'Undermining growth'
For a long time, Jamaica has been a transhipment port for Colombian cocaine. A lot of the cocaine gets smuggled out into the islands and sold. Drug smugglers from Haiti trade sophisticated guns for marijuana and cocaine, and the island is therefore awash with guns.
The World Bank in a recent report says crime in the Caribbean - and it's mostly referring to Jamaica - is "undermining growth, threatening human welfare, and impeding social development".
In inner cities like Trench Town, Tivoli Gardens and Denham Town - scene of a six-hour gun battle between a gang of teenage boys armed with AK-47s and M-16s last month - this means high levels of illiteracy, teenage pregnancy, unemployment and nearly every household involved in some kind of criminal activity, major or minor.
Youngsters fight gang wars, older men travel to the city to rob and steal and the women at home often take a break from homemaking to carry drugs to the US and UK. There are more than 300 Jamaican women in UK prisons serving sentences for carrying drugs.
Some 11,000 policemen, including 2,500 specially equipped frontline fighters, are engaged in fighting crime on the island, but the force's reputation has been sullied in the past by allegations of corruption.
Deputy Commissioner Mark Shields, a Scotland Yard officer on secondment to the Jamaican police, says there was a 10% increase in homicides in the first three months of 2007 compared with the same period in 2006. But, he says he is not "over concerned".
'Drugs and turf'
"The reality is that there is high crime in Jamaica, but it is in the crime hotspots," he says. "The perception is the whole of Jamaica has crime, which is not true."
Mr Shields said the quality of police investigations into the crimes had improved, and the courts were recognising the fact.
The hotspots are areas like St James, Kingston, St Andrews, Trench Town and Denham Town - a mix of inner cities and high-unemployment urban neighbourhoods where young gangs high on crack cocaine and armed with M-16s and AK-47s fight to kill.
"The fighting is mostly in the inner cities. These are mostly gang related fights over drugs and turf," says Karl Angell of the Jamaica police.
Two years ago, the police launched Operation Kingfish, an elaborate plan to infiltrate the main gangs and take them out.
The feared gang Klansman is now, according to the police, a "shadow of its old self", with the leader of the group having been killed in a shootout. The other big gang, Joel Andem, was also busted by the police during the same year and its leader was captured.
The police say there have been crack-downs on cocaine smuggling in Jamaica, with substantial seizures of the drug being made last year (2006). But it is hard pressed to explain why murders are shooting up again this year.
Mark Shields denies that this year's upsurge is related to the forthcoming general elections on the island.
Civil rights groups like Jamaicans For Justice say that the police do not have a clue about combating gun crime and have killed many people themselves.
The group says that 227 people were killed by the police in Jamaica last year (2006), up from 202 in 2005, and 168 in 2004.
"The police say these killings happened during shootouts. But eyewitness reports tell a different story," says Caroline Gomez of the rights group.
Analysts say Jamaica's culture of crime is a larger, social problem and will take more than police action to solve.
"What we have on our hands is a culture of crime and it's going to take some time to reverse it. Collectively, as a society, we have sat by and allowed the culture to develop," says Vernon Daley, a local journalist.
Improving the economy, combating joblessness and cleaning up politics would be a good first step to rid this sunny island of this fear.
