Adrian Dunkley

Crime Stop Jamaica

2022–2025

The figures below are illustrative. The records do not establish how many lives Crime Stop saved.

6Deaths assumed prevented
2,488,317Modelled hours of life savedEquivalent to 283.86 life-years
The middle scenario assumes six deaths prevented at age 30, with 47.31 years of life saved per person.
Each arc shows one assumed life saved. The colour changes at the assumed age of death.

What Crime Stop recorded

3,958Tips received
247Arrests reported
J$78.5mProperty recovered

A case can involve several people or items. Annual totals cannot tell us how often an individual tip led to an arrest.

View annual figures and sources
YearTipsArrestsPropertyRewards
20221,14877J$21.4mJ$7.7m
20231,13439J$30.8mJ$10.2m
202486755J$19.2mJ$7.5m
202580976J$7.1mJ$10.3m

Property and rewards are rounded and use nominal Jamaican dollars. Recovered property can include items held by authorities. See sources by year.

Change the assumptions

Enter your own values for the combined 2022–2025 period. The life-hours chart and benefit estimates update together.

J$180.9mGross benefit, 2024 J$
2,488,317Modelled hours of life saved
283.86Life-years saved
7.2Healthy years gained from fewer injuries

J$41.3m from property and J$139.7m from avoided treatment costs and productivity losses. Programme and police costs are outside this public calculation.

How the estimates work

Economic value

Small Arms Survey estimated US$138,706 in lost productivity per fatal firearm injury in Jamaica in 2024. At the Jamaican hospital studied, it estimated US$4,584 in direct medical costs and US$485 in lost productivity per nonfatal injury. The calculator converts those values at the Ministry of Finance’s end-2024 rate of J$156.42 per US dollar. It adjusts annual property amounts to 2024 prices and applies your chosen share to represent property recoveries that depended on the programme and had usable value.

Life and health

The Statistical Institute of Jamaica’s 2011 life table gives 47.31 expected remaining years at age 30. The calculator multiplies the remaining years at the selected age by the assumed deaths prevented. It uses 8,766 hours per year, based on 365.25 days, and rounds to the nearest hour. It calculates healthy years gained from fewer injuries by multiplying the number of nonfatal injuries prevented by the assumed health loss per year and its duration. For example, a 20% loss over three years equals 0.6 quality-adjusted life years. Research on U.S. firearm injury survivors documents lasting physical and mental effects. The size and duration of those effects in Jamaica remain uncertain.

What an impact study would need

Police case records could show whether a tip provided a new lead, accelerated an investigation or duplicated information already available. A study would also need comparable cases or areas, pre-existing trends, and measures of whether violence shifted elsewhere. Until then, Jamaica’s national crime trends cannot tell us how much of the change came from Crime Stop.

Adrian Dunkley serves on the board of Crime Stop Jamaica. This analysis uses publicly reported figures and is published in a personal capacity.

Sources