Above: Jamaica Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller

By the Caribbean Journal staff

It is time for Jamaica to slay the “monster of crime,” Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller said in her New Year’s message.

“Fighting crime takes a united effort,” she said. “As a people and as a culture, we have to set our face against criminality. This must be the year when we as Jamaicans say with every fiber our being, ‘enough is enough!’ where crime  is concerned.”

The Prime Minister said the government would “redouble its efforts” in 2014 to work toward a “safe and secure Jamaica.”

Part of those efforts include a plan to pass new “anti-gang” legislation along with new DNA legislation, she said.

Crime has continued to be a major problem for the English-speaking Caribbean’s most populous country. The country’s murder rate, already among the world’s highest, increased slightly in 2013.

“We can’t sit back and watch our nation’s hopes go up in gunsmoke,” she said.