Drug-based gang violence can threaten an established democracy’s future
Evidence
Nor did Jamaican criminals simply attack each other. Jamaica’s businesses suffer widespread protection rackets and property crimes. A 2002 UN survey of four hundred Jamaican firms found that two-thirds of all firms reported being victims of at least one property crime during 2001. Smaller firms suffered more from extortion, fraud, robbery, burglary, and arson than large ones (World Bank 2004, 89–90). At the same time, Jamaican police have acquired a worldwide reputation for brutality, which includes not only rough treatment of criminals but also attacks on gays (Amnesty International 2001c; Human Rights Watch 2004c). Jamaica serves as an important transit point for Colombian cocaine on its way to the United Kingdom and the United States, which helps explain the intensity of turf wars, the heavy armament of politically aligned gangs, and police brutality as well (Grimal 2000, 175). The power of drug-based gangs threatens to diminish hard-won and long-established Jamaican democracy (Sheller 2000). — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 402
Categorization
- QUESTION: Tilly treats Jamaica as a low-capacity regime whose coercive power is outsourced to gangs — does this vignette anchor his capacity axis for the matrix?
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 402
- XREF: connects to: Electoral democracy can persist amid rampant police and gang violence — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 518; Drug-transit wealth funds armed gangs capable of eroding democracy