A criminologist and a university professor have extended commendations to the men and women of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) for their continued efforts in taming murders but, at the same time, they’re warning the cops not to take anything for granted.

Among the factors which criminologist Dr Jason McKay has attributed to the drop in murders are the back-to-back operations which the police have been launching against criminals. These operations, he said, cause the gunmen to cower.

“I think it is a tremendous effort and a continuation of the effort that has been applied over the last year and the year before to reduce the opportunity for people to commit homicides,” McKay told the
Jamaica Observer.

“The continuous operations seem to be working. We have gotten more of a hide-and-cower effect from the criminals. They no longer have the free-handedness they were feeling throughout the last couple decades that [allowed them to think] they can do things and not get caught,” added McKay who is also a cop and a Sunday Observer columnist.

Data from the JCF show 51 murders committed in Jamaica between January 1 and February 7 this year, a 40 per cent reduction when compared to the same period last year when there were 85 murders.

Jamaica ended January 2026 with 33 murders, compared to January 2025 when there were 74 murders.

“We just hope that this can continue throughout the year,” McKay added.

Professor Anthony Clayton, from the Institute of Sustainable Development at The University of the West Indies, pointed out that the successes being experienced now by the JCF have a lot to do with work started by former commissioner Major General Antony Anderson. He commended the current commissioner for making his own improvements where he sees fit.

Clayton warned that while there are grounds on which to celebrate, the police need to take steps to ensure a continuation of their successes.

“What is happening is that the level of homicides have come down significantly. I think we can start to feel reasonably confident that the reduction is durable, and I attribute this to several factors — one of them is the very substantially increased resources available to the police and a whole raft of major reforms to policing.

“This started under Major General Antony Anderson but accelerated and has really come to fruition under the current commissioner Dr Kevin Blake. This includes a transition to intelligence-led policing — which is a fundamental strategy shift — and it is now working in almost every area of policing. We are now making substantial and sustained progress in starting to dismantle and degrade the power of the gang structures in Jamaica,” Clayton said, even as he raised the point that Jamaica might now be experiencing fewer murders but the island is still in the top 10 of the world’s most violent nations.

He said that while the progress is noteworthy, there is still room for change.

“We have moved from the top half of the top 10 and we are now in the second half of the top 10. That is progress, but it does indicate the fact that we still have a long way to go,” Clayton said.

He also emphasised that if Jamaica is not careful it could see its progress in the fight against criminal gangs eroding. He pointed to the numerous gun busts at the ports over the past few years, highlighting that the country has been failing in stopping the flow of illegal firearms and ammunition into the island. Also, he highlighted that a lot of homicides are not actually gang-related.

“They come under the general heading of domestic violence, and those problems are much harder to solve. That’s where we really have to start to focus, on the social factors that lead people to resort to violence — and that takes a lot longer to fix because you really have to start intervening into the dysfunctional broken families,” he said.

“You have to do something about the neglected and abused children. You have to fix the schools, and you have to put early detection systems in place, especially in the schools, so that we can be identifying people who are more likely to become violent as they grow up — and do something to get those people out of the cycle of violence.”