Scammer’s Yard: The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica

246 Pages·2020·3.313 MB·English

by  Jovan Scott Lewis

Scammer’s Yard
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Scammer’s
Yard
The Crime of Black Repair
in Jamaica
Jovan Scott Lewis

University of Minnesota Press

Minneapolis
London
A version of chapter 2 was originally published as “Structural Readjustment:
Crime, Development, and Repair in the Jamaican Lottery Scam / Reajustamento
Estrutural: Crime, Desenvolvimento, e Reparacao Na Burla Da Lotaria Jamaicana,”
Anthropological Quarterly 91, no. 3 (2018).
Copyright 2020 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lewis, Jovan Scott, author.
Title: Scammer’s yard : the crime of black repair in Jamaica / Jovan Scott Lewis.

Description: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020020413 (print) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0997-0 (hc) |
ISBN 978-1-5179-0998-7 (pb)
Subjects: LCSH: Blacks—Jamaica—Social conditions. | Crime—Sociological aspects. |
Jamaica—Social conditions—21st century. | Jamaica—Economic conditions—21st century.
Classification: LCC HV6699.J25 L49 2020 (print) | DDC 364.16/3097292—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020020413

UMP BmB 2020
For Rhys. May you never feel
the need for repair.
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CONTENTS
..................
introduction To Be Poor Is a Crime 1
1. The Plantation Remains 25
A History of Sufferation
2. Free Zones 59
Manipulated Development
after Structural Adjustment
3. Black Markets 97
The Color of Crime
4. Repairing Blackness 139
Seizing Reparations through the Scam
conclusion Black Life beyond Repair 177
acknowledgments 189
notes 193

bibliography 213

index 227
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INTRODUCTION
..................
To Be Poor Is a Crime
Scammer’s Yard is a study of life lived within the over-
lapping wakes of colonial independence and structural adjustment in
Jamaica. It tells how each of these equally weighted and enduring mo-
ments defines and delimits the scope and scale of opportunity for poor,
urban Jamaicans. This is a story about three friends who mitigate these
conditions through their participation in the Jamaican lottery scam— an
intricate scheme that led dozens of primarily elderly, White Americans to
send scammers tens of thousands of U.S. dollars. Their practice of the scam
demonstrates the complex mechanisms by which they refashion themselves
and their country, as well as the broader global relations within which they
both are set. Understanding that the world as it exists was not meant for
them, they draw on novel logics of capital, criminality, and Blackness as a
formulary for postcolonial Black repair to make a world for themselves and
on their terms.

The impetus behind this process was simple. Omar, Junior, and
Dwayne were young, poor, and Black and they wanted money. Money

that was lasting, impactful, and meaningful. In other words, they wanted
money so that they could “make life” in their city of Montego Bay. They

had lived much too long without it, and that life was one that they no
longer wished to endure. It was a life of sufferation: an inescapable condi-
tion of chronic poverty that was foundational to life’s experience and life’s
very quality. That money could equate to life was not a remarkable fact

for them. Money had always set life’s tone. It was as if they intrinsically
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