ABSTRACT
From the 1980s onwards, Jamaican gangs became notorious for their success in building transnational crime networks. The gangs’ geographical reach largely corresponded with the cities and countries where Jamaican immigrants settled. Their networks built on and extended earlier patterns of narcotics trafficking, but became more geographically diverse and more violent as the focus shifted from marijuana to cocaine. Drugs, guns and people began to travel along cross-border circuits that stretched from Downtown Kingston to inner-city neighbourhoods in New York, Toronto and London. The notoriety of the so-called ‘yardies’, as Jamaican gang members came to be called, grew as they received increasing attention from North American and European media. Various mass-mediated representations, from televised specials to mainstream movies and investigative journalism, have framed Jamaican gangs for non-Jamaican audiences. On the whole, these accounts depict Jamaican criminals as extraordinarily violent and ruthless, much to the distress of many Jamaicans at home and in the diaspora. Such stereotypical representations of ghettos and gangsters reflect and reinforce dominant imaginative geographies that depict Jamaica as a lawless, criminogenic space, and, many feel, they both diminish the appeal of the island as a tourist destination and cause difficulties for Jamaicans who live or travel abroad.
