Don Dada: Assessing The Socio-Economic And Political Functions Of Jamaica's Mafia Bosses

In Don Dada: Assessing the Socio-economic and Political Power of Jamaica’s Mafia Bosses, Damion Blake takes on a controversial subject: the Jamaican don.

The Jamaican don is a non-state actor, a male figure, usually from the community in which he plays a leadership role, and who wields considerable power and control inside that nation’s garrison communities. Garrisons in Jamaica are poor inner city communities characterized by homogeneous voting patterns for one of Jamaica’s two major political parties: the People’s National Party and the Jamaica Labour Party.

With revelatory insight, Don Dada explores the major roles dons play in their communities and how the activities of these non-state criminal actors have influenced the governance process. Focussing on communities in the downtown metropolitan area of Kingston, the capital city, the book investigates the evolution of the don from the 1960s to the present and their roles of security/protection, social welfare, partisan mobilization, and law and order.  Blake contends that dons have emerged as embedded governing authorities in Jamaican garrisons based on the socio-economic and political roles they carry out and puts forward a peace-building model to dissolve the power of dons and their gangs in Jamaica’s marginal communities. 

Damion Keith Blake is Associate Professor of Political Science and Policy Studies in the Department of International and Global Studies at Elon University.