Where in the US do *you* live?
If you don't want to give money to a bum and you say sorry and keep walking, if you let that bum get too physically close to you, you are at serious risk of a mugging.
Walking around where people feel free to beg, unless they're begging people in cars at traffic lights on exits from the freeway, is walking around where you are at risk of being mugged, raped, or murdered---or all of the above.
I went to college in the middle of a major city. I had a lot of friends get mugged walking along where the bums tended to hang out and beg.
I had people try to attack me twice when I was pregnant--within about two weeks of each other, just when I really started to show. No accounting for scumbags, is there? Once on the train, when I was carrying luggage from the airport. And used a visibly hostile facial expression/tone of voice/body language to fend off people casing me more times than I could count. Had a friend shot while resisting a mugging--go winged in a leg--the victim 20 mins. earlier who didn't resist got gutshot and died. Had friends of tougher spirits fend off muggers--once by decking the mugger, once by the Crocodile Dundee, "That's not a knife, this is a knife" trick. Had friends successfully brandish their guns to run off violent attackers. Had a friend raped and murdered. Had a friend raped about a block away from where the other was raped and murdered. And I can confidently say that non-locals were in vastly more danger than locals, because they were more likely to blunder into no-go areas.
Matter of fact, when my office got a new receptionist in from California, first thing I did was sit down with her, draw a rough map of the city, and tell her which "zones" of the city the *cops* only went into in groups. Didn't want to see her picture on the evening news, eh?
The basic safety rule is you don't let a stranger trying to approach you get within 21 feet of you *unless* he/she is forced to by the press of the crowd.
If a stranger doesn't stay outside 21 feet when told to stop approaching you, you have to look at any further approach as a move in to attack.
Fortunately, the laws in *my* state look favorably on people who defend themselves after telling some stranger approaching in a relatively "empty" section of parking lot or sidewalk *not* to come any closer. (If the sidewalk is narrower than 21 feet, you either cross the street, move over at a parking lot, or otherwise act to avoid the approach of the stranger. Or you are very much on your guard as you and the stranger pass by each other. Any unnecessarily close approach is *probably* an attack--since strangers who are just minding their own business know the unwritten rules and don't want to scare their fellow pedestrians out of their skins.)
Try defending yourself from an aggressive beggar as a tourist in Jamaica and if you didn't wind up dead you'd almost certainly wind up in a very uncomfortable jail with the consulate saying, "Sorry, can't help you."
No thanks, I'll pass.
If I want a nice beach trip I'll go to Florida.
You want more tourism? Fix your self-defense laws and their enforcement, and advertise that you have.
As it is, sorry, but your murder rate is sky high---even by American standards.
And tourists are always more in danger than locals, because they don't know what to avoid.
Yeah, you can hire and listen to a tour guide. Or you can just go to Florida. Or maybe do a cruise and only go ashore at the port of call during the day in areas the cruise line tells you are safe.
Personally, I prefer Florida. Or, if I were on the left coast, Malibu. Or if I wanted to hit an island, the US Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico.
If I wanted to leave the country and visit the Carribean, I'd pick Costa Rica or Nevis & St. Kitts. Maybe the Caymans. Maybe Trinidad and Tobago. Maybe the Dominican Republic--maybe.
After Castro dies, maybe Cuba will improve again.
But not Jamaica. Or Haiti. Too high risk for me.
But if I absolutely had to choose between Haiti and Jamaica, I'd pick Haiti and hire a *good* tour guide and a couple of bodyguards. But the best choice is "no be there."
I know the safety rules in an American city. I know what I can get away with without being arrested---and that in the cities where *I* choose to go, how I can stay within the law while defending myself, if I have to--even if I end up having to kill some psychopath with more violence than sense who is stupid enough to mistake me for prey.
Jamaica? Sorry, but no way in hell.
You want tourism, clean up your self defense laws---because your crime stats demonstrate that your police *cannot* clean up your act.
As for the poor kids in Tranquility Bay, I want it to be flat illegal to send American kids outside the US to "school" or "facility" without the kid's consent. US citizens of any age should have the right to stay in the US if they choose, unless their parents are going with them and are going to live with them the entire duration of the kid's expat stay.
American citizens, young or old, have the right to certain protections from our government---and that's one of them. Unfortunately, right now our government does a sucky job of protecting US citizens who are minors from involuntary exile and exploitation.
We don't owe you tourism or anything else.
You want tourist trade? Clean up your act--at least to the point of Texas or Florida or Louisiana-style self-defense laws. Otherwise, safety-conscious American tourists looking for fun in the sun will get it within our own borders, thanks.
Yeah, Atlanta has a high crime rate. But if some fool attacks me and I shoot his ass, *if* he dies (and I'd be the first person to call him an ambulance *after* I stopped the attack and was no longer in danger of death or serious bodily harm from him) I know damned well that I'm not going to rot in jail over it. If some fool breaks into our home (or hotel room) while we're in it and one of us shoots his ass, the police are more liable to commend us on our aim than prosecute us, Georgia laws and culture being what they are. Needless to say, our burglars typically make damned sure the family *isn't* home before breaking in [insert feral grin here]. Which works for us. The property is insured. Our lives and our family's lives are irreplaceable.
I sure can't say the same for Jamaica. And I can't necessarily say that with different cultural norms I'd even have a high enough confidence level at *recognizing* the difference between an attack and harmless, ordinary casual social interaction like I would in Atlanta.
*You* may know Jamaica well enough to be able to do that. I don't. And your crime rates suck ass. And my personal safety--and my family's--actually mean something to me.
Timoclea
