WITH 1,121 cases of domestic violence and 12 murders emanating from domestic disputes in the St Catherine North Police Division last year, Deputy Superintendent of Police Jacqueline Dillon says communities in the upper belt of that division are facing a serious problem.

“St Catherine North in the upper belt — Linstead, Ewarton, that upper area — is where we have the greatest problems where St Catherine North is concerned and one would think it would be in the greater Spanish Town area, but it’s not. It’s actually the Linstead belt, up in that area that is having a number of issues,” Dillon, who heads the police Domestic Violence Intervention Centres (DVICs), told the Jamaica Observer recently.

According to Dillon, the feuding in those communities extend beyond partners, embroiling other family members.

“One thing I do know for a fact is that those divisions that have high numbers of domestic violence also have high numbers of homicides out of domestic violence and serious injuries. Many times they escalate. Some of them don’t even come to the hands of the police before people die or are seriously injured. Sometimes it is after the incident that the police even know of the situation. So again, it goes back to reporting, by not only victims of domestic violence, but their family members and community,” said Dillon.

“The latest is the 78-year-old man who killed his 72-year-old wife recently [in Bog Walk]. A number of intimate partner violence cases end in deaths. But it’s also not just intimate partner violence, it’s also family violence. Violence among siblings, mother and child, father and child, cousins, relatives. And in some of these instances, it’s over ‘dead lef’ properties. People die leaving lands and it starts out in that way and people want to take control,”added Dillon.

As such, she said the police are trying in the best way possible to intervene.

“So St Catherine North has a problem, a serious problem. We have done a number of pop-ups in that area but I think there is still more that we need to do as it relates to getting more into these community meetings,” she said, noting that although the police in the St Catherine North Division have been doing a lot of initiatives around domestic violence via Zoom, “there is much more that we can do when it comes on to reaching everybody in some of these spaces”.

In the meantime, comparative figures for domestic violence for 2021 and 2022 show that the parishes of St Ann, Clarendon, St Elizabeth, Westmoreland and St Catherine led the way in respect of domestic violence reports.

For 2022, the DVIC in St Ann recorded 1,020 domestic violence reports and seven domestic violence murders; while for Clarendon it was 1,094 domestic violence reports and 16 domestic violence murders; St Elizabeth, 986 domestic violence reports and three domestic violence murders; while for Westmoreland it was 721 domestic violence reports and three domestic murders.

In the figures for St Catherine for 2022 , domestic violence reports for St Catherine North stood at 1,121, with 12 domestic murders, and for St Catherine South, 534 domestic violence reports and three domestic murders.

In 2021 for St Catherine North there were 1,642 domestic violence reports and 16 domestic murders, while for St Catherine South there were 881 reports and nine domestic murders.

Addressing the numbers which indicate an increase in the number of reports of domestic violence for 2022 compared to 202, Dillon said this could be an indication “that there are more incidents, or that persons are feeling a lot more comfortable in reporting to the police”.

In noting the high reporting numbers in rural areas, Dillon said this belied popular opinion.

“Many persons would have thought that Kingston and St Andrew would have been a high number and it is truly not. Maybe because there is under-reporting, again, people still don’t want their business out there in the public like that. When you go into rural communities’ people are more willing to talk in the country,” said Dillion.

“When you come into Kingston and St Catherine and some of the other parishes you find that people are not willing to talk about domestic violence again because of stigma and again because we are very private and we believe that whatever happens in our household should remain there,” Dillon added.

There were 8,746 domestic violence cases reported across the island last year. A total 1,324 cases were referred to the DVICs compared to 1,145 in 2021.

In 2022 DVICs islandwide recorded 1,720 intimate partner violence cases and 924 family violence cases, with more than 650 reports made by children.

Males are also reporting to the DVICs despite societal norms that question the manhood of abused men — some 743 between January and October 2022 — but cases reported by females continue to outstrip the males nearly three to one and stood at 2,201 by October 2022.