By Leonardo Blair, Staff ReporterTHE FINDINGS of a United States-commissioned study of Jamaican deportees from the U.S. will be made public on September 13 after months of research and debate as to the relationship between criminal deportees and crime levels here.
An official from the U.S. Embassy in Kingston told The Gleaner on Wednesday that Bernard Headley, professor of criminology at the University of the West Indies who directed the study, will be delivering the findings of the preliminary study at a function to be held at the Knutsford Court Hotel.
Last year, a six-month Associated Press (AP) investigation showed that the United States' aggressive deportation policy may be directly responsible for a large chunk of Jamaica's surging crime rate in the last five years.
According to the AP investigation, the 'ripple effect' of the massive deportations to countries in the Caribbean, as well as Latin America, had triggered crime waves that were overwhelming the efforts of local law enforcement officials in some countries, including Jamaica.
The AP investigation included interviews with more than 300 police, deportees, church leaders, social scientists and government officials in the United States and abroad.
In November 2002, U.S. Ambassador Sue Cobb, told a Gleaner Editors' Forum that the United States was concerned about the number of Jamaicans who were deported from that country and that consequently, it was 'looking for answers'.
While she did not provide details on the study at the time, she said it would be 'purely factual' rather than sociologically oriented and that the information derived from the investigation would be substantive for additional research on deportees.
