The “big, hairy, audacious goals” set by his ministry to help improve the economy are still underway despite severe challenges, says National Security minister Peter Bunting.

Borrowing a term from author Jim Collins, Bunting said his ministry’s aim is to significantly reduce major crimes to levels of developed countries by 2016.

The reduction in crime is directly linked to a better economy, Bunting said, adding that the estimated cost of crime has been 67 to 90 per cent of Jamaica’s gross domestic product over the last 40 years.

“We’ve developed a high tolerance for crime,” Bunting said at the American Chambers of Commerce expo in New Kingston last week. Jamaica’s murder rate has been especially difficult to lower, even as other major crimes have reduced.

“In every area except murder, we are below,” said Bunting,

“But no one really watches anything else (but murder),” he added.

By international standards, a civil war sees about 30 murders per 100,000 people in the population, he said. Jamaica’s figures were twice that, at 63 per 100,000, in 2009. “So, we were having two civil wars running concurrently.”

The number being targeted is 12 per 100,000, the minister said. That would see the country’s murder figures falling from over a thousand each year to about 320 in four years’ time. “If we achieve those goals or anywhere near those, the economy will boom.”

Bunting said the security forces have been making serious inroads, as people embrace a change from a violent subculture.

“Many people don’t see what’s wrong (with some kinds of crime) and so we need a zero tolerance stance to encourage a change,” he said.

Steps to achieving those goals must be a combination of social intervention and control and preventative measures, he advised.

Already, the ministry is seeking to combine the police force and the army for greater efficiency, he said, as well as introducing greater use of technology.

Mobile police posts, estimated to cost about a million dollars each, will be built to quickly respond to flare ups.

What’s more is that the creation of a Police Management Authority, to oversee all activities of that body, is being pursued.

The Citizen Security and Justice Programme is working hard to prevent crimes in volatile communities, Bunting said, adding that such reductions in major crimes will not happen overnight, but in increments.