AS British high commissioner to Jamaica Judith Slater prepares to bid farewell to her post in mid-September she is praising Jamaica’s progress in reducing violent crime, revealing that during her tenure she has felt “much safer” on the island than in some other countries, with high crime rates, where she has served.

“I’ve been all over [Jamaica] and I have personally never experienced any brushes with crime or violence, and I felt much safer than I ever did when I lived in South Africa, which is another very high -rime environment,” Slater told the Jamaica Observer on Monday during an interview reflecting on her four-year tour of duty.

“I do a lot of hiking [and] we just go on our own, maybe with a couple of friends, and everybody’s extremely warm and friendly, even out in the middle of nowhere. So, you know, that’s been absolutely lovely and I’ve really enjoyed it,” Slater said.

She welcomed the country’s latest crime figures which show murders have fallen by more than 40 per cent this year — a trend she described as “very pleasing” and “really quite significant”.

“So I think everybody in Jamaica is happy to see the murder rate. I think it’s getting to a point where it’s starting to look as if it can be seriously considered as a reduction… but obviously it’s pleasing to see that happen,” she said, referring to the fact that this marks the second-consecutive year in which the country’s murder rate has been on a downward trend.

However, Slater warned against complacency, acknowledging that Jamaica is still listed as a high-crime country on the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office travel advisory list, despite the recent reductions.

“It’s got to come down a lot more than 40 per cent, that is an objective fact. It’s great that the murder rate has come down by 40 per cent but it’s still pretty high. So there’s the fact that we are committed to our violence prevention work [and] we just point out areas that we’re just advising common sense, basically, and no one… is saying that the job is done so we can’t rest on our laurels,” said Slater.

“We don’t advise against travel to Jamaica, we just point out areas that we’re just advising common sense, basically… good practice, saying, ‘You might want to consider this or that.’ But we don’t advise against travel to Jamaica. In fact, I think it was last year that the number of Brits visiting Jamaica overtook the number of Brits visiting Barbados because… Barbados has always been known as Little England, and a lot of Brits go to Barbados. And I think for some British tourists, there is perhaps a perception that Jamaica is a bit edgy and not necessarily as safe as Barbados, but the fact that those numbers [of Britons visiting Jamaica] are rising is very, very pleasing,” she said.

While not seeking to take any credit for the current reduction in the country’s crime rate, Slater pointed to key initiatives that the high commission and other overseas donors have taken to help Jamaica achieve long-term and more sustainable solutions.

“Some of the things that we’ve done over the decades don’t necessarily yield immediate results because a lot of what we’ve been trying to do is looking at the sort of root causes… So one of the things we’re looking at is literacy, and trying to give kids who would otherwise probably drop out of school and join a gang the tools to actually go and make choices, you know, consider choices about their careers, and go off and do something other than go to a life of crime,” she said.

Slater noted that such interventions can take years to bear fruit but believes they are essential if Jamaica is to sustain the recent improvements.

“That sort of thing will take a long time to feed through to any reduction in crime. But, of course, it’s really pleasing to see the numbers down by 40 per cent this year because that is starting to be really quite significant,” she added.

At the same time, the outgoing high commissioner expressed concern that some parts of the eastern Caribbean have seen an uptick in violent crime.

“One of the things that’s concerning is that the crime rate in the eastern Caribbean has been rising even while Jamaica’s has been falling. The murder rate in the eastern Caribbean — and some of that, of course, is Haiti, and is the ripple effect from the challenges that Haiti is facing,” she said.

But the British Government, she emphasised, wants to help stem the flow of the rising violence.

She pointed out that the UK has been supporting regional security by helping to strengthen institutions such as the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency and the Financial Investigations Division, with the aim of raising investigative and enforcement standards across the Caribbean.