Jamaica’s an island with a dual personality, famous for both a carefree lifestyle and for incredibly brutal and drug-fuelled crime.  But now the murder rate has dropped 40 percent in just a few years, from 2009 to 2013. 

The New York Times wrote:

“Gunshots every night, burned-down businesses and corpses — up to a half-dozen a day — used to define the neighborhood of Mountain View on the eastern hillsides of Kingston, Jamaica’s capital.  But not anymore.

“Now, the nights are filled with barefoot soccer matches under streetlights or block parties that bring together former rivals from local gangs.  No one has been murdered in Mountain View for three years.”

So, what happened?

Journalist Kevin Drum has a hypothesis that fits with a growing school of thought about Lead additives in Petrol and Crime.  Many countries got rid of lead in petrol, with Jamaica first introducing unleaded in 1990, completing the job in 2000.

Based on observations in America and other countries, a drop in violent crime seemed to kick in about 20 years after unleaded is introduced.  And that hypothesis fits Jamaica pretty well, too.

Two things happened in America after World War II:  Oil companies put lead in gasoline to stop engines from knocking;  and returning soldiers got with their wives and created the post-war Baby Boom.

And two decades later, strange things started happening.  The 1960s saw a massive rise in violent crime.  Amherst College Economic Professor Jessica Wolpaw Reyes says an entire generation grew up absorbing lead from their environment, and it showed in the crime rates.  After a peak in the late 1960s, the US created the Environmental Protection Agency; leaded gas was out, catalytic converters were in.  Two decades after that, a generation came of age without environmental lead as a fact of life.  The crime rate went down.  Canada reported similar experiences.

A few countries still use leaded gas, but the standouts among them are Venezuela and South Africa; two countries experiencing terrible violent crime waves.

It’s just a hypothesis, but if it is true, things are going to get a lot better in Jamaica, an island that deserves a break.  Jamaica don’t want no bangarang!