“Jamaica recorded 673 murders in 2025, the lowest number since 1993 and a 40 percent drop from the year before. The country’s national security minister credits the decline partly to an increase in tips to police, which have risen nearly tenfold over the past decade,” reports The Doomslayer.
However, “even after a strong decrease in 2025, Jamaica’s homicide rate remained one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America and the Caribbean that year,” notes Statista. Only four countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have a higher homicide rate than Jamaica.
In 2023, Jamaica had the third highest homicide rate in the world. Now, it is still in the top 20 nations for its murder rate, despite the progress it has made.
The Gleaner reports on Jamaica’s progress:
Minister of National Security and Peace Dr Horace Chang says that after a massive slash in major crimes last year, Jamaicans are now set to reap a ‘peace dividend’, putting the benefits of safer communities at the forefront of the country’s progress.
He explained that this ‘peace dividend’ refers to the tangible social, economic, and developmental gains flowing directly to communities as crime declines, including safer streets, stronger families, expanded opportunities for young people, and an overall improved quality of life.
Chang underscored the important role Jamaican citizens have played in reducing crime, noting that the 2025 murder tally of 673 was the first time the figure fell below 700 since 1993.
Part of this impact has involved citizens providing tips to the police about criminal activities. While the number of tips has increased nearly tenfold over the past decade, most tipsters – 94 per cent – have not collected the promised reward…
The 673 murders recorded in 2025 represented a 40 per cent decline from the 1,139 recorded the previous year. This meant the homicide rate fell from 40 per 100,000 residents to 23.7 per 100,000.
The most important factor in deterring crime is the likelihood that an offender will get caught and spend at least some meaningful amount of time incarcerated. That is far more important as a deterrent than the length of time an offender gets incarcerated for. Clearance rates are more important than sentence length.
Longer prison sentences do reduce crime, but more by incapacitating offenders (keeping criminals in prison where they can’t harm innocent people, such as by committing robbery or stealing their possessions), than by deterring crimes by people outside of prison who have yet to commit crimes (incarceration does deter some crimes, but longer sentences typically have diminishing marginal returns in terms of deterrence, while increasing the likelihood that an offender will be caught has a large deterrent effect).
Criminals often commit more crimes after being released. Nationally, 81.9% of all state prisoners released in 2008 were subsequently arrested within a decade, including 74.5% of those 40 or older at the time of their release. (See Bureau of Justice Statistics, Recidivism of Prisoners in 24 States Released in 2008: A 10-Year Follow-Up Period (2008-2018), pg. 4, Table 4)). Incarcerating those criminals incapacitates them and keeps them from committing crimes against innocent people.
Failing to incarcerate criminals can lead to a high crime rate. When Italy released inmates early, that increased its crime rate significantly, by setting inmates free to commit more crimes, according to a 2014 study. (See Alessandro Barbarino & Giovanni Mastrobuono, the Incapacitation Effect of Incarceration from Several Italian Collective Pardons, American Economic Journal, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 1-37 (2014)). Other studies also find longer sentences cut crime.
