal court decisions.

Trinidad and Tobago, and St Kitts and Nevis each have enacted gang legislation (Hill 2012) that criminalizes being a gang member, recruiting individuals into a gang and preventing individuals from leaving a gang. In Trinidad, the law’s definition of gang membership is vague at best, stating that any evidence reasonably tending to show or demonstrate the existence of, or membership in, a gang shall be admissible in any action or proceedings brought under this act (First Session Tenth Parliament, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, Act No. 10 of 2011, 6).⁵

Likewise, the legislation gives sweeping powers to the police while providing few checks or balances for individual rights. For example, it allows police without a warrant to enter and search any place they reasonably believe to be harbouring a gang member. They are further allowed to arrest and detain for seventy-two hours, without warrant, any individual they believe to be a gang member. The punishments for gang-related offences are harsh. A first-offence conviction would result in a ten-year sentence; a second would yield a ­twenty-five-year sentence. Anyone found to be aiding a gang member also could be imprisoned for as many as twenty-five years.

A legislative response to gang problems could be a step in the right direction, but in Trinidad and St Kitts, the laws as written contain a number of deficits that may actually exacerbate the situation or even create new problems. These laws were created without sufficient attention to procedural or distributive justice. They do not sufficiently guide and limit (with quality control reviews) police and court discretion in designating any group as a gang or any individual as a gang member. The legislation could therefore fall short of fulfilling its purpose – that is, to suppress gangs, gang membership and illegal gang activity. As it is, many Caribbean nations have quite low clearance and detection rates for gang-related crime. In a study conducted by Katz and Maguire (2006), for example, fifty-three gang homicides occurred in one Trinidadian community, but only three suspects were arrested and none were convicted. Even if the proposed legislation were to result in a modest increase in arrests, it could thwart the conversion of arrests to convictions. Conviction sentences are severe enough that gang members would have even stronger motivation to threaten potential witnesses to dissuade them from offering damaging testimony.

If prior research is a guide, such legislation could have effects that are completely contrary to the ones desired. In El Salvador, for example, the Mano Dura, or iron fist, policy criminalized gang membership and, as a consequence, youth who were even remotely associated with a gang were arrested and incarcerated, and then were discriminated against upon their return to the community after serving prison time. The policy was found to have the unintended effect of increasing gang cohesion and the proliferation of gangs (USAID 2006). Similarly, Klein (1995) noted that in Los Angeles, California, gang sweeps by the police were an ineffective means of generating gang arrests. Klein claimed that such tactics may actually have had a negative impact on the community’s gang problem because the majority of those who were arrested were immediately released without charges being filed. This, he argued, may have strengthened gang cohesiveness and reduced any possible deterrent impact on gang members. A similar result might be found in Trinidad where in the year following the enactment of anti-gang legislation, 449 people were arrested for gang-related offences. Most of these individuals were never charged by prosecutors, however, and none were convicted (Julien 2012). Such findings not only illustrate the ineffectiveness of such strategies but most likely send a strong message to gang members that they are invulnerable, which in turn reduces the public’s confidence in the justice system. The potential certainly exists for legislation to be structured in a way that creates an effective foundation for responding to the gang problem in the Caribbean, but thus far this potential remains unrealized, and these early efforts may even be making the problem worse.

Suppression Strategies

Few of the Caribbean nations (other than Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago) are operating in accord with an organized strategy for responding to gangs and gang members, who are disproportionately involved in crime. Instead, they are currently responding primarily with suppression strategies. These are almost always reactive in nature, using criminal law to control or isolate behaviour. Typical suppression strategies include arrest, prosecution, intermediate sanctions and imprisonment. Caribbean law enforcement officials employ these tactics as they react incident-by-incident to crimes perpetuated by gangs. Among the problems that inhibit progress is the fact that the majority of law enforcement officials still lack the intelligence systems that are essential for identifying gang members and the groups who are most involved in violence.

In Jamaica in 2004, Operation Kingfish was launched in an effort to restore community confidence and reduce fear of crime, by targeting gang leaders and drug dons and breaking up organized crime groups. This task force reportedly made a major dent in crime, arresting some of Jamaica’s most wanted and dismantling at least two gangs while disrupting six others (Sinclair 2010). Later, the Jamaica Constabulary Force implemented an anti-gang strategy aimed at further disrupting gang activity. Its objectives were to (1) increase the effort in street and public spaces; (2) set and meet a deadline for identifying, profiling and disrupting or dismantling gangs; and (3) open a Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) file, a precursor to stripping criminals of profits from criminal acts, on each arrestee charged with a serious gang- or drug-related crime. According to an article in the online edition of the 8 April Jamaica Observer (2011), security officials believed that these actions had reduced killings by 44 per cent in the first quarter of 2011. Trinidad and Tobago also was one of the first Caribbean nations to establish a specialized unit with trained personnel to respond to gangs. Its Gang/Repeat Offender (Gang/ROP) Task Force was established in May 2006, staffed with about forty specially trained and coached sworn officers (recorded by Katz 2008, internal memo). The unit was responsible for apprehending wanted persons, collecting and disseminating gang intelligence to units across the police service, and conducting random patrols in areas with gang problems.

The initial police responses to street gangs in both Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago have been limited and subject to significant setbacks, but this slow start is not inconsistent with the early experience of developed nations (Katz and Webb 2006). First, although policing policies defining gang phenomena are being developed, those policies are not yet well known in police services, and when they are present they rarely are followed by the police. Gang intelligence remains unreliable; officers are continuing to document persons in accord with their own individual ideas, beliefs and biases rather than consistently documenting individuals in accord with standardized behavioural criteria.

Second, several specialized police units dedicated to responding to gangs have been suspected of serious misconduct and human rights violations. In Trinidad, to cite one example, the Repeat Offender Programme Task Force was disbanded after repeated allegations implicated its members in kidnappings and extra-judicial killings, tipping off criminals to raids, arranging for illegal extra security for certain nightclubs and running ghost gangs to fraudulently acquire public money (Simon 2010a, 2010b). Similarly, the Jamaica Constabulary Force has been accused of (extrajudicial) killing of up to forty-four civilians while cracking down on gangs and pursuing Christopher Coke, a powerful gang leader, in the gang-controlled garrison Tivoli Gardens (Office of the Public Defender 2013).

Third, though few evaluations of the Caribbean police response to gangs have been conducted, those few have shown their suppression efforts to be largely ineffective. In Trinidad and Tobago, for instance, the Gang/ROP Task Force made 495 arrests from May 2006 through August 2007, but the majority of those arrested were released or transferred; only 110 (22.2 per cent) were charged. The capacity of police agencies to adequately collect, maintain and disseminate intelligence – the core function of the Repeat Offender Programme Task Force – proved to be disorganized and unreliable (recorded by Katz 2008, internal memo). Some new research conducted in Jamaica suggests that recent suppression strategies have been implemented without sufficient regard for human rights (Levy 2012), but if they were to be implemented properly under the rule of law, these gang suppression strategies might yield effective and powerful results (see chapter 7).

Across the board, early efforts to suppress street gangs have been weak and ineffective or, worse, corrupt. Suppression tactics in the Caribbean are too often part of the problem rather than an appropriate solution. In addition, there remains the need not only to address immediate problems (for example, to arrest individuals for criminal activity) but also to reduce the role of suppression as a response to gangs. Instead, the goal should be to deter youth and adults from organizing or joining gangs in the first place and to deter members from engaging in future crime. For that, the opportunity lies in intervention and prevention strategies.

Intervention and Prevention Strategies

Well-conceived and well-implemented suppression tactics can be an effective supplement to other elements of a strategic response to gangs and gang crime. At best, however, suppression addresses only part of the problem. Intervention and prevention strategies take the longer view, aiming to weaken or eliminate the attraction of forming or joining a gang in the first place. They seek to provide timely skills and opportunities that susceptible youth need to realize their goals in other more productive and rewarding ways. So far, Caribbean governments have seemed reluctant to adopt such intervention and prevention strategies.

Caribbean nations could tap into their community cohesiveness to mobilize regional coalitions of schools, churches, public health services and criminal justice agencies. Such coalitions with a focused aim could prove to be powerful agents, collaborating to develop, coordinate and deliver locally specific responses to street gangs. To date, some Caribbean coalitions have been formed for broader purposes, but thus far they have not focused on big pay-off issues such as those surrounding gangs. Much opportunity lies in coalitional responses to gang problems.

One example of such a strategy can be found in Jamaica’s Peace Management Initiative (PMI). In 2008, the PMI brokered a peace agreement between gang leaders in one community where an already high level of gang violence was rising. As part of the peace agreement, gang members were no longer to carry or use guns, and community leaders were to discourage violence and encourage members to tolerate political diversity. Additionally, the PMI established a peace council that was responsible for monitoring the terms of the agreement. The agreement was signed by gang leaders, members of civil society and political leaders. The peace agreement was largely credited with decreasing violence in the community. Levy (2012) illustrates its success by noting that in the year prior to the agreement there were more than sixty-five homicides in Greater Brown’s Town, a collection of communities in East Kingston, while for each of the five years following the agreement, there was an annual average of only eight homicides (p. 33). While this example illustrates the potential promise of such strategies, more rigorous research and evaluation is needed to understand their impact.

Another productive strategy for Caribbean nations could be to identify and address the root causes of street gangs and gang crime which can differ across regions. We can assume that if they do not have reasonable access to legitimate opportunities to accomplish their aims otherwise, a significant number of individuals in a given locale will be more apt to engage with criminal groups to achieve their goals and obtain resources. Root cause strategies focus on improving academic, economic and social opportunities for disadvantaged youth emphasizing educational success, job training and placement, and problem-solving skills.

Social intervention strategies are another intriguing option. Here, the specific aim is to reduce the likelihood of violent outbreaks in communities. It requires that trained outreach workers be available to provide time-sensitive guidance and services that can defuse escalating emotional situations – crisis intervention, temporary shelter or counselling, for example – following a violent incident. Outreach workers can be skilled at inter-gang mediation, group counselling and conflict resolution at points of crisis, all tactics that have proven themselves effective in preventing violent incidents (Burch and Chemers 1997; Spergel 2007; Spergel and Grossman 1997; Spergel, Wa and Sosa 2006).

Some Caribbean countries have begun to implement social intervention strategies through the importation of the Chicago CeaseFire programme (also known as