🇯🇲 Jamaica
Visiting: Dangerous
Visiting Jamaica means accepting real risks. Same-sex relationships are criminalised, which places it 122nd for LGBT rights, so LGBT travellers should weigh this carefully. Violent crime is the defining risk: homicide ranks 175th, one of the highest rates in the world, and worse again, women's safety is extremely poor, placed 176th. On the other side of the ledger, freedom is well protected, ranking 37th, and road deaths are moderate, at 98th.
Homicide
Intentional homicides per 100,000 people — lower is better.
Jamaica: 23.8
Ranked 6th in the world for the highest homicide rate.
Why this rank?
Twenty-four killings per 100,000 people a year is well over twice the ten that marks the deadliest countries.
Is it safe to visit?
Take it seriously. The rate is very high even after a steep fall, and nearly three-quarters of 2024's killings were gang-related.
Why we updated the score?
The police have published their 2025 count, 673 murders, down 41%. The UN takes its figure from the police a year later, so we used the new count.
Road Fatalities
Road-traffic deaths per 100,000 people per year — lower is better.
Jamaica: 13.6
Ranked 83rd in the world for the deadliest roads.
Why this rank?
Nearly fourteen deaths per 100,000 people a year is just below the world average of fifteen.
Is it safe to visit?
Reasonable in a car. Below the world average now, and most of the deaths are motorcyclists or people on foot.
Why we updated the score?
The WHO's 2021 figure was Jamaica's own count. The road safety unit has published 2025, with 373 deaths, down from 487, so we've used the newer count and the rate drops a band.
Conflict
Conflict deaths inside the country in the last twelve months, as recorded by the Uppsala conflict database, civilians killed on purpose, and any UN sanctions or court order over a war. The worst of those sets the colour. Lower is better.
Jamaica: 2.47
Ranked 54th most conflict-affected country in the world.
Why this rank?
Six people died in fighting inside Jamaica in the year to July 2026, two of them civilians killed on purpose.
Is it safe to visit?
Take care in St James parish, around Montego Bay, where fighting between the police and an armed gang killed six people in the year to July 2026, two of them civilians.
Freedom
Six freedoms rated 0–4 by Freedom House — protest, speech, press, religion, movement and due process. The weakest rating sets the colour, and the total places the country inside it — higher is better.
Jamaica: 8.39
Ranked 37th freest country in the world.
Why this rank?
In Jamaica the lowest are speech, movement and due process at 3. Total 21 of 24.
Is it safe to visit?
A democratic system with competitive elections and orderly rotations of power. Four freedoms are one step from the top. Corruption and violent crime are the concerns, and crime is the Homicide column's job.
LGBT Rights
LGBT equality in law and daily life — higher is better.
Jamaica: Illegal
Ranked 59th least equal in the world for LGBT people.
Why this rank?
Sex between men carries up to ten years with hard labour under an 1864 law, and the judges kept it in place when a challenge reached them in 2023. Red by law.
Is it safe to visit?
Not safe to be open. It is one of the harder places in the Americas to be visibly LGBT, with violence and family rejection well documented.
Women's Safety
Women's safety — feeling safe out at night, political violence against women, a fair hearing in court, and how normal violence at home is, with the night figure setting a floor on the colour — higher is better.
Jamaica: 2.99
Ranked 5th least safe country in the world for women.
Why this rank?
The courts rate well and violence at home is low. What sinks the score is attacks on women, recorded in 2024 at close to the index's worst-case rate.
Is it safe to visit?
Jamaica is dangerous for a woman travelling alone.