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Gov­ern­ment has sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to fol­low the ex­am­ple of Ja­maica and in­tro­duce Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs), as the coun­try seeks to take ad­van­tage of the re­duc­tion in mur­ders and oth­er crimes dur­ing a State of Emer­gency (SoE) that is ex­pect­ed to end on Jan­u­ary 31, 2026.

Ja­maica es­tab­lished ZOSOs un­der the 2017 Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures Act, to tack­le high crime in spe­cif­ic ar­eas through en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment and reg­u­lar­ly ex­tend­ed by Par­lia­ment.

Speak­ing on Wednes­day (Jan­u­ary 14, 2026) at a news con­fer­ence at the head­quar­ters of the rul­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion in­tends to ad­vance the ZOSO leg­is­la­tion, de­signed to tar­get crime “hot spots” with­out re­sort­ing to a SoE, which he ac­knowl­edged had “yield­ed tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits”.