Criminal dons and extralegal security privatization in downtown Kingston, Jamaica

Abstract

In cities across the world, neoliberal retrenchment, shrinking public expenditure and an emphasis on private‐public partnerships have resulted in the privatization of many services formerly provided by the state. The privatization of security has been one of the most significant shifts in this regard, with citizens becoming responsibilized for safeguarding their own physical integrity and material belongings. This transfer of state responsibility has had an important effect on the spatial organization of cities, as formerly public spaces become both privatized and militarized. Drawing on research in Kingston, Jamaica, this paper describes how new actors from criminal organizations to security companies move to fill these physical and social spaces. Arguing for an increased focus on spatial retreat from below, it highlights the extent to which an extralegal transformation of urban security and services takes place in marginalized areas, parallel to the better studied privatization of security services in affluent areas.

Setting the Scene: The Geographies of Urban Governance

“…The growing income inequality in cities worldwide, the inability of state authorities to provide the public goods needed by people, the entrance of new players (NGOs, CBOs and the private sector) in infrastructure and basic services provisions from water and energy through to security is changing urban societies. Ironically, criminal gangs both use the lack of rule of law to fl ourish and are increasingly also providing civic amenities in their own way to control local people (Jaffe 2012 ). Will the growing number of people coming into the cities be able to continuously assert their right to the city or will fi rst-comers create barriers for late-comers?…”

Security, Resilience and Participatory Urban Upgrading in Latin America and the Caribbean

“…In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Jamaica's homicide rate fluctuated between the low 30s and 40s per 100,000 (Levy, 2013); it peaked at 62 in 2009, dropped to 36 in 2014, and was back up to 47 in 2018 ( InSight Crime , 2019). According to UNHabitat (2007), from 1998 to 2005, 76 per cent of all homicides occurred in the Kingston Metropolitan Area, making the city's murder rate significantly higher than that of the island in general; Jaffe (2012) reports it to have peaked at over 150 per 100,000 in the garrisons. Parts of inner‐city Kingston continue to have the highest homicide rates on the island (Morris, 2019).…”

Writing around violence: Representing organized crime in Kingston, Jamaica

“…Similarly, Brick Town residents did not restrict their discussions to dons' non-violent activities, which included providing local access to a range of public goods and services, from welfare and employment to solid waste management and the construction of public parks (see Jaffe, 2013). 5 They also confirmed the dons' use of violence, although they tended to justify its use as necessary to maintain local peace and order (see Jaffe, 2012bJaffe, , 2015Charles and Beckford, 2012). With respect to crime more broadly, many of my interlocutors turned out to have been deported from foreign countries after having been involved in 'a little drugs business', or had spent time in prisons in Jamaica, but other residents generally did not treat them as scary, violent individuals.…”