Crime in the Cayman Islands

Every intending expat needs to know something about the crime situation in his intended home. My blog contains several posts about crime in Cayman. The archives of January, March and July 2011 include commentaries on the topic; you can tell the subject-matter by the titles, pretty much.

Crime is by no means rampant, by Caribbean and regional standards, but it is serious enough by Cayman's past standards. We are averaging about one armed robbery a week, this year.  Even our Tourism Department no longer advertises us as crime-free.

Once you've read the blog, you might have questions.

Update June 2012. My latest blog-post is called “Locking the doors and windows”, which is self-explanatory. In retrospect, my above posting probably understated the danger posed to residents by amateur criminals armed with guns. Expats coming to Cayman should not be under any illusions with regard to crime. It's not what one would call a lawless place, but it's not all peace and love, either.

Very helpful, Gordon. Thank you.

I have just added an update to my original posting. In retrospect, the latter was guilty of understating the danger to residents of Cayman.

Thank you for the update, Gordon. I had thought the Cayman Islands was one of the few places in the Caribbean where you would not need iron bars on your windows. It's very sad to hear that is no longer the case.

http://www.caymannewsservice.com/crime/ … voids-jail

This link is to a horrifying story of a recent violent rape, and the soft sentence that "punished" the rapist. Stories of this nature are very often covered up in Cayman, or buried under a pile of more trivial news. The fact that only 50 people bothered to comment on this online - almost all of them anonymously - is an indicator of the lack of concern with which such crimes are greeted by the general public. As a community, we seem to have become resigned to such monstrosities.

I myself didn't comment, but will post a comment on my blog next week when my family has gone back to Norway from their vacation.

Thanks for the link, Gordon. That is absolutely disgusting: The violent rape of a 13 year old results in no jail time due to "mitigating factors". The State doesn't seem to realize it is basically condoning violent rape - enabling it, even.

Ireland falls into this same trap of slapping sexual predators on the wrist but this case out of CI takes the cake. It's mind-boggling and an outrage to basic human decency.

The US justice system has many, many flaws, but at least these types of (lack of) sentencing outrages do not occur because it take violent sexual crimes seriously.

I wish CI and Europe would learn from that instead of allowing these people to commit rape over and over again, often leading to murder, as in the case of the previously convicted rapist in Wales who tied-up, raped and dismembered an Irish woman. He had previously violently raped a 15 year old girl and only received a three year sentence (and who knows how little time of that sentence he actually served).

And now a girl was just raped in my town of Galway. Others have been attacked in the past week. No arrests have been made but who wants to bet that the same person is responsible for all of these latest attacks and who wants to bet that, if caught, we come to find out that this isn't the first time this cretin has been caught up in the judicial system for such sickening behavior?

Your frustration must be hard to control, Gordon. Thanks for letting us know of what is happening there.

Gordon..went to your link and I have scratched CI off my list of retirement possibles as I have my 9 year old granddaughter living with us.  Unfortunatly, this happens all over the world because they had a troubled childhood.  I am certain that this young girl does not have a wealthy and influential family or the sentence would have been quite different.
  Get the story on UTube if you can.
     Bryan