Introduction: Crime, Gender and Sexuality in the Anglophone Caribbean

Anglophone Caribbean countries have rates of gender-based violence higher than the global average (Deshong 2016: 82–3), and reports and surveys produced by NGOs and governmental organisations indicate that ‘sexual assault and domestic violence are prevalent regionwide’ (UNDP 2012: 31). Statistics for femicide in Jamaica are ‘among the highest in the world’ (UNDP 2016: 63), and in Guyana, domestic murder was the second most prevalent murder category in 2017 (Ifill in this special issue). Homophobic and transphobic violence is also regarded as a significant human rights issue in the Caribbean; a 2014 Human Rights Watch report documented an ‘intolerable level of violence, physical and sexual’ towards the LGBTQI community in Jamaica, and in Guyana, activists have recently campaigned against legislation which, by criminalising cross-dressing, sanctioned violence against the LGBTQI community (see Robinson and Matthews in this special issue). Bearing in mind the prevalence of gender-based violence, as well as the gender bias and homophobia encoded in Anglophone Caribbean countries’ legislation and law enforcement practices (Robinson 2000; Tambiah 2011), it follows that gender and sexuality should be central to the study of crime and criminal justice in the region. There is a clear need for research which explores the forms, causes and effects of gender-based violence; the relationship between masculinities and crime; LGBTQI people’s experience of crime and criminal justice; and the gendered ways in which the police and courts operate.