Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness has asserted that Jamaica’s declining murder rate reflects the fact that the country is systematically degrading the ecosystem of organised violence, disrupting gang leadership, constraining their finance, and reducing criminals’ territorial control.

Holness made the assertion on Thursday while addressing the 4th Annual Security Seminar of the Office of the National Security Advisor at AC Marriott hotel in New Kingston.

He said that national security resilience is now a central organising principle of Jamaica’s security strategy, even while cautioning that resilience demands consolidation.

“Communities once controlled by gangs must become structurally and permanently inhospitable to their return,” he said. “That means secure public spaces, reliable infrastructure, ordered community development, lawful economic opportunities, and consistent State presence.”

The prime minister urged that where gangs once governed through fear, the State must now govern through presence, legitimacy, and the provision of opportunities.

Holness told the seminar that the security gains must be locked in by development or they will be contested again. He noted that Hurricane Melissa, which impacted the country at Category 5 strength last October, constituted a “defining national security event”, claiming 45 lives and affecting approximately 760,000 people across south-western Jamaica.

Holness pointed to the response of the Jamaica Defence Force, which, he said, demonstrated “real institutional strength, enhanced joint planning, effective civil military coordination, and communications resilience”.

But that response, he said, also exposed pressure points where logistic chains were stretched, fuel and maintenance capacity strained, and maritime and air assets diverted from border security to humanitarian relief.

According to Holness, this showed that while the Government has tripled the national security budget, “there are threats that we could face for which we don’t have the assets or other capabilities to respond”. As such, the country “must continue to invest in our national security assets”.

Additionally, he told the security seminar that, “Hurricane Melissa has taught us an unavoidable lesson that climate shocks are no longer episodic emergencies — they are now permanent features of Jamaica’s national security environment.

“After Melissa, there can be no return to a security model that treats climate issues as peripheral,” Holness said.

“Beyond the humanitarian dimension, disasters represent strategic shocks; they redirect resources, stress institutional capacity, disrupt national logistics, and create windows of opportunity for illicit traffic and irregular migration. They present an opportunity for the discontinuity of Government. They can be at the scale where the provision of services can be terminated…” said Holness.

He pointed out that following the hurricane, local government services were disrupted — “buildings totally destroyed, police stations totally destroyed”.

“The good thing that Jamaica can be proud of is that there was no break in the provision of policing services. Our assets were definitely affected, but our human resources played their role, our security forces played their role admirably,” the prime minister said while arguing that national security resilience must, therefore, be treated as a strategic imperative.

“Our security institutions must be able to anticipate, absorb, adapt, and recover from shocks, whether criminal, environmental, or geopolitical,” he said, while stressing that disaster risk management must be fully integrated into core security planning, budgeting, and capability development.

The prime minister also stated that border security plays a key role since Jamaica sits within one of the most-trafficked maritime corridors in the hemisphere. He noted that trafficking networks are adaptive and multi-modal, exploiting containerised cargo, clandestine airstrips, unmanned aerial vehicles, and semi-submersible vessels which are all part of the strategies used in the threats to Jamaica’s border security.

Holness highlighted that narcotic routes increasingly overlap with irregular migration networks and shared that in 2025 the authorities seized more than 33,000 kilogrammes of marijuana and more than 1,360 kilogrammes of cocaine. Additionally, the Jamaica Defence Force Coast Guard intercepted approximately 990 pounds of cocaine valued at $3.7 billion. Also in 2025, Jamaica documented 124 known irregular migrant entries, primarily from Haiti and Cuba, with each requiring humanitarian processing, legal compliance and sustained resource allocation.

“For a small island developing state like Jamaica, sustained, unmanaged inflows [of migrants] impose real economic, administrative, and social strains. Border security is, therefore, foundational to national security, economic security, disaster resilience, and crime reduction,” said Holness.