Crime and Justice International Magazine - Sam Houston State University

Steeped in prohibitionist doctrine and with a predominant focus on supply reduction as the primary strategy for winning the battle against illegal drugs, the war on drugs has been widely acclaimed as unsuccessful. Pointing to the relative stability of both street prices and the demand for drugs as an indication of failed drug policy, critics of the drug war attribute its failure to a lack of attention to demand reduction, while others such as Reiman (2007) have questioned the ethics of drug policies that have led to an unprecedented growth in the prison population of the United States. Other scholars, specifically Youngers (2004: 362), acknowledge that “drug abuse and its related violence in the United States is home-grown and hence must be primarily addressed domestically,” and denounce U.S. policy for its exportation of the war on drugs, its globalization of domestic problems, and its misconceived solutions that have been foisted onto other countries.

The debate concerning the merits or lack thereof of the war on drugs provides fertile ground for academic scrutiny, but does not constitute the subject of enquiry for this paper. The focus of attention here is an element of the war that has largely evaded the attention of scholars: the implications of the war on drugs for countries within the transit zone. Geographically located between the major drug producing and consuming countries of the Americas, transit countries such as Jamaica have become vulnerable entry points for the transnational drug trade for a variety of reasons, including the porosity of their borders, the presence of local organized criminal networks, high rates of crime and violence, weak political structures, and inadequate law enforcement infrastructure. This paper examines the war on drugs through the lenses of those who become unwitting partners in the transnational drug trade, and for whom collateral damage has its most ominous consequences. Concomitantly, this paper attempts to communicate an understanding of Caribbean drug enforcement policy, strategy, and tactics from the perspective of Marxist criminological theory and the entrenchment of the trade as well as some of its consequences in the Caribbean from a routine activity perspective. Finally, in reviewing the salient literature, this paper will draw upon the author’s experience as a twenty-three-year veteran of the Jamaican police force with five years as chief of the Narcotics Division.

The War on Drugs: Domestic Warfare

Youngers and Rosin (2004: 3) suggest that the draconian U.S. drug control policies in effect today are a consequence of the mid-1980s crack explosion and the impact of its accompanying violence on many U.S. cities. They note that “within the United States, rigid legislation, enhanced law enforcement, and elevated rates of incarceration are the government’s preferred tools” in the war against illicit drugs. In an allusion to the drug war and its consequential harms, Trebach and Inciardi (1993) reflect the general consensus of researchers who widely hail U.S. drug control policies as a failure. Researchers, including Reiman (2007), argue that a major casualty of the drug wars has been justice itself and point to the denial of due process, the erosion of privacy rights, the militarization of policing, and the less stringent application of rules concerning the introduction of illegally gathered evidence as proof of justice subverted in an attempt to win the war on drugs.

While the benefits of the drug war have been less well documented, the casualties are widely enumerated. Perhaps the most devastating domestic consequence of the war is the massive incarceration of drug offenders that has been primarily responsible for the unprecedented growth in prison populations in the United States during the past two decades. Considering a combined prison/jail population of over 2.1 million, and a rate of incarceration of more than 700 per 100,000 population, Mauer (2004: 613) reports that the “most significant contributor to prison expansion in recent decades has been the war on drugs. Overall, the number of persons awaiting trial or serving a sentence for a drug offence in prison or jail has increased from about 40,000 in 1980 to 450,000 today.”

Another harmful consequence of the war on drugs is the extent to which it has filled American prisons with racial minorities. The 1991 Survey of State Prison Inmates shows that 25 percent of black inmates had been convicted of drug crimes, compared to 12 percent of whites. During the peak of the drug war, the national arrest rates for drugs was five times higher for blacks than for whites, even though both groups used drugs at a similar rate. In other words, “African-Americans make up 12 percent of the U.S. population and constitute 13 percent of all monthly drug users, but represent 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of those convicted of drug possession, and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison for drug possession” (Donziger 1996: 115). Reiman (2007) has chimed in on the debate arguing that the harsh sentences for crack, a cheap version of cocaine mostly used by the poor, in comparison to relatively light sentences for the more expensive powdered cocaine which is mostly used by rich whites, is emblematic of his assertion that the poor are more likely than the rich to end up in prison. Tonry (1995: 82) argues that “the war on drugs forseeably and unnecessarily blighted the lives of hundreds of thousands of young black Americans and undermined decades of effort to improve the life chances of members of the black underclass” and suggests that for ethical and sound policy reasons, the war should never have been undertaken.

The debate on the damaging effects of the war on drugs seems endless. Some critics have argued that the persistence in pursuing policies that have clearly failed is more attributable to geopolitical considerations aimed at reducing harm. Others have argued that the focus on supply reduction limits the potential long-term benefits that would accrue from a comparative allocation of resources to curbing the demand for illegal drugs. Studies have shown that demand reduction efforts are less costly, more effective, and demonstrate greater sustainability than methods to reduce supply. For example, a 1994 study by the RAND Corporation found that investing $34 million in treatment reduces cocaine use as much as spending $783 million for foreign source country programs…or $366 million for interdiction (Youngers, 2004: 363).

Youngers and Rosin (2004: 4) suggest that the use of war terminology, while a powerful metaphor, renders U.S. drug policy somewhat problematic: “The presumed ‘enemy’ is not an organized army that can be identified and defeated but rather a set of social and economic forces that sustain the trade. The drug war mentality ensures that U.S. drug control resources are skewed toward interdiction and law enforcement efforts. But such policies, which fail to take into account the complex social and economic roots of both illicit drug production and consumption, tend to shift the pattern of players in the drug trade without significantly reducing the trade itself.” Despite the apparent ineffectiveness of its drug policies, the United States continues to expend billions of dollars in targeting supply rather than demand as it attempts to reduce the cultivation of, and trade in, illegal drugs. And where crop eradication and substitution have failed to result in reduced production, massive interdiction schemes have been launched with the expectation that countries within the “transit zone” will adopt the U.S. agenda and become full partners in the internationalization of the U.S. war against drugs.

Exportation of the War on Drugs – A theoretical explanation

Bewley-Taylor (1999: 6) argues that the United States has persistently confronted the issue of drug use from a prohibitionist perspective while locating the domestic problems beyond the boundaries of American society. He claims that in internationalizing its domestic approach towards drug control, the United States has used its influence as a superpower to create a “universal norm dictating national responses to illicit drug use.” His contention that the United Nations has played a major role in ensuring the global adoption of a U.S.-instigated drug prohibition regime is supported by the fact that the UN has developed several international treaties and conventions aimed at reducing the global consequences associated with illicit drug use.

The approach of the United States in dictating the enforcement response in the Caribbean is classic Marxist in its theoretical orientation. More specifically, the exportation of the U.S. drug war to the Caribbean and the threats of sanctions to ensure conformity reflect, at a macro level, the notion of an imbalance of power between classes that is inherent in Marxist thought. Marxist theory, as explained by Richard Quinney and other critical criminologists, endorses the power-elite model of society, in which economic and political power have been concentrated into the hands of a small ruling class. This political power is used to manipulate the legal and criminal justice systems to promote the interest of the [ruling class] and to perpetuate its position of power (Akers & Sellers, 2004: 217). From the Marxist/critical perspective, the law appears to operate in the interest of the whole society while in reality it is structured to serve only the interest of the ruling elite. As this discussion progresses, it will become clear how the United States, through its drug certification regime and its overwhelming influence in organizations like the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has brandished its political and economic clout to coerce weak nations of the Caribbean to wage the drug war in ways that are sometimes inimical to Caribbean interests.

International cooperation in the fight against illicit drugs surrounds three major international conventions: (1) the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961) along with its 1972 protocol, which requires governments to implement policies to limit the supply of illicit drugs without interfering with licit medical requirements and also to treat and rehabilitate addicts and punish traffickers; (2) the Convention on Psychotropic Substances (1971) which established an international control system for psychotropic substances to ensure inclusion of the new drugs being produced by the global pharmaceutical industry; and, (3) the Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (1988) which led to the development of most of the strong anti-trafficking measures seen as commonplace today, including extradition of drug traffickers for trial in foreign jurisdictions, anti-money laundering laws, and the sharing of assets forfeited from traffickers. Over 70 percent of countries worldwide are signatories to the 1988 Convention, also dubbed the Vienna Convention.

Maritime “Shiprider” Agreements

The strategic importance of the Caribbean region has, according to Griffiths (2004), shifted from considerations based on geo-politics to issues of geo-narcotics. The concept of geo-narcotics, Griffiths (2004: 106) notes, captures the dynamics of three factors besides drugs: geography, power, and politics. Even in matters of international cooperation where global security interests prevail, the potential for conflict among states remains salient. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that matters relating to the sovereignty of states within the transit zone, particularly in relation to the establishment of “shiprider” agreements, are among the most contentious issues in the exportation of the war on drugs. Initially resisted by Caribbean governments as an encroachment on national control over their territories, shiprider agreements enable the United States to pursue aircraft and sea craft into the airspace and territorial waters of other countries. Maingot (1999: 166) suggests that the problem of sovereignty usually complicates cross-border initiatives, and in an article entirely dismissive of “thin-skinned sovereignty,” criticizes the efforts of Barbados and Jamaica to secure respect for their territorial waters. Maingot’s (1999) critique followed on the heels of decisions by the governments of Barbados and Jamaica to refrain from signing shiprider agreements with the United States without explicit acknowledgment that the pursuit of suspected traffickers into their territorial waters would first require their express permission. In even more explicit terms, Elliot Abrams, a former high-ranking official in the Reagan administration, suggested that U.S. security concerns “in our proverbial backyard” might well require that Caribbean nations relinquish their sovereignty over national security and allow the United States to properly assume its role as the ultimate guarantor of peace, stability, and nowadays, democracy in the region (Beruff & Cordero, 2004: 318). Consistent with this orientation, Patricia Hall, a senior State Department official, in a barely disguised threat, made the following statement at a graduation ceremony for drug law enforcement officers in Jamaica: “We urge the Government of Jamaica, which has not yet signed a maritime cooperation agreement with the U.S., to seriously consider the ramifications of remaining outside this cooperative effort, especially the possibility of becoming a safe haven to traffickers.”² Ms. Hall’s speech was recognized throughout the region as an allusion to the power wielded by the United States in its annual drug certification process.

The U.S. Certification Process

Enacted by Congress in 1986, the certification process requires the President to certify, by March 1 each year, major drug-producing and transit countries as cooperating fully with U.S. counter-drug measures. In the case of Latin America and the Caribbean, Carpenter (2003) describes this relationship as being characterized by a carrot and stick approach with more ‘sticks’ than ‘carrots’ in Washington’s policy. Whenever the carrot of U.S. aid dollars fails to secure cooperation from Latin American [and Caribbean] governments, Washington can resort to the stick (decertification). The decertification of a country could result in the following sanctions:

 

 

Caribbean Drug Problem from the Routine Activity Perspective

The susceptibility of Caribbean island nations to the ravages of the international drug trade is easily understood within the context of routine activity theory. This theory holds that predatory crimes occur when there is a convergence in time and space of a motivated offender, a suitable target, and the absence of capable guardians against a violation (Cohen & Felson, 1998). The absence of any one of the three elements is sufficient to prevent the successful completion of the crime. The absence of capable guardianship in the context of the Caribbean island states is tantamount to weak, poorly-equipped, and in some instances, corrupt law enforcement agencies which are not uncommon throughout these countries. It has been argued, especially by some American officials, that the drug problem in the Caribbean has been exacerbated by inefficient and corrupt law enforcement practices.

In its explanation of the occurrence of crime, routine activity theory emphasizes the significance of space or the element of place that is highlighted by environmental criminology. Brantingham and Brantingham (2004), environmental criminologists, argue that given the motivation of an individual to commit an offense, the actual commission of the offense is the end result of a multi-staged decision process which seeks out and identifies within the general environment a target positioned in space and time. As discussed earlier in this paper and will be discussed later, the generally porous and unpatrolled shorelines³ of Caribbean countries provide a natural cover for drug traffickers who, in the dead of night, are generally able to launch and land drug-laden “go fast” boats without interference from law enforcement authorities or the prying eyes of the public.

Drug trafficking is a crime of opportunity. As an opportunity theory, the routine activity approach is not only critical to an understanding how such crimes are carried out, the areas likely to be targeted, or the conditions under which they are likely to occur. The routine activity approach is also generally influential in the design and implementation of law enforcement strategies and tactics to target offenders and seize drugs. Based on this theoretical approach, law enforcement agents have been able to reduce opportunities for drug trafficking through airports or by targeting illegal airstrips or coves and inlets along the coast line that are likely sites for receiving or dispatching boats or light aircraft loaded with contraband. However, as law enforcement activity intensifies in one area, it is not uncommon to see a displacement effect in other areas. This displacement effect is, according to Gabor (1981), the result of an alteration of criminal activity due to preventive efforts. Gabor elaborates that an ostensibly effective prevention program may actually lead to changes in criminal behavior so that offenders can circumvent the preventive measures instituted. Offenders may relocate the site of their activities; they may select different targets within the original site; they may alter the tactics used or the time of their violations; or they may even engage in different forms of criminality (Gabor, 1981).As will become evident below, law enforcement efforts in some areas of the Caribbean have triggered problems in other areas that are more vulnerable. In typical displacement fashion, the crackdown on drug crimes has also seen a shift to the proliferation of other types of crime in Jamaica.

The Caribbean as Transit Zone

According to Beruff and Cordero (2004: 303), the U.S. Government’s anti-drug strategy defines the Caribbean region as a ‘transit zone,’ an extensive and problematic border that must be controlled to keep drugs away from U.S. shores. Dubbed the “third border” of the United States by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, the Caribbean region spans a vast geographic area of just under two million square miles of maritime space punctuated by small islands with largely permeable coastlines. Countries in the region are as diverse in language and culture as they are in terms of their political and criminal justice systems. Ranging from population counts of fewer than 50,000 to 11 million inhabitants, and with wide disparities in socio-economic standards, Caribbean countries vary in the extent to which they are vulnerable to the encroachments of the transnational illegal drug trade. The vulnerability of the region to the influence of organized criminal networks is well summarized by Bagley (2004: 264):

In most of Latin America and the Caribbean, the dynamics of globalization over the last two decades have resulted in almost ideal conditions for the rapid penetration and spread of transnational organized crime. On the one hand, the hundreds of millions of under- or unemployed poor provide a vast seething cauldron in which criminality of all sorts can and does incubate and multiply. Indeed, engagement in criminal activities, including forms of organized crime, on the part of many of the disadvantaged in the region can be seen as a rational survival strategy in the face of otherwise severely limited life opportunities.

The challenge to the region posed by the transnational drug trade is often overlooked in debates concerning the viability of the war on drugs. Reference to the entire region as a “transit zone” encourages analysis that focuses entirely on producing and consuming countries while masking the realities that confront countries of the Caribbean. In an article on the topic, Beruff and Cordero (2004: 310) note that the concept of a transit zone obscures the complexity of the drug trade in the region: “It downplays the negative, and sometimes devastating, impact of drugs on the region’s societies and governments.… [P]eople in the Caribbean are less concerned that their territory is used for the transshipment of drugs than they are about the multiple negative effects that the illicit drug trade has on their societies and daily lives.” Beruff and Cordero also note that governments in the region are justifiably concerned about the social and economic problems that emanate from the drug trade, and have lobbied the United States to take a multi-dimensional approach to the problem that will focus less on the militarization of the region, and incorporate an expanded definition of security threats that emanate from political, environmental, economic, health, and social influences.

One of the major challenges confronting Caribbean countries stems from the ease with which drug traffickers are able to divert their operations from one vulnerable territory to another. Success in disrupting the drug trade in any particular country in the region necessarily leads to a displacement effect as the drug traffickers shift their operations elsewhere. An outstanding example of this displacement effect was seen in 2003 when following law enforcement efforts to dismantle several drug courier networks between Jamaica and the United Kingdom, similar networks mushroomed in Trinidad, Antigua, and other islands of the Eastern Caribbean. In fact, the mushrooming of the drug problem in the entire Caribbean during the first half of the current decade cannot be divorced entirely from the law enforcement effects of the U.S.-funded Plan Colombia.

The Jamaican Situation

With the unenviable distinction of being the largest marijuana producing and exporting country in the Caribbean, Jamaica has traditionally been associated with the production of this illicit drug. Despite this, a significant reduction in the production and exportation of marijuana has been achieved since the 1980s largely through the Jamaican Government’s Anti-Drug Master Plan that targets the production and export of marijuana through eradication of crops and seizures of product destined for markets overseas. The reduction in the trade is also attributable to developments in the transnational drug trade. By 2003, a DEA intelligence brief noted that Colombia was producing some 13 times more marijuana than Jamaica, thus rendering the island-state neither a major producer⁴ nor consumer of illicit drugs in the contemporary War on Drugs.

In the DEA’s 2003 Threat Assessment report on the Caribbean, the agency acknowledges Jamaica as the only significant producer and exporter of marijuana in the Caribbean, but notes that the primary drug threat to the United States from the Caribbean is the transshipment of large amounts of cocaine from South America. Cocaine is much less bulky to transport, easier to conceal, and above all, commands a price that is often ten to fifteen times higher than that of marijuana. In 2002, an estimated 27 percent of 544 metric tons of export-quality cocaine available to the United States flowed through the Caribbean corridor (DEA Drug Intelligence Brief, 2003).

The continued notoriety of the small Caribbean nation for its role in the transnational drug trade can be largely attributed to Jamaica’s geopolitical realities. Located in the North Western Caribbean, Jamaica is roughly equidistant from Colombia, the world’s largest producer of cocaine, and the United States, the world’s largest consuming market. Jamaica is less than 550 miles to the south of Miami and roughly the same distance to the north of Colombia, making it an ideal transhipment point for drugs destined from the South American country to the United States. The Jamaican coastline of over 600 miles is under-patrolled and provides a rather porous border and a natural haven for illegal drug trading activities.

In 2003, the Tactical Analysis Task Force⁵ estimated that approximately 100 metric tons of cocaine passes through the island each year, making Jamaica one of the largest transshipment points for cocaine in the region. At an estimated U.S. street value of US$30,000 per kilogram, the value of this cocaine trade is approximately US$3 to $4.5 billion per year, or almost three to five times the earnings from Jamaica’s leading legitimate foreign exchange earner, the tourism sector, in the year 2000.⁶

Anatomy of the Drug Trade in Jamaica

Beginning in the late 1980s to early 1990s, Jamaican marijuana traffickers were recruited into the cocaine trade by Colombian traffickers who were aggressively establishing cocaine marketing and distribution networks in the region. The traffickers also forged partnerships with Bahamian operators to move the illicit drugs from Jamaica to the United States via The Bahamas. This Colombian/Jamaican/Bahamian partnership was beneficial to the Colombian traffickers because in addition to the geographical advantage of transshipping through Jamaica (500 nautical miles or 16 to 20 hours by ‘go fast’ boat from the north coast of Colombia), and the southernmost Bahamian islands (just over 200 nautical miles from Jamaica), and the northernmost Bahamian islands (about 20 minutes by air from Florida), the islands already had well-established linkages to both legitimate and illegal markets of the north. In addition to exploiting the voluminous traffic of commercial freighters and passenger airlines, the drug cartels acquired their its own fleets of aircraft and sea-going vessels of varying sizes, and the Bahamians are very well noted for their skills as light aircraft pilots and boat captains.

The general arrangement had the Colombians as suppliers and joint Colombian/Jamaican crews transporting the cocaine. The Jamaicans were responsible for handling the arrival of the cocaine laden go-fast boats from Colombia, accommodating foreign crew members and re-fuelling and dispatching the boats back to Colombia. They would then stockpile the cocaine and re-export it by go-fast boats to the Bahamas for onward transfer to the United States.

Initially, the Jamaican traffickers were paid a percentage of the cocaine loads for their role in the trade. Not only did the presence of such huge quantities of illicit drugs in Jamaica spawn a secondary trade involving the movement of thousands of drug couriers to the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, it also led to the introduction of crack houses in many inner-city communities, and motivated very high levels of violent crimes. The consequences have also been seen in the increasing levels of firearm trafficking, corruption among private and public sector officials, and an increase in the inflow of drug money and money-laundering schemes.

Impact on Jamaica

The threat posed to the national security of Jamaica by the illicit drug trade has grown exponentially over the last decade. This has been manifested in several ways, the most evident being an increase in the volume of drugs smuggled in and out of the country, the presence of Colombian nationals on the island to further their drug trafficking interests, and a related “drugs-for-firearms trade” which has developed between Jamaica and Haiti. Additionally, the last decade has seen an increase in the growth of drug-related crime and violence and the millions of foreign exchange dollars smuggled on a regular basis to Colombia and Panama. In a presentation to the Jamaican Parliament in April 2005, the Minister of National Security, Dr. Peter Phillips, warned the Government about the existence of a “criminal elite whose activities are centered on the international trade in illicit drugs, which constitute the tap root of violent crime in Jamaica.” In sum, the presence and growth of the transnational drug trade in Jamaica represents a challenge to the state, taking the form of both physical threats on the lives of police officers,⁷ as well as a threat to the state’s ability to govern, as acknowledged by the National Security minister.

Following a series of successful multi-lateral anti-drug operations in Jamaica and neighbouring countries in 2004, several high-level drug traffickers were arrested, their cartels dismantled, and their assets seized, prompting the 2005 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report to heap praise on Jamaica’s enforcement efforts. However, in drawing attention to the cost of this success, the report notes that the arrest of major Jamaican, Colombian, and Bahamian narcotics traffickers further resulted in the current disruption of cocaine trafficking throughout Jamaica and much of the Central Caribbean, and that the successful counter-narcotics operations in Jamaica have further led to an increase in extortion, kidnappings, and violence, as drug traffickers pursue alternative sources of income. Indeed, a disturbingly significant block of opinion in Jamaica holds that the dramatic spike in violent crimes in many communities since 2004 is attributable to the fallout created by the unavailability of financial proceeds from the drug trade.

Conclusion

While it is clear that Jamaica has done much to earn continued certification as a full partner in the war on drugs, it remains to be seen whether these actions will be as readily translated into a long-term reduction of the use of the country as a transhipment point for illegal drugs. After all, notwithstanding the clampdown on drug trafficking in Jamaica, the realities of the market remain intact, in that the hunger for drugs in the United States is far from satisfied and the capacity to produce the drug in Colombia remains largely undiminished. Therefore, as the multi-billion-dollar U.S.-funded Plan Colombia continues to take effect, Jamaica is confronted with the real possibility that the Colombian cartels will graduate from just using Jamaica as an operations base for the transshipment of cocaine to establishing it as a refueling depot and command and control center for distribution. If the local law enforcement response is not properly focused and adequately funded, the cartels may well succeed in fully establishing logistics and command control infrastructures in Jamaica to manage the flow of cocaine through the western Caribbean. The recent gains made in Jamaica over the last five years represent a significant victory in the war on drugs, but the battle is far from over. As other Caribbean countries brace themselves for the possibility of new incursions into their territories that may well result from the successes of operations in Jamaica, the never-ending war on drugs continues apace.

Notes