With the exception of four rural parishes, the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) finds that major crimes have reduced in the first three weeks of January 2023 compared to a similar period 12 months prior.

The statistics provided by the JCF earlier this week indicated that overall, major crimes experienced a 38.9 per cent drop in reports.

On a more granular level, 61 homicides were recorded in the January 1-January 22 period this year, 55 fewer murders or a 47.4 per cent reduction over 2022. Of the 19 police divisions island-wide, only St Mary, Clarendon, Manchester and St Thomas have seen higher murder figures this year when compared with January 1-January 22, 2022.

Encouragingly, St Andrew Central, Portland and Trelawny are yet to report homicides.

Decreases were also observed in incidents of shootings (down 32.4 per cent), robberies (falling 44.9) and rape (plummeting 62.2 per cent).

On the other end of the spectrum, break-ins are trending 6.8 per cent higher thus far in 2023 than when compared to last year.

-Zemelyah Shaw is an Our Today writer. Send your feedback to [email protected]