KINGSTON, Jamaica – With Jamaica still struggling with a high murder rate, Opposition spokesman on National Security, Peter Bunting, has asserted that the country would be in a better position if the Government had adopted the People’s National Party’s (PNP’s) template on crime.

“So there is a template that worked at a time when we had much fewer resources than this administration has. We introduced violence interrupters, [and] we supported the Peace Management Initiative to break the cycle of reprisal and counter-reprisal[s] that often results in many, many deaths after the first incident,” outlined Bunting.

“So the template is there. We begged the administration after the change of government [in 2016] not to abandon it, but for purely partisan political reasons, they did, and now the country is reaping the whirlwind from those poor decisions,” he declared. 

Bunting was addressing a press conference called on Monday by the Opposition to address national issues.

Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) crime statistics showed that as of Saturday, October 9, murders were up 10.4 per cent in 2021 over 2020, with 1,111 homicides in 2021, up from 1,006 in 2020.

In raising concerns about the crime situation, Bunting pointed out that for last week alone, there were some 33 murders committed across the island. 

“This caps a really awful week where there were 33 murders; an average of about five murders per day and it continued the accelerated rate of murder we’ve seen since June. Until the end of May, we were going along about the same rate as last year, but we’ve seen a rapid slide in the last three to four months,” he claimed.

“Just to put this in[to] perspective, at the rate we are going, by the end of October we will probably have exceeded the total number of murders in any year between 2011 and 2015, and that’s with two months to go for the year,” he continued. 

In the meantime, the Opposition spokesman insisted that the JCF should strengthen its crime investigative measures going forward.

“So when we put the cases together, we don’t find, as we pointed out, that hundreds of those cases are thrown out for lack of evidence or insufficient evidence,” advised Bunting.