Paget deFreitas, chairman of the editorial board at The Gleaner: “By Nov. 23, 1,380 murders were recorded on the island this year, an increase of 5 percent over the corresponding period last year. The trajectory places Jamaica on track to surpass the 1,463 homicides of 2021. The island’s murder rate, close to 50 per 100,000, is among the world’s highest. The authorities say that the majority of murders are the result of rivalry between criminal gangs that thrive on extortion or by scamming elderly Americans out of their money with bogus lottery schemes. Some of the gangs have their roots in a political culture that used to rely on strong-armed men to corral votes. Gangs retain a residual role in the island’s politics. Apart from the fear crime causes, it harms the economy by indirectly constricting growth–by up to 7 percent annually, some studies suggest. Paradoxically, tourism, an area of the economy that would be expected to be extremely sensitive to crime, consistently defies the gloomy statistics. The sector’s earnings this year will be just shy of the $3.7 billion it grossed in 2019. More broadly, the economy is projected…”