Abid all the confusion over US State Department travel alerts to many parts of the world with high crime rates and unstable security issues, it is common that the ordinary "man/woman on the street", in the US, will express fear and timidity about traveling to our Rock.

For those of us who have personally experienced the horror of the extremest of crime, murder, in our families, a political sociologist attempts to apply some balm, stating:

In general, tourists (including Americans) are safer in the Caribbean than in their home countries...Only 0.0004 percent of all visitors to Jamaica reported that they were victimized" by crime.

Not to bleed a hardened heart, but the article goes on to sketch in Poverty being the Mother of Crime, a perpetual agenda that cries out for a common effort.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022700992_pf.html

It's much more dangerous in parts of Baltimore, MD than it is in Jamaica. Perception is everything.

Actually, the article says poverty is the "mother of organized crime". If that's the case, wouldn't drug cartels retire from the drug trade after they made their first billion?

Here is another look at this problem. http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/americas/sun-sand-and-savagery-whatever-happ ened-to-jamaica-paradise-island-1680136.html
I think people who come to JA. need to remember they are somewhere else - this is not the UK or the US and there is much that goes on here that you will not understand on the surface - so don't think you do and act accordingly. A perfect example is someone who thinks it is no more dangerous than Baltimore. Please - get smart. I am not trying to scare anyone but the facts stand on their own.

I think these things ("much more dangerous in parts of Baltimore" and "sun, sand and savagery") exist together. The article is only about Kingston. No, I don't think that Kingston is the only place that has crime. But I also don't think that the level of crime we read about in Kingston is what trevelers will find everywhere in the country, and is certainly not what we see in TB.

I've been very (VERY) safe in TB. My guess is that, even if things aren't as safe as they were when I first visited, they are still so very much safer than in Kingston. Yes, people need to remember that they aren't home, need to remember (need to realize?) that Jamaica isn't one giant AI designed specifically for their tourist trade, but I also think people should feel safe traveling (intelligently) in the country.

Crushing Crime...euphemisms or tough talk from the politicos, as the St James (Montego Bay) crime surge taints the touristic "golden goose"???

Check out the Gleaner's "St James Crime Wave on Radar"...
St Elizabeth High on Radar, targeting "criminal networks", while "dem others" tend to the needs and opportunities of the downtrodden in MoBay's "19 inner-city enclaves".

www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090511/lead/lead6.html

Oh yee mighty "dialogue" and "Strategic Reviews" in the combat arsenal against CRIME!...are we again on familiar ground, or at a deeper level, are a "lost" segment of the youth being recruited into criminality for lack of alternatives, like the "boy soldiers", handed "powerful" guns by "Big Daddies", in regional conflicts abroad, who guarantee them an evil glimmer of respect?

Rhetorically speaking..."off" course.