Jamaica struggles to fight crime

By Soutik Biswas
BBC News, Jamaica

There has been a spike in murders this year
They call themselves Fatherless, a group of armed young men who have lost their fathers in gang wars in Trench Town, a Kingston inner city of bullet-pocked homes and birthplace of reggae.

[...]The figures are chilling - there were 1,674 murders in 2005, up from 1,471 murders the year before. Last year, the number of murders came down to 1,340. [...]

[...]Crime in Jamaica is not new. According to a CIA report, "deteriorating economic conditions during the 1970s led to rising violence as gangs affiliated to major political parties, evolved in powerful organised crime networks involved in international drug smuggling and money laundering." [...]

Pour lire l'article complet: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6657203.stm

However nobody has warned american tourists not to visit Jamaica.Jamaica has 2.5 million people it has a force of 11.000 police officiers .Haiti has 8 million,but only 7000 police officers;Why?

I was watching a program on tv where an expert on crime attributes the increase in homicides and rapes to violence on TV.He said 40% of crime is related to violence that is seeing on tv by young people.When people can make a fortune on film that celebrates murders, and on music that denigrates women it is time to abandon the big cities where the criminals are concentrated;for the politicians do not want to solve the crime epidemic.

One does not have to be a social worker or a psychologist to comprehend the causes of these barbaric acts.It's every night that these crimes are reported on the news. last night it was a young couple from Germany that was victimized by the bandits in Orlando. the wife was sexually molested and the husband was beaten to give his mone to the gangsters .It is not enough to arrest and put them in jail for a few years ,it is important to combat the causes of this brutality.It is not enough to teach young people how to write ,read and do mathematics.We have to provide them with skills that permit them to make a living.

When one considers the needs of these young people, it is not surprising that these poorly educated young men and women do not have any respect for human life anymore.Without the ability to think rationnaly they are influenced easily by the vendors of violence on tv and in the theaters.Ther idols are some people who can put a ball in a litle hole or in a baskett in the basketball court .Tiger Wood.Michael Jordan,Shark are more important than Dr Benjamin Gordon;Sweet Mickey or jacques ketant are more respected and admired than the laborers who earn a living honestly.Thus we are all responsible of the delinquency of the young people for we do not teach them to appreciate what is decent,good and compassionate.

Yesterday my duaghter was telling me how my grand son was calling a young female classmate a bitch.I was wondering where the child has learned such a word,since his parents are Jeovah witnesses.But what you expect when you have black men writing songs to call their sisters and mothers bitches;to call their friend niggers.

Sans Malice, there's some good news According to the Associated Press, after 30 years of growing popularity, rap music is now struggling with an alarming sales decline and growing criticism from within about the culture's negative effect on society. Rap sales slid a whopping 21 % the past year, and for the first time in 12 years, no rap album was among the top 10 sellers of the year. A recent study by the Black Youth Project showed a majority of youth think rap has too many violent images. In a poll of black Americans by The Associated Press and AOL-Black Voices last year, 50% of respondents said hip-hop was a negative force in American society.

I don’t think all rap/hip-hop music is bad. But there are definitely some cancerous elements within it. The good news is that the american society is now addressing it. And wouldn’t it be ironic that the violent strain in rap is headed for a slow death itself? Let’s hope so.

The sooner the better, man.I do not have any admiration for these musicians who denigrate their friends'mothers and sisters .As far as I am concerned they can break and burn all their records.Besides how can one calls this stupidity music?It seems this is a conspiracy to lower the talents of our musicians,for I can not comprehend that somone who have heard the voices of Nat king Cole, Brook Benton, sam Cook , Sammy Davis junior ,Johny Mathis,Ray Charles ,The supremes, Aretha Franklin.and all the other famous artists who made all of us proud can appreciate these noises that the music industry is promoting to denigrate indirectly black people .

This is the reason that I admire Sidney Poitier so much for despite his poor formal education no amount of money could make him act in a movie that denigrates his own race and people.You would never heard these words in a song by Harry Belafonte.