EU puts up more anti-crime money

The European Union (EU) is to increase its cash allocation to Jamaica to further fight crime and reduce poverty.

Head of the European Union delegation in Jamaica, Ambassador Marco Mazzocchi Alemanni, has disclosed that the EU has approved an additional $250 million for its flagship Poverty Reduction Programme II (PRP II).

The programme, which was launched in 2007 with $1.2 billion and run by the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), has also been extended and will continue until December 2013.

Mazzocchi Alemanni has also announced that the EU is now negotiating a third poverty-reduction programme (PRP III) with the Jamaican Government and that should begin next year with $1 billion.

Improving living standards

According to Mazzocchi Alemanni, PRP III will focus on non-state entities and provide grants for a variety of activities, including job and school-readiness training, summer camps, sports rallies, as well as strengthening school-feeding and school-gardening programmes.

"Our support has been premised on the fact that reducing crime and growth flows in a virtuous circle. If crime is cut, this leads to higher growth rates which, in turn, translate to jobs and a better standard of living," Mazzocchi Alemanni said.

"With PRP II, we have focused exclusively on volatile communities. In Jamaica, crime is geographically subscribed to given communities which suffer from unemployment and poor physical and social infrastructure. We wanted to help not just with the physical side," added Mazzocchi Alemanni yesterday, before a signing ceremony planned for this morning to repair five police stations.

The EU has repeatedly said that its approach to reducing crime in Jamaica rests on four pillars. These are budgetary support to the Jamaican security and justice administration; support of human-rights organisations and those which support conflict management; and community development through its poverty-reduction programme.

Positive turnaround

In the last 12 months, Jamaica has seen a reduction in murder and other crimes and, according to Mazzocchi Alemanni, this coincided not only with the more intense policing, but with the accelerated support from the EU for violence-mitigation, poverty-reduction and justice and peace-management programmes.

Already, the EU has identified some $7 billion in present and proposed new grants to Jamaica to deal with crime reduction and poverty.

The EU has also sought to reduce crime by providing experts to assist the police commissioner, Owen Ellington. Two international experts are now working with Ellington.

"Arising from the Lomé Convention and then Cotonou Partnership Agreement, because of the philosophy of the continuous agreement, we disbursed more funds to Jamaica than to Afghanistan in 2010," Mazzocchi Alemanni noted.