- 期刊
- OpenAccess
The Influence of Macroeconomic Factors on Murders in Jamaica: Should the Police Be Cautious in Interpreting the Murder Statistics?
並列摘要
Jamaica has been plagued by high murder rates for some time and the issue has become a national problem. This research seeks to: 1) model murder, 2) determine factors of mortality, 3) examine the role of poverty on murder, and 4) provide policy markers, particularly the police, with an understanding of how murders can be effectively addressed. This study is a secondary data analysis of statistics from different agencies. Data were entered and stored into Microsoft Excel and SPSS for Window version 17.0 (SPSS Inc; Chicago, IL, USA) which were both used to analyze the data. The averaged murders per decade have been increasing by geometrical progression, with the greater proportion occurring in the last decade (2000-2010). Although averaged murders for each decade have been increasing, the lowest increased occurred in the 1990s compared to the 1980s (43.4%). There is a strong positive correlation between the annual exchange rate and lnmurder (r_s = 0.934, p＜0.0001). However, a strong inverse relationship exist between lnpoverty and annual exchange rate (r_s = -0.748, p＜0.0001) as well as between lnpoverty and lnmurder (r_s = -0.831, p＜0.0001), while weak relationships existed between 1) exchange rate and mortality (r_s = 0.507, p＜0.019), 2) lnpoverty and mortality (r_s = -0.549, p＜0.010) and 3) lnmurder and lnmortality (r_s = 0.485, p＜0.026). The Jamaican police should not credit themselves for the reduction in murders that took place in 2010.