Above: Portland

By the Caribbean Journal staff

It’s no secret that Jamaica has long been dealing with a crime problem.

And the numbers are beginning to improve, particularly the murder rate, which has hovered near the top of the Caribbean for some time.

So when it comes to violent crime, which part of the country is safest?

The government recently released data on murder rates across Jamaican parishes.

The lowest? It’s Portland, which has a murder rate of about 10 per 100,000 population.

That’s lower than recent United Nations estimates of the Caribbean region-wide average, which sits at just under 16.

See the full table for Jamaica’s murder rate by parish. The period covered the Jan. 1 to Sept. 20 period, according to government data.