By Omar Anderson, Gleaner Writer 
Headley (left) and Scott (right)
LOCAL AUTHORITIES are more convinced that deportees play a significant role in Jamaica's high crime and murder rate based on the findings of a recently released report from University of the West Indies professor, Bernard Headley.
Headley had concluded that deportees do not play a major role in local crime.
The study, entitled, Deported: entry and exit findings on Jamaicans returned from the United States, downplayed certain beliefs about Jamaican deportees from the United States.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security provided data (between 1997 to 2003) for the study which was sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Kingston.
Regarding the nature of the offences for which Jamaican males are convicted in the U.S., the report notes that during the period under review, deportees from the U.S. were convicted for 106 homicides which represent two per cent of all crimes Jamaicans committed in America. Deportees were mostly convicted for cocaine trafficking (33.4 per cent), ganja trafficking (16.9 per cent), and other drugs (9.5 per cent).
But, according to Gilbert Scott, permanent secretary in the Ministry of National Security, the findings only supported the view of local criminal justice officials.
"We are concerned that a large number of the criminal deportees who are returned to Jamaica have been convicted of serious crimes, and in large numbers crimes having to do with the illegal trade in narcotics," he said.
The permanent secretary added that the situation is worsened with Jamaica being a major transshipment point, many of these deportees leave the U.S. which has more advanced and enhanced security measures, and are returned to Jamaica whose "security arrangements are still being challenged."
Meanwhile, the age at which most deportees go overseas is another bone of contention. With most deportees staying an average 11 years, according to the Headley report, Mr. Scott argued that most of the deportees (over 50 per cent) who were below 20 years old, visited the U.S. when they were young, and were therefore hardened by the system there. The report however charge that deportees are usually older than 20, with 23 years being the mean age of arrival in the U.S.
But Mr. Scott told The Sunday Gleaner on Friday that according to the report, 30 per cent of convicted deportees went to the U.S. when they were 15 years old or younger. Another 20 per cent, he said, went when they were between 16 and 20 years old, bearing in mind that the average length of stay is 11 years.
"So you are looking at 50 per cent of persons going to the U.S. at 20 years or younger," Mr. Scott told The Sunday Gleaner.
According to the report, the age of the largest number of deportees returning to the island between 1997 and 2003 was 56 years and over, followed by the 31 to 35 age group. It adds these age groups were usually past the age of protracted criminal involvement.
But the permanent secretary is challenging that theory.
"The largest number of persons returning to Jamaica are in the age group 30 and under, and that incidentally coincides with another statistics that is of concern to the society," he said.
"You will realise that the age group which we'll extend to 35 in the Jamaican context, accounts for some 65 per cent of all major crimes and are also the major victims of major crimes."
Meanwhile, the report adds that less than three per cent of deportees with criminal convictions arrived in the U.S. at five years old or younger. It also says that males who ended up as criminal deportees, had already been "exposed" to criminal activities before entering America.
Additionally, the Headley Report states that for 48.8 per cent or nearly half of the deportees, the conviction for which they were returned to Jamaica was their first known or recorded conviction in the U.S.
"The finding is significant because part of the mythology and the rap against "criminal deportees is that they had become hardened, habitual criminals in their country of last known residence," the report says. "But based on the data, that seems hardly to have been the case."
