NCJ Number
115897
Journal
Social Justice Volume: 15 Issue: 3-4 Dated: (Fall-Winter 1988) Pages: 61-86
Date Published
1988
Length
26 pages
Annotation
The drug trafficking networks operated by Jamaicans in the United States are essentially Jamaican exports that result from certain political and economic contradictions with Jamaican society and that constitute only one variant of an already existing, secondary illegal drug economy in the United States.
Abstract
This informal economy lies outside the rules sanctioned by the government and is invisible to the public and sometimes illegal. Street gangs of many ethnic groups are increasingly involved in drug trafficking, although the Jamaicans are the most clever, the most violent, and the most highly organized. The crimes associated with Jamaicans in the United States and other countries are mere spillovers of larger systemic processes in Jamaica, where alienation and a scarcity of regular, socially acceptable work have forced many youth into the margins of existence. Thus, the growth of the criminal population has been a logical outgrowth of the forces of Western imperialism and the country's dependent-capitalist development. Persistent poverty, structural unemployment, and rural dispossession have given rise to a vibrant informal economy. The Jamaican crime networks have been exported to the United States as a result of the migration of senior drug dealers to American cities, the migration of youths whose parents had previously come to the United States to perform menial jobs, and the ongoing recruitment of the youths born to Jamaican immigrants.