Jamaica tops Caribbean on Global Peace Index, ranks third in Americas

Jamaica has been ranked the most peaceful country in the Caribbean in the latest Global Peace Index and sits third across North and Central America, behind only Canada and Costa Rica, criminologist Dr. Jason McKay said in a television interview.

McKay stressed that the index is comparative and does not rest on homicide figures alone. Key factors include the absence of external war and serious internal conflict such as civil war, alongside how the country has managed its own crime statistics. Jamaica took a one-point hit this year after assessors weighed a hurricane’s effect on safety and security, he said, while some regional peers moved up relative to their own conditions.

Sharp drops in murders have still strengthened the score. Killings have fallen in double digits for successive years, McKay noted, and that decline is being driven by successful police and military operations aimed at gangs — a problem he traced back to 1974. As gangs weaken, he said, communities feel safer and commerce returns.

He pointed to investment in former hotspot corridors, including a multi-million-dollar petrol station on the stretch between Rema and Tivoli Gardens — long treated as a battleground — and eateries reopening along Spanish Town Road that residents once had to travel elsewhere to find.

Public perception, he argued, often lags behind the data because it is shaped by news coverage, social media, and personal experience of break-ins or robberies. Most Jamaican communities already look peaceful day to day, he said; people can help by refusing to live with active gang extortion that raises shop and taxi prices, and by using anonymous channels such as Crime Stop.

On schools, McKay urged caution against treating campuses like security zones and called for clearer consequences, including easier removal of disruptive students — something he said is harder now that school boards and the Ministry of Education are involved. He linked weak consequences to rising student conflict.

The ranking, he said, should boost tourism and foreign investment and present Jamaica as a recovering place to visit, invest, and raise a family — especially while it outranks the United States within the wider regional measure. Sustaining the gains will require continued recognition of Jamaica Constabulary Force and Jamaica Defence Force officers, stronger tools to pursue overseas gang financiers, and a long-term commitment measured in decades rather than a single political cycle.