Crime is the number one problem facing Jamaica

Stone Poll Reporters:

A significant majority of Jamaicans identified 'crime and violence' as the number one problem facing the country, with joblessness a distant second and poor leadership an even more distant third, based on the most recent Stone Polls.

Sixty-four per cent of respondents who were asked what was the most important problem facing the country at this time, said 'crime/violence', followed by unemployment (20.7 per cent) and poor leadership (1.7 per cent).

But when asked to identify the most important problem facing their community, most people said 'unemployment' (54 per cent), 'poor infrastructure' (11.3 per cent) followed by 'crime' (8.7 per cent) and 'water shortages' (5.1 per cent).

Interestingly, only 1.1 per cent of the people said 'corruption' was the main problem at the national level, while corruption did not factor at the community level.

The Polls were conducted by the Stone Polling Organisation during the first week of August 2006, using a representative sample of 1,496 eligible voters. It has a margin of error of plus or minus three per cent.

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