Jamaica's Growing Violence Threatens Retiree Economy

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This verdant island has one of the higher homicide rates in the world with 62 murders per 100,000 residents in 2009. Rising violence is an issue throughout the Caribbean, largely fueled by narcotics trafficking, according to a 2007 joint report by the United Nations and the World Bank.

Jamaican criminals sometimes target returnees, waiting until their monthly pension checks arrive from abroad before striking. One of the gangs preying on the returnees was led by police officers.

The number of returning retirees—1,170 last year—has dropped in half since the 1990s. That's a big deal in Jamaica, which counts on retirees and their money to help pump up its troubled economy.

Some 2 million Jamaicans live abroad, nearly as many as the 2.7 million who live on the island. Their exodus began in 1946 and continues today.

To be sure, there are other factors besides crime that could be pushing down the number of returnees to Jamaica. Many retirees now have children and grandchildren in the U.S. and the U.K., and want to stay close by. There also are growing Jamaican communities in places attractive to retirees like Florida.

In addition, crime hasn't stopped the growth of Jamaica's tourism industry, which generated over $1.9 billion last year, and is on track to surpass that this year.

Another potential threat to returnees: their own families. Distant cousins, barely known to retirees, sometimes see returned residents as bank accounts to tap. Ethlyn Hyman-Dixon, a 69-year-old returnee from England, was stabbed to death in 2008 by a nephew who was convicted of the slaying last year.

Boxer Trevor Berbick, the last man to beat Muhammad Ali in the ring, was hacked to death in Portland Parish by a nephew, later convicted of the murder. Mr. Berbick was 54.

Crime has hit a retirement community called Southaven in the town of Yallahs, about 15 miles east of Kingston, that caters to returned expats. With its broad boulevards and white-washed stucco walls, Southaven could be any seniors' district in Arizona or Florida—except that many homes are abandoned.

"People are scared. They're leaving," says Cynthia Edwards, 71, who bought a place in Yallahs with her husband in 2005. Toiling 11 years at a Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress Hotel in Orlando, Fla., the Kingston-born woman had managed to scrape together $90,000 for a retirement home.

The moment she arrived in Southaven, she says, she realized her mistake. That first evening, she was robbed of nearly $500. "There was two gunmen who came in at us and took my bag from my shoulder and my friend's bag from her shoulder," she recalls. "I was out tugging at it and they said to me 'Gimme the bag because I don't want to kill you.' I let the bag go and they ran."

Since then, the Edwardses have paid thousands of dollars to add electronic security to their home. They have hired armed guards to patrol their neighborhood at night. The couple sleeps with a "chopper," or machete, at their bedside, which they once used to jab at a trespasser's hands after a screen was yanked from its frame.

The Edwardses say they can't afford to move. Even if they could find a buyer for their home, their combined monthly income of less than $500 from U.S. Social Security and an English pension isn't enough to support them in retirement in the U.S., Mrs. Edwards says.

Returnees say they often are targeted by squatters. Last year Jamaica's Ministry of Water and Housing formed a special anti-squatters unit to deal with the estimated 600,000 Jamaicans living on land where they have no legal right. However, unit leader Basil Forsythe says he is only allowed to go after squatters living on public lands. Elderly returning residents, he says, "have to go through courts on their own. I advise them to engage a lawyer."

Crime exploded into open warfare this past May, during a manhunt for a top gang leader, Christopher Coke, the "don" of Kingston's Tivoli Gardens ghetto. Instead, his "gun men" erected barricades against army patrols. As gun battles raged, nearly a hundred people were killed; many more were burned out of their homes. An island-wide state of emergency finally was lifted in July.

Back in 1994, almost 2,600 retired Jamaicans returned to their country. The number of returnees dropped more than half by the early 2000s. It has remained relatively flat every since, even though the number of Jamaicans at retirement age abroad has risen substantially. Just in the U.S., almost 200,000 Jamaican immigrants are now over the age of 60, up from 82,000 Jamaican immigrants who either were retired or were approaching retirement 10 years ago.

For decades, Jamaican governments have counted on money from expats working in England or North America. Eighty percent of the country's college graduates work abroad, according to a World Bank study.

If expatriates give up on their native country, they are less likely to send money, to invest in businesses there, to buy land for retirement homes. Badrul Haque, the World Bank's Kingston representative, calculates returned residents' pensions contribute more hard currency to Jamaica—$10 million per month—than almost any industry save tourism and mining.

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