Absent from the criminological literature on policing in the Caribbean are studies on female’s motivations to become police officers, studies using female police recruits and studies using a comparative approach. As a result of this gap, data were gathered from female police recruits in Jamaica ( N = 37) and Trinidad and Tobago ( N = 60) in July 2017 via a standardised, self-administered questionnaire in order to determine their motivations for entry into policing. The main motivation for female’s entry into policing in both jurisdictions was job security. Revenge and the desire for power and authority were the least cited motivations for entry into the police profession in both jurisdictions. The importance of females as police officers, study limitations and directions for future research are also discussed.

While the topic of motivation to enter policing has proliferated in the Global North, there are limited studies examining recruit’s motivations to enter policing in the Caribbean. As a result, the current effort was designed to analyze the motivations for entering the police profession by gathering data from police recruits in training at the National Police College in Jamaica via standardized, self-administered questionnaires. Data were gathered from one hundred and sixty-one (n=161) police recruits and analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The analyses were based on gender, age, marital status and educational level and sought to determine the motivations of police recruits who entered the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF). The findings indicated that the major motivations for entry into policing in Jamaica were: (1) the desire to assist others, (2) the opportunity to further education, and (3) the opportunity to enforce laws. This study provides insights into the motivations behind motivations for entry into policing in Jamaica and is a starting point for future research on motivations to enter the police profession in the Caribbean.  

Research focusing on policing and the justice systems from an island perspective is available, but extremely rare. Additionally, available research on policing and justice systems in island contexts is usually conducted by non-island scholars using a limited frame of reference on ‘islandness’. Instructively, conventional wisdom suggest that it is academically imprecise and improper to universalise scholarship from countries with large land masses onto islands with unique topographies and challenges. This thematic section, highlights the inherent qualities of policing and justice systems in island communities by way of engagement with the existing body of island and ocean studies literature as well as by way of theoretically informed and methodologically appropriate research conducted by a judicial mix of early, mid- and established career scholars. The authors of the article in this thematic section present their scholarly efforts from diverse perspectives and contributes to decolonization efforts in island studies. Ultimately, the articles advance the call for a move away from colonial epistemology and hegemony in knowledge production and transference to situating island scholars and scholarship within island studies. In sum, this thematic section contributes to the emergent body of literature on both policing and the justice systems and studies on island communities.

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