Tue | Oct 14, 2025

Editorial | JamaicaEye and body-worn cameras

Published:Sunday | May 11, 2025 | 12:18 AM
Surveillance cameras installed in Olympic Gardens, St Andrew.
Surveillance cameras installed in Olympic Gardens, St Andrew.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ pledge that Jamaica will soon have a surfeit of surveillance cameras in public spaces, as well as body-worn devices by the police, is welcome.

But with respect to the latter, this newspaper would suggest to the PM a small shift in strategy.

Instead of waiting until the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) completes a full build-out of its backbone technology to facilitate the use of body-worn cameras (BWCs) by frontline officers, it should assign some of those it now has to cops who go on planned operations, which account for nearly half of shooting deaths by the police.

In the meantime, in preparation for the Government’s initiative in public spaces, Celia Barclay, the information commissioner, should launch a public education campaign on the tensions between privacy rights and public security concerns in the context of the island’s Data Protection Act (DPA) and how these are resolved in accordance with the law.

At the same time, Ms Barclay should bring clarity to what protection/insulation is enjoyed by private citizens whose public-facing surveillance cameras they choose to integrate with the Government’s JamaicaEye system – which is what Dr Holness says his administration is resuscitating and about to expand.

Launched seven years ago, JamaicaEye was to place cameras in public spaces across the island, which was supposed to be centrally monitored at a unit of the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), the army. Private citizens were also invited to link their cameras into the system, so as to widen the surveillance capacity of the initiative.

GOOD IDEA

This, appropriately regulated, is a good idea, which is widely used, and has been shown to work, in other jurisdictions.

Indeed, as this newspaper highlighted several months ago, Britain has more than five million surveillance cameras, or one for every 13 citizens. They helped, the evidence suggests, to deter crime.

Last year, the College of Policing published the summary of a meta analysis of 76 studies from several countries that showed a 13 per cent decrease in crime in places where CCTV was employed, compared to places where there were none.

The analysis noted: “The largest and most consistent effects of CCTV were observed in car parks and, to a lesser extent, residential areas. In car parks, crime decreased by 37 per cent overall in treatment areas compared to control areas…”

Hopefully, surveillance cameras would have a similar effect in high-crime Jamaica. Unfortunately, there has been no publicly reported similar analysis in Jamaica and the JamaicaEye initiative was not optimally developed or maintained.

In December, Horace Chang, the national security minister, reported that large numbers of the approximately 1,000 cameras on the network didn’t work for want of maintenance.

Apparently, the data transmission network for most of these cameras was wire-based, while servicing companies had largely gone digital, making it difficult to find or employ repair crews.

At the time, though, Dr Chang said he was in the process of negotiating a maintenance agreement with a domestic company.

Last week, however, Prime Minister Holness inaugurated a JamaicaEye monitoring centre at the Olympic Gardens Police Station in his St Andrew West Central constituency, which, apparently, will monitor more than 50 cameras in the community.

A similar surveillance centre, according to Dr Chang, was being established at the Denham Town Police Station in West Kingston, while Prime Minister Holness said the police would soon launch a national command surveillance centre.

OVERHAUL

The announced initiatives suggest a major overhaul of the JamaicaEye project, with the police, rather than the JDF, having primary responsibility for surveillance oversight. Dr Chang should clarify the matter.

Alluding to public questions about JamaicaEye and the use of BWCs by the police, Prime Minister Holness said cameras were being installed in public spaces at scale and sophistication. The Government was also working with speed, Dr Holness said, on body-worn cameras for the police, but first to have the system in place to support data storage and retrieval.

The complaint would soon be, he said, of too many cameras.

Any such complaint can be substantially mitigated with public information – if all parties clearly understand their rights and obligations as set out in the DPA, with respect to the collection and management of people’s private information. These obligations apply as much to public bodies as they do to private citizens.

Indeed, there can be a thin line between legitimate public surveillance and an intrusion of people’s privacy. Which is why we welcome the prime minister’s statement that the monitors will be trained to observe the rules of privacy.

The question of body-worn cameras by the police – an initiative that has been in train for a dozen years – has gained attention because of an upward spiral in police homicides. The 180 citizens police killed in 2024 was 27 per cent more than the previous year; the 119 so far this year is 150 per higher than the number for the corresponding period in 2024.

The police say these deaths result from cops protecting themselves when challenged by criminals. These claims are often challenged by the families of the victims, or by the residents of communities where they lived. None of these incidents have ever been captured on a BWC.

Human rights advocates note that, given the high numbers that occur on special operations, some of the limited amount of BWCs the police now have, which are deployed in public space management, should be used in these planned operations.

We agree.