Don Dada

In May 2010, the Jamaican government used its military and police arms of the state to capture, arrest and extradite Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke to the United States on drug trafficking charges. Coke was Jamaica’s last mega don. He derived this status from his considerable political influence, financial wealth and the para-military prowess accorded to him from leading the infamous ‘Showa Posse’ gang.

The Jamaican don is a violent non-state actor who wields considerable power and control inside the nation’s garrison communities. A don is a male figure, usually from the community in which he plays a leadership role. Garrisons in Jamaica have often emerged as neighbourhoods that are don-ruled shadow versions of the official state. These are poor inner-city communities characterised by homogeneous, and in some cases, over-voting patterns for one of Jamaica’s two major political parties: The People’s National Party (PNP) or the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). This book explores the major roles dons play in Jamaican garrisons. It focuses on a cluster of communities in the downtown metro area of Kingston, Jamaica. Additionally, it investigates the factors that account for the evolution of such roles performed by dons from the 1960s to the present. The author used governance theories and the concept of embeddedness as an analytic framework to interpret the power and authority dons have in garrisons. It ends with suggestions on how to dissolve the power of dons and their gangs in Jamaica’s inner-city communities.