For decades, Jamaica has struggled with persistently high levels of violent crime, driven by entrenched gang networks, socio-economic marginalisation, and weak institutional capacity. To stabilise volatile communities and reclaim spaces dominated by criminal actors, Jamaican policymakers adopted the counterinsurgency-derived clear, hold, build (CHB) framework, most formally expressed through the Law Reform (Zones of Special Operations) Act (2017). The strategy promised a structured pathway: remove violent actors, maintain security control, and then deliver sustained social transformation.

Yet despite its conceptual appeal, Jamaica’s adaptation of CHB has been marked by a profound imbalance. The “clear” and “hold” phases — led by the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) — have been executed with varying degrees of tactical success. However, the “build” phase, the model’s decisive component, remains chronically underdeveloped, inconsistently implemented, and structurally constrained. The absence of a robust build phase has ultimately undermined the long-term viability of the entire CHB strategy.

This piece critically examines Jamaica’s experience with CHB, arguing that while the country has demonstrated capacity to clear and temporarily hold high-risk communities, the failure to institutionalise and sustain the build phase has prevented meaningful transformation, allowing criminal networks to regenerate and public trust to erode.

The Clear Phase: Tactical Gains Without Strategic Consolidation

The clear phase aims to neutralise criminal actors, seize weapons, and disrupt gang infrastructure. Jamaica’s security forces have demonstrated competence in conducting targeted operations, intelligence-driven raids, and tactical saturation within designated Zones of Special Operations (ZOSOs). However, the fragmented nature of Jamaica’s modern criminal landscape — characterised by micro-gangs, fluid alliances, and decentralised leadership — limits the strategic impact of clearing operations.

Criminal displacement, succession violence, and the rapid reconstitution of gang networks often follow clearance activities. While these challenges are significant, they are not insurmountable. What makes them enduring is the absence of a subsequent build phase capable of transforming the socio-economic conditions that allow gangs to regenerate.

The Hold Phase: Resource-Intensive Saturation Without Transition

The hold phase is designed to maintain security control long enough for civilian agencies to enter and begin development work. In practice, Jamaica’s hold phase has been prolonged, human-resource intensive, and difficult to sustain. Static posts, checkpoints, and high visibility patrols require substantial personnel, diverting resources from other policing priorities.

This phase becomes a bottleneck when the build phase fails to materialise. Without visible development, community members perceive the security presence as temporary and transactional. As a result, they remain hesitant to cooperate with authorities, fearing retaliation once security forces withdraw. The hold phase thus becomes an expensive, extended waiting period — one that cannot achieve stability on its own.

The Build Phase: The Missing Pillar of Jamaica’s Crime Management Strategy

The build phase is the heart of the CHB model. It is the point at which temporary security gains must be converted into long-term social resilience, economic mobility, and institutional trust. In Jamaica, this phase has been the weakest, most inconsistent, and least institutionalised component of the strategy due to the following.

1) Inter-agency fragmentation and siloed governance — Although ZOSO legislation created a Social Intervention Committee (SIC), the coordination of ministries responsible for housing, youth development, education, training, infrastructure, and social protection remains uneven. Agencies operate under different mandates, budget cycles, and priorities, making synchronised intervention difficult. Without unified planning and shared accountability, build activities are slow, fragmented, or entirely absent.

2) Infrastructure deficits and developmental complexity — Many vulnerable communities are informal settlements with inadequate drainage, narrow pathways, weak lighting, and unstable housing. Transforming these spaces requires multi-year capital investment, complex land titling processes, and engineering projects that far exceed the operational timelines of ZOSOs. Security forces can clear and hold a community in weeks; meaningful physical transformation may require a decade.

3) Pace disparity between security and development — The build phase moves at the speed of bureaucracy, not the urgency of community need. Residents expect rapid improvements once a zone is declared, but government agencies often deliver slow, incremental, or symbolic interventions. This temporal mismatch breeds frustration, weakens trust, and creates fertile ground for gang re-entrenchment.

4) Absence of permanent community assets — The build phase should leave behind permanent institutions — modern police posts, youth centres, training hubs, business incubators, and reliable social services. Instead, many ZOSO communities experience temporary programmes, short-term projects, or sporadic interventions that disappear once funding cycles end. Without permanent assets, communities revert to pre-ZOSO conditions.

5) Failure to address root causes of crime — The build phase is intended to tackle the structural drivers of violence: unemployment, educational deficits, weak family support systems, limited economic mobility, and chronic marginalisation. Jamaica’s implementation has not delivered interventions at the scale required to shift these underlying conditions. As a result, gangs continue to fill the vacuum left by absent state institutions.

Consequences of the Missing Build Phase

The absence of a robust build phase has several national-level consequences:

• Security gains remain temporary and reversible.

• Communities experience intervention fatigue and lose trust in state promises.

• Gangs re-establish influence, often more covertly and strategically.

• Public confidence in ZOSOs declines, weakening political support.

• The JCF and JDF bear disproportionate responsibility, stretching resources and morale.

Ultimately, Jamaica’s CHB strategy becomes a clear-hold-pause model — one that suppresses violence temporarily but fails to deliver transformation.

Jamaica’s adaptation of the CHB model demonstrates that security operations alone cannot resolve chronic violence. The clear and hold phases provide temporary stability, but without a strong, well-resourced, and synchronised build phase, communities remain vulnerable to criminal recapture.

For CHB to achieve its intended impact, Jamaica must:

• institutionalise real-time coordination between security and development agencies

• deliver permanent community assets rather than temporary programmes

• accelerate infrastructure and social investment in vulnerable communities

• ensure that development begins immediately after clearance, not years later

• embed community policing as a long-term anchor of trust and stability

Until the build phase becomes the centrepiece of Jamaica’s crime management strategy, ZOSOs will continue to produce short-term gains without long-term transformation. The country’s experience makes one reality clear: Violence cannot be cleared or held out of a community, it must be built out through sustained development, institutional trust, and economic opportunity.

Dormah B Harrison is a retired assistant commissioner of police. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or dormahh@gmail.com.

Dormah B Harrison