According to an article by Deborah Gabriel in African Echo, Jamaicans are significantly over represented in British prisons because of their involvement in drug trafficking.
As at September 2005, black men and women accounted for almost 15 per cent of the British prison population, while they only made up 2 per cent of the population in the UK (2001 Census).
Prisoners from the Caribbean make up 2.51 per cent of the total prison population, but Jamaicans account for 84% of all those Caribbean prisoners in the UK.
Jamaican prisoners currently serving time in the UK are mostly drugs couriers who are arrested coming into the UK.
This is because “by an accident of Geography”, the Caribbean lies directly between the major cocaine-producing countries – Colombia, Bolivia and Peru and the main drug consuming countries of North America and Western Europe.
There are signs of serious crime problems in Trinidad, Guyana and St Lucia which are now being used as alternative routes for the shipment of cocaine, along with Nigeria, which has also seen an increase in cocaine smuggling.