Crime, Criminal Activity and Tourism Performance
Nikolaos Karagiannis and Zagros Madjd-Sadjadi
Summary
Chapter 3 provides a preliminary discussion on problems of crime and criminal activity in the Caribbean, especially as they relate to tourism. The authors single out certain areas of concern, namely, economic costs, long-term investment dampening, illicit drugs, gangs, indirect costs, and youth as the primary perpetrators of crime in the region, and offer policy recommendations towards halting the impact of criminal activity on Caribbean tourism performance.
Introduction: Caribbean Tourism Performance
Beginning with the advent of widespread commercial airline travel in the 1950s and the advent of the global economic boom touched off by the Marshall Plan in Europe and the rebuilding of Japan following World War II, tourism has experienced dramatic and sustained growth such that it now is one of the world’s largest industries (Heppenheimer 1995). Although there have been occasional localized disruptions due to wars, natural disasters, and terrorism, the decrease in cost and the development of commercialized tourist destinations has ensured a steady increase in total demand. We are now witnessing a sea change in terms of the tourist demographic. With the collapse of communism a generation ago in Eastern Europe and Russia as well as the rise of Brazil, India, and China as global economic competitors to western hegemony, more and more tourists are coming from these nontraditional sources.
Tourism has become the Caribbean’s most globally competitive industry and is predicated on the area’s warm climate, fine beaches, and attractive scenery (Boxill and Fredrich 2002). The region’s international tourist arrivals and receipts have been increasing since the 1950s, although at a slower pace as the industry has matured, and its share of world tourism has been on the rise since 1980 (WTO 1998). The industry has added more than three-quarter of a million jobs over the past decade and there has been a large increase in visitors arriving by cruise ships, making port calls an important source of revenue for these countries (PIOJ, Economic and Social Survey Jamaica, various years; Caribbean Tourism Organization, Latest Tourism Statistics).
Approximately a quarter of the Caribbean’s GDP comes from tourism, making it the most tourism-dependent region in the world (Clayton and Karagiannis 2008). Yet this figure is somewhat misleading as the proportionate impact of tourism on employment differs from country to country (Poon 1993). According to Caribbean Tourism Organization (2002) data, in 2000, tourists dropped a little less than US$1000 each and nearly US$20 billion total in the region, accounted for as little as 3.6 percent of the GDP in Trinidad and Tobago and as much as 83 percent of the GDP in Anguilla. Vaugeios (2002) calculates that this represented between 50 and 70 percent of the hard currency earnings of the region, displacing traditional agricultural exports as the major source of trade income. This is true even as natural resources extraction (oil and natural gas in Trinidad and Tobago, bauxite in Jamaica) and offshore banking (The Bahamas, Cayman Islands) have moved into view as important, globally-competitive industries in their own right. Yet these industries, unlike tourism, lack the ability to procure large-scale employment for unskilled and semi-skilled Caribbean laborers who have been displaced as agriculture diminishes in importance.
Without tourism, the balance of payments would be decidedly more negative on the current account of various Caribbean economies. Tourism’s share of current account receipts doubled from less than 18 percent in 1980 to about 37 percent in the 1990s (Mather and Todd 1993). Even so, there is great leakage in gross foreign exchange earnings that vary widely between various Caribbean economies but average about 40 percent (Karagiannis 2002).
Yet the tourism industry, while continuing to grow, is no longer generating the same high levels of growth that it did in the 1980s. Undoubtedly, the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, in the U.S. and the recent ugly financial crisis since 2007–2009 have partially accounted for this. American air travel declined in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and while European visitors did not drop off in the same proportions, the region’s proximity to the U.S., which is an advantage in the competitive tourism market in normal times, also contributed to a disproportionate negative impact in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.
Security concerns have becoming an ongoing issue with the tightening of protocols in the United States for outbound air travelers. While most countries have required the use of a passport for all international travel, the U.S. has stood virtually alone in having the ability for its citizens to travel without such papers throughout most of the Caribbean until very recently. Thus Americans could reasonably wake up and decide to take an international trip to these destinations on the spur of the moment and could re-enter the United States with only a birth certificate and U.S. driver’s license, while individuals in other countries required at least a passport and often a visa. While Americans still do not require visas to travel to most of the Caribbean, the State Department since 2007 has required Americans to show a passport when re-entering the United States by air, effectively reducing the number of potential visitors to this region.
These enhanced restrictions could not have come at a worse time in that they coincided with the recent financial crisis that began in late 2007. Indeed, figures and relevant statistical information clearly illustrate that Caribbean tourism performance has declined significantly during the last three years (Caribbean Tourism Organization 2011; PIOJ [various years]). Although the worldwide decline in travel and tourism demand was 8.5 percent, the loss in the Caribbean was 13.5 percent, which translated into a temporary loss of some 365,000 jobs (WTTC 2002, 2011). This reflected the extent to which Caribbean islands rely on the U.S. market even as the Caribbean has found that European tourist visitors have become its most important source of growth since the 1990s due in large part to a growing charter travel business (Caribbean Tourism Organization 2011).
These are all external uncontrollable factors that have impacted the industry. While local tourism and government officials can fret about such issues, there is really little that they can do about them. Yet, the Caribbean has placed itself at a disadvantage because of the perception that it is no longer the safe haven it once was perceived to be. The rise of criminal activity, especially the drug scourge and organized gangs, have reduced the ability of the region to attract visitors and it is in these areas that governments of the region can have an impact. Without an alternative sustainable, globally-competitive industry on the horizon, the region must work to ensure that the Caribbean remains a major tourist attraction. Yet there are challenges as it works to expand offerings. Gambling, found in many enclaves, can bring with it the seedier elements of organized crime. Expanding offerings beyond enclosed enclaves and near ports where cruise ships lay anchor means exposing tourists to local nuisance crimes (petty theft, illicit drugs, prostitution) that may be detrimental to the tourist experience the region wishes to project. As such, we develop this chapter as follows. The first section provides a preliminary discussion on problems of crime and criminal activity in the Caribbean, especially as they relate to tourism. The second main part singles out various areas of concern, namely, economic costs, long-term investment dampening, illicit drugs, gangs, indirect costs, and youth as the primary perpetrators of crime in the region. The final section offers policy considerations towards halting the impact of crime and criminal activity on Caribbean tourism performance.
Crime and Caribbean Tourism: A Preliminary Discussion
When visitors think of the islands of the Caribbean, lounging on white sand beaches and snorkeling in clear blue waters are what immediately come to mind. But there is a darker side to the idyllic atmosphere of the birthplace of reggae and calypso. Crime, especially violent crime, has plagued the region, causing reduced levels of investment (Economist 2008) and tourism (Alleyne and Boxill 2003) than would otherwise be the case. Beyond this, crime has a self-feeding aspect since increased criminal activity spawns from economic deprivation (Sun, Chu, and Sung 2011), yet economic deprivation is also caused by increased criminal activity (Detotto and Otranto 2010; Daniele and Marani 2010).
The region has a perception problem and it does not matter whether the criminal activity is home-grown or imported. In Aruba, two cases have captured the U.S. public’s imagination with regard to the small island paradise. Natalee Holloway’s disappearance and the murder of Robyn Gardner drew unwanted attention to the Dutch colony. Though the main suspect in the murder of Ms. Gardner is an American who is charged with executing a murder for financial gain to collect on an accidental death policy, this is of little comfort to a tourism industry that was already shaky in the wake of the Natalee Holloway disappearance (USA Today 2011).
Murder rates have risen sharply even in countries where unemployment has remained low and growth strong, such as the countries of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States where murder rates increased by 33 percent from 2004 to 2007 (Stern and Balestino 2008) and Trinidad and Tobago where murder rates more than quadrupled from 1999 to 2007 (Economist 2008). To protect tourists and their lucrative tourism sectors, Caribbean countries have responded with “enclave tourism” (de Albuquerque and McElroy 1999) where all-inclusive resorts cater to the whims of travelers shuttling them between the airport and the resort and carefully arranging any tours so that individual tourists are not placed in potential danger due to wandering into the wrong neighborhoods. Yet, this comes at a price. When visitors to the islands go to a Sandals, Couples, or Hedonism resort, they end up with an experience that is less expressive of the island culture. Instead of providing guests with an international experience with the locals, these resorts separate visitors from residents, breed resentment among the island populace towards foreigners, and reduce the economic viability of microenterprise entrepreneurs by denying them the ability to freely sell their wares to tourists.
Even so, the need to protect international visitors from criminal elements is understandable. All it takes is one Fountain Valley Massacre to destroy an island economy for years. In September 1972, Ishmael LaBeet and four masked accomplices entered the clubhouse at the Fountain Valley Golf Course in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, and killed four tourists and four local employees while making off with $700 in cash from the register plus an unknown amount from the wallets and purses of the murdered victims (Time 1972). Tourism in the “American Paradise” did not recover for two decades, but the worst aspect of this incident was that the machine gun used by LaBeet during that heinous crime actually came from the St. Croix police department. This fact was not revealed until a Pulitzer-prize winning article by Melvin Claxton (1994) appeared more than two decades later and detailed how police determined not only that the gun used in the crime had come from their department but that one of their own police officers likely gave it to LaBeet.
The United States Virgin Islands, in fact, has seen a number of violent crimes against tourists. Beginning in October 1993, U.S. Navy ships were prohibited from docking in St. Thomas following six assaults on naval personnel in a period of only two days (Rohter 1994). Four months earlier, one naval officer had been killed and two sailors assaulted on the same island (Daily Gazette 1994). The Navy planned to restore shore leave in April 1994 but this plan was put on hold following the murder that month of a swimming instructor from San Diego named Murray Callan, who was shot from behind without warning by two gunmen, less than a quarter mile from his hotel (New York Times 1994). The Navy finally restored shore leave in November 1994 (Daily Gazette 1994).
These incidents have only grown worse. By 2009, the U.S. Virgin Islands was rivalling Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago for the not-so-coveted mantle of “murder capital of the world” (Mortenson 2010) and the problem only grew worse with an additional 10 murders in the territory of 100,000 people in 2010 (Shea 2011). Even tourists on tour buses are not safe when the level of violence is so high—in June 2010, 14-year-old cruise passenger Lizmarie Perez Chapparro was killed while on a chaperoned tour conducted by the cruise ship in St. Thomas when her bus was caught in the crossfire during a gang shootout (Sloan 2010).
In contrast, Jamaica, by and large, has responded quickly and decisively when violence against tourists have occurred. In August 1991, the U.S. government issued a travel advisory warning Americans about the crime problem in the island nation and urging caution while visiting the country. The Jamaican government responded within days to the advisory by increasing police patrols and security in tourist areas (New York Times 1991). In July 1992, following the Ocho Rios murder of a Dutch tourist and the subsequent travel advisories issued by the British and Dutch governments, the Jamaica government briefly instituted army patrols of tourist areas (de Albuquerque and McElroy 1999). Over the next six years, crimes against tourists dropped by about 70 percent (from more than 600 to less than 200), but in January 1999, in response to two separate robberies in the previous two months involving busloads of German tourists, the Jamaican government once again called out the army to patrol tourist areas (BBC News 1999). These actions were controversial as many commentators believed that such measures were sending a message that Jamaica was unable to control the situation and that visitors to the island nation were in more danger than was actually the case, though the tourist industry itself had recommended that the patrols be instituted.
Yet, many times violence against tourists occurs when they are outside the relatively safe confines of the tourist enclaves or when they themselves are engaged in illegal activities. In 2001, British tourist Melanie Rose Clarke was murdered by a companion while traveling by taxi on the way to a relative’s home. She had been visiting Jamaica in order to attend a relative’s wedding (Daily Mail 2001). In 2006, a pregnant Swedish woman was killed at her home in Jamaica, while later that year an Australian tourist was killed after apparently inviting a prostitute into his hotel room (Fox News 2006). In 2008, another British visitor was killed in the home that she owned in St. James (Leppard 2008). In 2010, a tourist from New Zealand was killed in a botched robbery attempt at a Kingston home (UPI 2010). Later that same year, Paul Martin, a Canadian tourist, attempted to kill his wife by blaming the attack on carjackers. Luckily, she survived the attack and was able to testify against him (Jamaica Star 2010).
At the same time, violent crime against tourists has never reached the proportions that locals face and it is still a fact that tourists are much less likely to be victims of violent crimes while on vacation than when they stay at home. However, negative perception is still an issue and it is one that persists even in cases when initial claims of violence have later been discredited. The case of Pakistani cricket coach Bob Woolmer is illustrative. In March of 2007, Woolmer was found on the floor of his hotel room in Jamaica. He was taken to the hospital and could not be revived (CNN 2007). Police initially considered it a homicide, but three months later, it was determined that Woolmer died of natural causes (BBC 2007). Unfortunately, memories being what they are, people remember the initial report and not the subsequent retraction.
Yet, while these violent attacks are rare, there is often a perception that they are not, and when they do occur, the fact is that the region’s police forces have an abysmal record of clearing cases. Indeed, when one considers that only 49 percent of all Jamaican murder cases were solved between 1997 and 2000 (Economist 2002), one wonders whether tourists might find themselves the victims of other tourists who see the inability of the police to solve such crimes as an opportunity to do what they cannot do at home (Gleansor and Peak 2004). Still, it is murder and other violent crimes that capture the public imagination and create antipathy towards the region, rather than the surreptitious lifting of a wallet or absconding with an unattended purse or laptop that is far more prevalent.
At the same time, since establishments that cater to tourists usually have significant private security, one might expect that victimization rates of tourists would be lower than would be found in the general population. Johnny and Jordan (2007) find this to be the case for St. Lucia. While it is true that higher crime rates do contribute to higher rates for both tourists and residents, the higher level of security undertaken at resorts does seem to pay some dividends in keeping tourists safe. Similarly, when one considers that very few of the millions of tourists report any type of crime to the police, one gets the distinct impression that crimes against tourists is less of a problem than how the media portrays it.
What to do about the problem is something that vexes Caribbean governments. None want to suffer the same fate as Aruba with its steep decline in tourism following the Natalee Holloway disappearance (Schorn 2006). The downturn in Aruban tourism was at least partially caused by the persistent media coverage and the impression that the government was incompetent, corrupt, or both with regard to the investigation into the matter.
Jamaica, on the other hand, has worked to reduce its murder rate by setting up military patrols and reinstating the death penalty in 2008. The strategy appears to be is working, but further efforts might be necessary to further reduce the rate. From a high number of 1,682 murders in 2009, the total dropped to 1,428 in 2010 (UPI 2011). From 2011 to 2015, the total number of murders stabilized between about 1,100 and 1,200 a year (Jamaica Observer 2015).
Other tactics are to look at the root causes of crime. Given the active involvement of youth in gang-related violence, crime reduction “programs may include very simple things such as systematic efforts to improve parenting skills” (Harriott 2002, 14). Similar in this vein would be establishing family courts that can deal with child abuse cases to allow a child who brings such a charge to be placed under the protection of the government without requiring corroborating evidence, such as is required in criminal cases (UNICEF 2007).
Regional cooperation is also important so that beggar-thy-neighbor policies are not instigated that merely transfer the criminal problem elsewhere. The Regional Task Force on Crime and Security formed in 2002 was CARICOM’s attempt at “designing and implementing strategies to combat crime across the region” (Tsvetkova 2009). Yet without the participation of all factions of society these policies are likely to fail. To that end, effective witness protection programs are needed in order to ensure public cooperation. Unfortunately, some countries, such as the Dominican Republic and St. Lucia do not have such programs (U.S. Department of State 2011), while others, such as Jamaica, are inconsistent in the application of their programs (Jamaica Observer 2011). This will help reduce worries that witnesses will have to choose between the truth and their own lives. Still, more needs to be done to reduce the animosity that is felt among the populace towards the police. For example, extrajudicial killings in Jamaica are frequently mentioned in the media (Fahim 2010; Summers 2004) and this does little to build trust. Harriott (2002, 17) suggests “improved police responsiveness and accountability” to the public would go a long way in solving this problem.
Yet, there seems to be a disconnect between the need to handle headline crime and the passing annoyances that most tourists take for granted when they go on vacation. Harriott (2002) notes that Caribbean governments are preoccupied with crimes against tourists even though tourists have lower incidents of both violent and nonviolent crime perpetrated against them than the resident population, even after accounting for length of stay. For example, during the whole of the 1990s, even though Jamaica received 15 million visitors over the time span, just 18 were murdered (Harriott 2002, 3). During the 20-year period from 1980 to 2000, only two people were murdered in Barbados (Harriott 2002, 3).
Yet, politicians focus on the quality of the experience, trying to turn the Caribbean into a Disneyland-like retreat from the real world. In 2005, The Bahamas Prime Minister Perry Christie complained, “Why would a visitor want to leave a clean, safe, all-inclusive resort to be exposed to filth and rip-offs? How many times have we seen dead animals in the streets on the way to resorts? .. . A band of no-good young fellows does not have the right in our countries to cause the nationals to suffer . . . A priority must be placed on stamping out criminal behavior . . . In the context of people traveling globally, they are not distinguishing in any great detail between a country here and a country there in this region.” Similar statements have been repeatedly made by politicians and government officials in The Bahamas, in Trinidad, and in other Caribbean territories over the last five years (Caribbean News Now 2015). Indeed, this preoccupation about the image portrayed to tourists may lead to a heightened sense of danger where none exists. After all, unlike in the United States and Europe, crime figures in the Caribbean are treated almost like state secrets, leading some to speculate that they do not want to have this issue highlighted but this only makes the anecdotal evidence all the more difficult to rebut (CNN 2002).
Crime and Caribbean Tourism: Specific Concerns
Crime as a Perception Problem
The Caribbean has often suffered from a surfeit of unemployment and economic malaise, both of which are linked to rises in criminal activity (Rafael and Winter-Ebmer 2001). Yet, when one compares the rate of criminal activity aimed at tourists in the Caribbean against other similar destinations one finds that the Caribbean region is doing an exceptionally good job in ensuring the safety of visitors. Chesney-Lind and Lind (1986) found that visitors to Hawaii experienced more violent and nonviolent crime than did residents. Still, the perception of crime, even when it is not directed at tourists, is a factor that influences travel decisions (Alleyne and Boxill 2003). Yet the problem is not addressed by the presence of all-inclusive enclave tourist resorts that seal off the visitors from the local populations. The problem with such resorts is that much of the experience fails to link to the rest of the economy and this means that the economic benefits of tourism are not distributed but instead tend to be concentrated in the hands of major corporations that develop these locales. Indeed, one can almost think of these as cruise ships that don’t float given their lack of integration with the rest of the national economies of the region.
Illicit Drugs
Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Caribbean has undoubtedly heard of Rastafarianism, a religion whose adherents believe in the sanctity of smoking marijuana. Yet the regional drug problem is not one where marijuana plays a major role. Instead, the Caribbean serves as a way station for the transfer of cocaine (from south to north) and guns (from north to south). It is difficult to patrol all of the waterways in order to stop the trade flows and local law enforcement capabilities are, in any case, inadequate for the task (Economist 2008).
Operation Kingfish is an attempt by the U.S., UK, and Canada to reduce this flow by assisting Jamaica in its patrol of the 65 cays, islands, and rocks that are part of its sovereign territory (Drummond 2008). This success of Operation Kingfish in reducing the drug scourge is one of the factors that may be reducing the Jamaican murder rate. Yet the problem is that as more drugs are interdicted in Jamaica waters, the drug trade may simply move to locales where there is less enforcement, causing an increase in violence in those locations.
Just as organized crime has infiltrated all of Italian society and is now its largest employer and economic sector (Kiefer 2007), drug traffickers have been able to influence politicians in the Caribbean to look the other way. Indeed, a report from Scotland Yard issued in regards to the disappearance of William Herbert, the country’s former ambassador to the United Nations and deputy prime minister, noted that Dr. Herbert was “rumored to be heavily involved in laundering drugs money through his bank in Anguilla” (New Scotland Yard 1995).
In Jamaica, “garrison communities” proliferated in the 1970s as the Jamaican Labor Party and the People’s National Party sought to create political hegemony through intimidation as well as the ballot box. It all began with the creation of Tivoli Gardens by Edward Seaga in an effort to secure an electoral base and was matched by Anthony Spaulding who set up a counterpart in South St. Andrew (Abrahams 2000, 232). From this initial base, a number of similar strongholds emerged and the two parties set out to arm their constituents. Politics had become a blood sport. This was entirely a different pathway to creation than would be found almost anywhere else. In Jamaica the gangs were creations of the state, whereas in other countries, while gangs may have been intimately intertwined with the political workings, they were undoubtedly external to the state in their origins. Yet, Jamaica’s garrison communities soon broke free of the shackles of their political masters and like Frankenstein’s monster, they took on a life of their own. With illicit drugs, garrison dons no longer had to rely on political parties for their livelihoods. Instead, the deal was about to be reversed with the dons having the upper hand over the politicians.
In Trinidad and Tobago, a “gang culture” has emerged, which “some believe . . . can be attributed to a loss of respect for the state and the rule of law [owing to] a series of high-level corruption scandals” and the large income disparities fostered in the aftermath of the oil and natural gas boom (Economist 2008). Guns and drugs are the main culprits in an escalation of murder that has overhung the country, with 53 percent of all murders being related to gang warfare over a four-year period beginning in 2003 (Economist 2008).
A recurrent local theme is that the high murder levels are the direct result of large scale criminal deportation from the U.S. and the UK to the Caribbean. While this idea has been largely discredited by Madjd-Sadjadi and Alleyne (2007) and Headley (2005), this perception does cause friction between local residents who resent immigration policies of the U.S. and visitors to the islands.
Crime Damages Society and the Economy
Despite little evidence that it is taking place, the tourism industry worries constantly about tourists being caught in the crossfire. The problem is that each murder of a vacationing American is amplified to a 24/7 news cycle that feeds on the fears of many. The deaths or arrests of Americans abroad resonate through the television and radio conversations that make up the U.S. media landscape. The jailing of Amanda Knox for murder in Italy and the conviction and imprisonment of hikers trespassing in Iran played on the fear that Americans have of being caught in a judicial system that is alien to their way of thinking. Similarly, the loss of a single American tourist in Hawaii would not strike the same chord as the death of one on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. For tourism-dependent economies the mere thought of a Natalee Holloway-inspired boycott causes unprecedented fear because their entire economic system is utterly dependent on maintaining a positive image for overseas tourists.
Economic Costs
Crime acts as a cancer to the economy, causing the system to work against itself. As more spending is placed into security, which is fundamentally a protection of existing assets, less goes into productive endeavors that can grow the economy and create the jobs necessary to alleviate economic deprivation. Increased security also breeds reductions in levels of trust and thus employees are less motivated and productive. A report by the UNODC and the World Bank (2007) estimates that if Caribbean countries could match the lower crime levels found in Costa Rica (with a homicide rate of 8.1/100,000), economic growth rates would increase, with the greatest effect on Jamaica and Haiti, and a lesser effect on the Dominican Republic and Guyana.
A Lost Generation
According to the CARICOM Commission on Youth Development (2010, 71) more than 70 percent of all murders, 60 percent of all rapes, and 65 percent of all crimes are committed by those under the age of 30. Youth are far more likely to be involved in gangs, have higher unemployment rates, and are more likely to be victims of violent crime. This represents a lost generation in more ways than one. As youth find themselves increasingly isolated from the productive sector, they are more likely to develop antisocial behaviors that will cause irreparable harm to themselves and society. Indeed, just lost tourism revenues for the CARICOM region due to crime are estimated to be in excess of US$200 million per year (CARICOM 2010).
Reduced Growth in Foreign Direct Investment
According to a 2006 World Bank survey, nearly 40 percent of all Caribbean managers reported that crime reduced their likelihood of expanding their businesses, while, on average, direct security costs for private firms in Jamaica added 2 percent to the overall costs (Economist 2008). There were also large indirect costs since firms could not stay open at night and they had to institute security protocols that ended up taking more time than if they were operating in a safer environment. Those workers who are best able to move, do so, and the World Bank has found that of the 10 countries with the greatest number of college-educated emigrants, eight of them are in the Caribbean (World Bank 2011).
Halting the Impact of Crime on Caribbean Tourism: Addressing Main Problems
Reactions by the populace of various Caribbean islands to security measures have varied widely. It is unclear how effective are curfews, harsher punishments, reintroduction of the death penalty, and increased training and recruitment of quality law enforcement personnel. Curfews seems to be more acceptable than the military taking the place of the police as the enforcers of domestic law. Corruption remains an important issue that needs to be addressed, especially if the Caribbean is to come to grips with the drug scourge that eats at its societies. There seem to be no end to suggestions about how to reduce crime, but unless we can attack the root causes of crime in the Caribbean, these measures will be nothing more than bandages over a deepening wound. Unless the central issues of relative and absolute economic deprivation, gun and drug trafficking, corruption, and an ineffective and ineffectual judicial system are addressed (Harriott 2002), the Caribbean will not fully recover and only if the countries of the Caribbean collaborate can they achieve lasting success.
Employment Generation and Training Programs
Perhaps the biggest challenge is to provide the youth of the Caribbean with well-paying, full-time, permanent jobs. The exodus of the best and brightest may assist with the balance of payments by providing needed remittance income, but it does little to remedy the situation. The lack of opportunities for constructive engagement lead wayward youth to pursue antisocial behaviors. In addition, poor monetary policies of countries such as in Jamaica that lead to high interest rates only contribute to short-sighted thinking that is inimical to furthering education.
Tertiary education has too often been focused on the creation of college graduates rather than being skills-based and vocational in orientation. For example, in Jamaica, while tertiary education in 2009–2010 accounted for 18 percent of the Ministry of Education’s budget, 70 percent of the expenses were concentrated in just two schools: The University of the West Indies, Mona and the University of Technology. Only 30 percent of all tertiary education spending went to the other 15 postsecondary institutions on the island (Jamaica Ministry of Education 2011, Table 5-2(a)). When one considers that both universities are not only located in Kingston, but also happen to be located across the street from one another, this intensive spending is rather problematic. Given that only a quarter of the population of the island lives in the parish of Kingston and St. Andrew (where the city of Kingston is located) with about another 29 percent in the four surrounding parishes of Portland, St. Thomas, St. Catherine, and St. Mary, this leaves between 46 and 75 percent of the population without direct access to the two major tertiary institutions (Statistical Institute of Jamaica 2010).
As noted by Madjd-Sadjadi (2005), apprenticeship and vocational education programs fill a major void in educational systems and can be used to economically raise skill levels of high school graduates quickly and effectively. We would recommend that Caribbean countries concentrate their limited tertiary funds on endeavors that will be of a more broad-based nature and emphasize skills that would be beneficial to the tourism industry.
Corruption is an ongoing battle that makes it difficult to fight crime because the same people who are sworn to uphold the law are also breaking it. At the same time, widespread corruption breeds contempt for the rule of law among the populace. According to Harriott (2002, 12), “the CCM report . . . estimates that drug corruption provides the Caribbean civil servants with some US$320 million in income annually. This is not an insignificant problem.” Caribbean island nations have tried to combat this problem by increasing educational requirements and improving screening processes when they hire. However, when the police and other civil servants are not well-paid, when individuals are given wide latitude without proper oversight, or when incentives to act in an honest manner are not in place, the temptation to engage in corruption increases.
Law Enforcement vs Social Measures
Addressing root causes is a long-term process that does not have the short-run payback of more punitive measures. It is far easier and more visible to go after drug dealers than it is to increase educational attainment and legitimate employment opportunities so that fewer individuals will be drawn into the drug trade in the first place. The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Regional Task Force on Crime and Security was established in 2001 to allow the governments of the region to cooperate on criminal and security matters. The U.S. and the UK have provided monetary and technical assistance to the militaries of various CARICOM countries. But it is hard to effectively combat crime when the judicial system fails in its duty to punish offenders.
Nearly half of all rapes, three-quarters of all murders, and more than 90 percent of all burglaries are never solved in Trinidad and Tobago (Douglas 2010). With the chances of being caught, let alone convicted and incarcerated or executed, so abysmal, criminality flourishes. The witness protection program in the country is in shambles as witnesses who no longer feel they can be protected actively refuse to assist in prosecutions (Joseph 2006). Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has called for removal of obstacles to the imposition of the death penalty, which will draw the ire of international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International (Trinidad & Tobago Guardian Online 2011). Yet without an effective death penalty, given the low rate of conviction, criminals are in control. Among CARICOM governments, only Guyana, Barbados, and Belize use the Caribbean Court of Appeals as the final appellate court, while the Privy Council continues to be the court of final appeal for both Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. Yet the Privy Council has not allowed an execution in Trinidad and Tobago since 1999, despite having 42 individuals sitting on death row (Dayle 2011), and there has not been an execution in Jamaica since 1988, while eight people languish on death row in that country (Cornell Law School 2016). The low rates of execution and even sentencing to death contrast sharply to states in the U.S. that have close to the same number of total murders. Virginia, which has about 400 murders each year (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2011), in contrast to Trinidad and Tobago’s 500 per year (Dowlat 2011), has executed 38 people since Trinidad and Tobago last used the death penalty (Death Penalty Information Center 2016). Texas, which has had fewer murders than Jamaica, has executed 504 people from 1989 through January 2016 (Death Penalty Information Center 2016) while Jamaica has executed precisely zero (Cornell Law School 2016).
Without reform that strengthens the criminal justice system to balance the need to protect the public against the legitimate rights of the accused, law enforcement will be unable to address the issue of crime. From the standpoint of the tourism industry, without final closure, cases will continue to linger in the public mind and this will mean that the damage of a Natalee Holloway disappearance cannot be mitigated with the passage of time. Justice delayed is justice denied, not just for the victims and their families, but for the entire society.
Local Involvement in Tourism Development and Empowerment
Emphasis should be placed on greater local involvement in the Caribbean as well as the development of local communities. Local communities need to be more involved in the planning of tourism development so that a better appreciation for the society’s history and culture can be conveyed. The problem with the current mass “sun, sand, and sea” model is that it can be replicated anywhere in the Caribbean. However, tourism based on unique characteristics of the locality are not so easily transplanted. For example, in Jamaica, Port Royal, known for its harboring of pirates before it was mostly submerged in a June 7, 1692 earthquake and tsunami, could be restored to its former glory and attract history buffs and kids with an interest in swashbucklers. Ecotourism could be developed to take travelers to explore the Blue Mountains, while the Bob Marley Museum might see additional attractions surrounding it that showcase other contributors to the reggae, ska, and rocksteady music genres that originated on the island.
By moving away from the mass “sun, sand, and sea” model, and towards heritage, cultural, ecological, health, and community tourism, product differentiation will occur and this will give those tourism niches significant market power and allow for greater community involvement and local ownership (Boxill 2000; Boxill and Frederick 2002; Hayle 2000 and 2002; Timothy 2002; Duperly-Pinks 2002). This local involvement will mean less relative deprivation as tourism earners are more equally spread throughout the community, leading to a reduction in crime and alienation (Duperly-Pinks 2002). Such local involvement should go a long way in creating the much needed “organic link” between the industry and the people (Boxill and Frederick 2002; Hayle 2002), which will help ensure the industry’s long-term survival, particularly in wake of neoliberal globalization that seeks to reduce competitive industries to the lowest common denominator.
As individuals or communities are empowered, psychological well- being and self-esteem is improved. By linking communities to the developments, there is created a long-term planning aspect that leads to sustainable development and greater stakeholder input in the decision-making process (Timothy 2002, 152).
One final possibility provided criminality can be reduced to levels more common in the rest of the world is the creation of dark tourism (Sharpley and Stone 2009; Lennon and Foley 2000) out of the sites of former garrison communities in Jamaica and other locales where crime once took hold. Dark tourism, which has as its basis the seeking out of the macabre, has made tourist attractions out of Auschwitz and the Sixth Floor Museum of the former Texas School Book Depository in Dallas (the location from where Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy in 1963).
Although crimes against tourists are rare, when they do occur, especially when they are violent and unsolved, the effects on the local tourism-dependent economies of the Caribbean can be devastating. Much of the public perception of violence in the Caribbean is based on these rather rare events or mind-numbing statistics that detail how dangerous it is to be a resident of the country without considering that visitors tend to be protected from violence. At the same time, the violent nature of the external environment and the enclave tourism response of the all-inclusive resort had made product differentiation in the Caribbean difficult. Without effective product differentiation, the Caribbean will gradually lose its ability to compete for high-end tourism dollars with places that offer a less violent backdrop.
Proposed solutions to the problems are many but they require an integrated approach that not only addresses the issue of crime in society but also the central questions of how to punish criminality and how to address its root causes. In the end, the Caribbean needs to extricate itself from its enclave tourism mentality to ensure that it can compete effectively in a globalized neoliberal world.
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