Lovelette Brooks, Special Projects Editor

A child is accompanied by an adult as she walks through a section of Red Dirt, in Flankers St. James on Friday. Flankers is one of the hot spots of crime identified by the Montego Bay police. - Photos by Claudine Housen/Staff Photographer

Civic leaders in Montego Bay are pointing fingers at the unrestrained, unregulated development of the inner-city areas of the resort town as one of the main factors fuelling the record number of murders in the western end of the island.

Despite the 10-point strategic crime-reduction plan laid out recently by National Security Minister Dr. Peter Phillips, the civic leaders are calling for social reforms centred on a number of criminal enclaves.

Pauline Reid, president of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce, while lauding the policing efforts, pointed to a number of ills in the marginalised communities that have fuelled crime.

"For too long, we have allowed unregulated and unplanned development within the city to fester, and this needs to stop now, she said adamantly at a Gleaner Editors' Forum in Montego Bay last Thursday.

Years of decay

Deputy Commissioner in charge of crime, Mark Shields agreed that "years and years of decay and underinvestment in these areas have created ramshackle type settlements". "But, we are now picking up the pieces," he reassured.

"Why can't some of the social programmes employed in the inner-city communities in Kingston, be replicated here? I am sure this will help to turn around the lives of many of our citizens," Ms. Reid said.

Not unlike Kingston's inner-city communities, Montego Bay, the locus of business and commerce in western Jamaica since the late 1960 to the 1970s has seen an influx of rural-urban migrants, some displaced by agriculture, others lured by the expanding tourist market. As the economy became even more diversified and with the advent of free zone manufacturing, there was an influx of more people into the city without the necessary provision of housing.

Relative to other cities, Montego Bay became the fastest growing urban centre in Jamaica. Between 1982 and 1991, the city expanded at an annual rate of two per cent, compared to 0.88 per cent for Jamaica as a whole.

In time, formal sector development and upper-income residential and commercial activities occupied the flat coastal strip to the city's north-east and south-west. In contrast, the hills rising to the north, south and east of the central core rapidly developed as informal settlements, characterised by squatter-capturing.

Studies have shown that this type of unguided spatial expansion coupled with dense settlement and deterioration of social services, typical of rapid urbanisation, provide the ideal condition for gangs to mushroom and flourish. In Montego Bay, there are at least five criminal enclaves.

Currently, 17 active gangs operate out of five 'hot spots' on the fringes of the city's business and resort centres. "These gangs dominate (and) their main motive is warfare and robbery", admitted Deputy Superintendent Rudolph Taylor of Police Area One.

With names such as 'Stone Crusher', 'Tight Pants Crew', 'Killer Bees', 'Blood Stain' and 'One Order', these gangs account for 70 per cent of all crimes committed in Montego Bay. Twenty-one per cent of murders committed in the western belt, take place in the following areas: Flankers, Norwood, Glendevon, Granville, Salt Spring and Rosemount.

Apart from the poor social conditions which fester criminality, the peculiar geography of these communities make them difficult to police.

"These inner-city areas have become problematic for us because of their hilly terrain, and the absence of basic infrastructure such as electricity, water and roads," said Superintendent John Morris, head of operations for the Montego Bay police.