Against the backdrop of Trinidad and Tobago’s Parliament approving a third consecutive three-month extension of its national state of emergency (SoE) to curb violent crime, a leading Jamaican security strategist is urging the Caribbean nation to replace this temporary measure with Jamaica’s proven Zone of Special Operations (ZOSO) framework, a model that has delivered sustained reductions in violent crime in Jamaica’s most dangerous communities.
Professor Anthony Clayton, lead author of Jamaica’s landmark 2014 National Security Policy and one of the original architects of the country’s groundbreaking “Clear, Hold and Build” security strategy, shared his insights during a Wednesday night interview on TV6’s current affairs program *Beyond the Headlines*. While Clayton acknowledged that emergency powers can deliver short-term dips in community violence, he stressed that such measures fail to address the deep-rooted social and economic conditions that fuel chronic organized crime and gang activity.
“I strongly recommend the ZOSO framework over an extended SoE, because it does not carry the same legal and constitutional risks related to due process,” Clayton explained. He added context to Jamaica’s own experience: the country ran parallel SoE and ZOSO programs for years, though the ZOSO model was not without its early critics. Under Jamaica’s original design, a community automatically qualified for ZOSO status when its local homicide rate rose to more than double the national average.
Clayton went on to detail the core structure of the ZOSO model, clarifying a common misconception about the role of military forces within the framework. Unlike emergency powers that allow broad military involvement in policing, ZOSO tasks armed forces solely with securing the perimeters of high-crime communities, rather than taking over frontline law enforcement. “The military do not have policing powers, and they are not meant to replace regular police,” Clayton emphasized. “The entire goal is to create a secure space that allows regular police officers to do their jobs effectively, which was impossible before the zone was established.”
He also warned that security planners must prepare for an expected side effect of ZOSO operations: the displacement of active gang members to neighboring communities. “Gang members will always move when you secure their home territory, but they do not have unlimited options,” he noted. “Most will relocate to areas aligned with their existing criminal networks. If you plan ahead, you can seal potential exit and entry routes, and screen all people moving in and out of these adjacent communities to contain the displacement.”
Drawing on decades of Jamaica’s experience testing and refining the ZOSO model, Clayton pointed to one critical early mistake that Trinidad and Tobago can avoid: treating ZOSO as a short-term, three-month measure. “In Jamaica, we initially required ZOSO extensions to come back to Parliament for approval every few months, and that was a serious error,” he said. “We should have opted for an open-ended authorization from the start. If community members and criminals both know you will leave in three months, there is no incentive for residents to cooperate, and gang members can simply wait out the operation.”
Despite that early misstep, Clayton confirmed that ZOSO has delivered transformative results for Jamaica’s national homicide rate, which was once the highest in the world. At its peak in 2009, Jamaica’s homicide rate hit 63 per 100,000 people. By 2005, the rate had already dropped by nearly half, a stunning decline that caught global security analysts by surprise. While Jamaica still ranks among the top 10 countries globally for homicide rates, Clayton noted that the rate has fallen steadily every year since 2020, marking meaningful, incremental progress.
When asked if the ZOSO model could translate to similar success in Trinidad and Tobago, Clayton said the model is an ideal fit, particularly because violent crime in the country is heavily concentrated in a small number of specific communities, just as it was in Jamaica.
Throughout the interview, Clayton repeatedly stressed a core principle that applies to both ZOSO and SoE measures: neither is a standalone solution to crime. “Neither an SoE nor a ZOSO is an end in itself,” he explained. “They should not be viewed as permanent fixes, nor are they only a crime suppression tactic. If you only implement these measures and do nothing else, crime rates will almost always rebound once you return to regular policing.”
Instead, Clayton argued, these security measures create a critical temporary window for governments to address the underlying social conditions that allow gangs and criminal organizations to take root and grow. “These measures just buy you time,” he said. “During that window, you have to invest in community infrastructure: repair broken streetlights, rebuild roads, improve underfunded schools, upgrade local clinics, and roll out targeted social interventions for at-risk residents.”
Clayton added that because violent crime is geographically concentrated in just a handful of communities, targeted special measures are not inherently unconstitutional or illegitimate — but heavy-handed, constant patrols and aggressive raids are not the answer. “We have had significant success dismantling major gang networks in Jamaica over the past year, but taking down gang leadership is only one piece of the puzzle,” he noted.
Clayton also highlighted a key legal lesson from Jamaica’s experience with repeated SoE extensions: in 2010, Jamaica’s highest courts ultimately ruled that the repeated, long-term use of states of emergency as a crime-fighting strategy violated the country’s constitution. The courts found that emergency powers were intended only for truly exceptional, temporary crises, not for ongoing, long-term crime suppression. Judges also raised serious concerns about the practice of prolonged detention without trial, a common feature of extended SoEs.
“The court acknowledged that removing violent offenders from communities may be necessary, but those offenders still have a right to a timely trial,” Clayton said. “If we erode due process protections, we put our entire legal, moral and constitutional order at risk.”
Above all, Clayton emphasized that sustainable, long-term crime reduction requires sustained investment in vulnerable communities, particularly for young children exposed to chronic violence from toddlerhood. He pointed to local research showing that thousands of children growing up in Jamaica’s high-crime communities develop permanent mental health conditions — including hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder — from witnessing brutal gang violence as young as age 3 or 4. Studies show these traumatized children are 10 times more likely to end up incarcerated later in life, creating an intergenerational cycle of crime that cannot be broken with short-term security measures.
“This cycle cannot be fixed overnight, and it cannot be fixed with a three-month state of emergency or even a ZOSO,” Clayton explained. “These measures only create the space to fix the underlying problems. The biggest barrier to progress is that politicians always prioritize quick, visible fixes that will deliver results before the next election, instead of investing in the long-term change that actually reduces crime permanently.”
