The Murder Rate Is Down 40% in Jamaica - The Reason?

Mother Jones

Jamaica started replacing leaded gasoline with unleaded in 1990 and banned leaded gasoline completelyin 2000. That's a pretty steep drop (it took the United States a full two decades to go from introduction to complete ban). So what you'd expect is a fairly steep drop in violent crime with a lag of 20 years—i.e., starting around 2010. What we got was a 40% drop in murder between 2009 and 2013.

Pretty remarkable, no? It fits the lead hypothesis like a glove.

Again: this is just murder, not violent crime in general. And all I have here is a horseback estimate of how quickly leaded gasoline was phased out in Jamaica. What I don't have is a time series of blood lead levels in small children going back to 1990. So don't take this too seriously. But don't dismiss it either. It's yet another data point that suggests leaded gasoline really does have a significant impact on violent crime.

Gun Flow into Jamaica

The Miami Herald reports on the latest problem the American gun market is causing.

Ships from Miami steam into Jamaica's main harbor loaded with TV sets and blue jeans. But some of the most popular U.S. imports never appear on the manifests: handguns, rifles and bullets that stoke one of the world's highest murder rates.

The volume is much less than the flow of U.S. guns into Mexico that end up in the hands of drug cartels - Jamaican authorities recover fewer than 1,000 firearms a year. But of those whose origin can be traced, 80 percent come from the U.S., Jamaican law enforcement officials have said in interviews with The Associated Press.

When we discussed the flow into Mexico, the suggestion that 90% of the weapons came from the U.S., was hotly contested. It turned out that figure came from the ATF themselves. What do you think about this 80% idea, that the U.S. is the source of 80% of the Jamaican guns? Does that sound reasonable?

I still like what one of our favorite commenters said last time about Mexico. FatWhiteMan said who cares what happens down there. I suppose this could apply even more to Jamaica. Certainly, we're all more concerned what's happening in the States, in our inner cities especially. But, on the other hand, is this the kind of reputation we want for our country. It used to be "The land of the free and the home of the brave." Now, what would we call it?

What's your opinion? Should we be concerned with Mexico and Jamaica when we can't even get our own situation in order? Or is it all part of the same problem?

Please leave a comment.

Medal Count

Unrelated to the photo on the left, a good friend of mine pointed out that Great Britain is holding a solid third place with only a tiny fraction of the population of the US and China. I guess that's why they ran the world for so long. Didn't they also own Jamaica at one point?


The New York Times has the story.