Recidivism in the Caribbean: Improving the Reintegration of Jamaican Ex-prisoners

358 Pages·2019·3.479 MB·English

by  Dacia L. Leslie

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN RACE, ETHNICITY,
INDIGENEITY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Recidivism in
the Caribbean
Improving the Reintegration
of Jamaican Ex-prisoners
Dacia L. Leslie
Palgrave Studies in Race, Ethnicity, Indigeneity
and Criminal Justice
Series Editors
Chris Cunneen
University of Technology Sydney
Sydney, NSW, Australia
Katheryn Russell-Brown
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL, USA
Shaun L. Gabbidon
Penn State Harrisburg
Middletown, PA, USA
Steve Garner
School of Social Sciences
Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
This pioneering series brings much-needed attention to minority,
excluded, and marginalised perspectives in criminology, centred on the
topic of ‘race’ and the racialization of crime and criminal justice systems.
It draws on a range of theoretical approaches including critical race the-
ory, critical criminology, postcolonial theory, intersectional approaches
and Indigenous theory. The series seeks to challenge and broaden the
current discourse, debates and discussions within contemporary crimi-
nology as a whole, including drawing on the voices of Indigenous people
and those from the Global South which are often silenced in favour of
dominant white discourses in Criminology.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15777
Dacia L. Leslie
Recidivism in the
Caribbean
Improving the Reintegration of
Jamaican Ex-prisoners
Dacia L. Leslie
Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies
The University of the West Indies, Mona
Kingston, Jamaica
Palgrave Studies in Race, Ethnicity, Indigeneity and Criminal Justice
ISBN 978-3-030-12906-4 ISBN 978-3-030-12907-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12907-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019934816
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This book is devoted to all the women, men and youth who continue to
advocate for more progressive habits and patterns of criminal justice.
Foreword
This excellent book by Dacia Leslie is timely given Jamaica’s current crime
situation. It is a book that is a must-read by policymakers, advocates,
academicians, students and anybody interested in understanding the
crime situation in Jamaica, the issue of recidivism and the rehabilitation
of ex-inmates.
As of May 26, 2018, there have been 556 murders in Jamaica (Jamaica
Gleaner, May 31, 2018). A state of emergency still exists in the nation’s
second capital, and the country is reeling over the recent murders of two
young girls who were also sexually assaulted. Every government has com-
mitted to eradicating violence against women and children and solving
the nation’s major crime problem.
Crime negatively impacts on all aspects of the country’s development.
A 2005 study conducted by the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and
Economic Studies (SALISES) found that the economy, personal move-
ment, recreation, work and social interaction were all negatively affected
by the high levels of crime in Jamaica.
The social, economic and psychological effects of crime have been tre-
mendous. A 2014 Inter-American Development Bank Report estimates
that crime-related costs to Jamaica amount to four per cent of GDP. The
Minister of Health also highlights the crisis and heavy costs that the
health sector is experiencing in relation to violence-related injuries
(Jamaica Gleaner, May 3, 2018). In 2017/2018, the Government of
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viii Foreword
Jamaica spent 8.5 per cent of the national budget on national security
and justice, an increase of 11.8 per cent over the 2012/2013 figure
(Planning Institute of Jamaica [PIOJ], 2018; 2013). The incarcerated
population has grown from 3797 in 2012 to 3857 in 2017. Expenditure
on correctional services accounted for 11.3 per cent of the 2017/2018
national budget. Lowering the rate of recidivism is imperative.
Dacia Leslie’s book on social reintegration in Jamaica should be in the
libraries of all universities, departments of national security and nongov-
ernmental organisations. It is an excellent handbook for literature review,
methodologies, data collection and analyses and policy recommendations
for all criminological programmes.
I am honoured that my former student has decided to contribute to
the policy formulation and implementation processes in the Caribbean
in such an impactful way. Dacia Leslie is a fervent advocate of the mar-
ginalised in society and is actively involved in lifting the downtrodden in
whatever way she can. This book is a manifestation that students can
become change agents, and as her former lecturer, writing this foreword
was one of the proudest moments of my life. What more can any teacher
ask for!!!
Kingston, Jamaica Aldrie Henry-Lee
August 2018
References
Planning Institute of Jamaica. 2013. Economic and Social Survey of
Jamaica. Kingston.
Planning Institute of Jamaica. 2018. Economic and Social Survey of
Jamaica. Kingston.
Preface
Finding ways to reintegrate ex-prisoners into Jamaican society is a press-
ing but complex social, economic and moral challenge. This is due, not
least, to the financial costs of prison recidivism and growing concern over
the Jamaican state’s capacity to meet the needs of a large number of its
citizens subject to forced repatriation to their country of origin by over-
seas jurisdictions due to their offending. The absence of a mature and
reliable evidence base about the extent and nature of criminal recidivism
in Jamaica also contributes to the challenges faced by policymakers and
service providers seeking to reduce the incidence of crime. This is in part
related to the dearth of Caribbean scholarship on what is a sizeable and
multifaceted subject matter which has impeded more decisive and pro-
gressive political and policy responses.
There are generic criminological themes regarding rehabilitation, desis-
tance, reentry, resettlement and reintegration of offenders. But there
remains the considerable challenge of identifying culturally specific fea-
tures that bear upon crime and the policies and programmes that might
encourage sustained abstinence from offending and which could be better
served by a distinctive Caribbean criminological epistemology. This book
offers insights into the social worlds of previously incarcerated men and
women in Jamaica to better understand what they deem to be the influ-
ences that led them to crime and those which might at least assist them in
desisting from lawbreaking. It interrogates practical understandings of
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x Preface
the nexus between recidivism and social reintegration through adopting
mixed qualitative approaches and an adaptive theoretical framework
needed to generate the authentic voices of inmates, ex-prisoners, involun-
tarily removed migrants and practitioners in Jamaica. Thus, the focus of
the book resides around the problematic matter of experiences of impris-
onment and the subsequent reintegration of persons leaving prison. This
is not without recognising how the process is affected by traditions and
enduring challenges for the police and the courts which stem in part from
the country’s complex colonial history.
This is a history that continues to be characterised by social inequality.
Throughout, the voices and experiences of persons leaving adult correc-
tional centres in Jamaica or detention centres overseas come to the fore to
challenge accepted policy and criminological wisdom. Their perspectives
highlight the need to consider the interlocking systems of inequitable
power in the design of more creative and determined initiatives to help
persons leaving prison to find new and better futures. It is hoped that the
book will assist policymakers, criminal justice professionals and students
of cultural criminology, sociology and public policy think critically about
steps that might be taken to tackle high rates of violent crime and
recidivism.
Caribbean states, such as Jamaica, share much with other class-s tratified
capitalist societies, yet Western criminology seems unable to fully explain
the nature of crime and social reintegration within the context of the
region’s contemporary experiences of neo-colonialism (Pryce 2007).
Thus, the book recognises the structural and systemic forces which shape
public perceptions of and state-led responses to punishment. However, it
is not theoretically positioned within a postcolonial perspective, but
much more in a social science methodology that seeks to understand and
interpret rather than approach the topic with a predetermined set of
assumptions. That said, the originality of the book lies in its cultural rel-
evance to a Caribbean postcolonial society in which persons leaving
prison must seek to lead reintegrated lives despite the structural, com-
munity and individual barriers that might be the creations of institution-
alised and internalised racism. Indeed, it is their insights into these
experiences that offer rarely glimpsed understandings of institutional and
community life for some of the most marginalised citizens of Jamaica.