The new report, titled “Do States of Emergency in the Caribbean Suppress Gang Violence or Spread It? The Cases of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago,” examines whether government-declared states of emergency (SoEs) have effectively reduced gang-related violence or simply displaced it to other areas. Drawing on Blake’s research on security, gangs, violence, politics and governance in Jamaica, ACLED’s analysts integrated his insights in their regional comparative analysis.

The publication can be found .

In his commentary, Blake analyzed Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ historic third-term electoral victory. He highlighted how reductions in crime, investments in infrastructure and debt stabilization contributed to the Jamaica Labour Party’s success. Blake also noted the challenges Holness faces, including modernizing health care, improving education, and sustaining public security. His analysis underscores the broader implications of Jamaica’s political trajectory for good governance, security and economic growth.

The publication can be found

The study examines a significant shift in security cooperation between Mexico and the Caribbean, moving from the U.S.-led “war on drugs” to a regionally driven “war on guns” aimed at curbing illicit arms trafficking. The research highlights CARICOM’s support for Mexico’s historic lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers, positioning it as a crucial step in challenging global power hierarchies through South-South security cooperation. By analyzing legal, political and strategic dimensions, the study provides new insights into the evolving nature of regional security partnerships among Latin American and Caribbean states and their attempts to remedy the deadly effects of high homicide rates related to the North-to-South flow of guns across their borders.

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. Focusing 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.

Blake has served as a consultant with  Jamaica’s Ministry of National Security on its violence prevention program, “Unite for Change.” He is also a guest columnist and political commentator with the Gleaner newspaper and Nationwide News Network radio station in Jamaica, contributing commentary pieces and analysis on Caribbean electoral politics, political economy, violence and organized crime.

Blake also provides expert country reports, analysis and affidavits to legal firms in the United States and the United Kingdom on immigration matters related to Jamaicans & other Caribbean nationals in deportation proceedings.

His ľĂľĂČČ areas are: Comparative Politics and Government; National Security, Politics of the Caribbean, Introduction to International Relations, Elon Core Curriculum and interdisciplinary courses which include The Black man in America. Blake’s research areas are: Organized Crime and urban violence in the Americas; Democracy and Mass participation in the U.S.; Social Justice and Race the U.S.; and Caribbean politics, governance and development.

The article, “Gangster’s Paradise? Culture and the cost of violence in Jamaica,” explores how a sub-culture of violence is gripping parts of the island triggering annual increases in gun crimes and homicides.

“Jamaica has a subculture of violence, one which is feeding destructive behavioural patterns of rampant murders, shootings, gun crimes, and acts of human destruction,” Blake writes in the column. “The mainstream culture is now being overtaken by an insidious set of mores and values that glorify and provides succour to violence. This subculture disfigures the Jamaican society, and if we continue to leave it unchecked, I fear it will rip the country apart.”

The full article can be found in the

Damion Blake, associate professor in political science and policy studies, was an invited speaker at the University of the West Indies’ Humanities in Action Virtual Seminar Series under the theme #BlackLivesMatter: The Historical Quest to Respect Black Bodies and Lives.

Blake, who also serves as Elon’s Faculty Fellow for Race, Ethnicity and Diversity, offered a presentation that examined the prospects for an ethical police force and policing within the context of racial disparities in police arrests and their use of excessive and deadly force.

Blake gave a virtual public lecture with a follow up question-and-answer session on the intersections of race, white supremacy, anti-black racism and policing in America. His presentation probed the question of whether an ethical police force and policing is possible within the context of America’s historical and current racial tensions.

Blake argued that an ethical model of policing in America is possible, provided that policemen and women across the country first engage in anti-racist introspection and training. Blake noted the current calls for police reform, such as revising the Broken Windows model of surveillance and criminalization of communities of color and defunding the police through re-investing state and federal funds toward preventative socio-economic initiatives on housing, health care and job opportunities for low-income minority communities.

Blake concluded that the societal and structural racist and biased ideologies that criminalize and de-humanize Black bodies in America must first be ‘un-learned’ and dissolved among the rank and file of men and women in police departments across the country before we can see changes in their use of excessive and deadly force at disproportionate higher rates against Black bodies than the rest of the population.

Damion Blake, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Policy Studies, recently published a co-authored article entitled, “.”

This research, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Global South Studies, examines how internal and external political, socioeconomic and cultural factors impacted the formation and evolution of the Jamaican state. The findings indicate that state-building in Anglo-Caribbean countries (such as Jamaica) is not linear, but rather oscillates across the stages of high, moderate and low levels of development.

Damion Blake, assistant professor in the Department of Political Science & Policy Studies, has published an article in the Journal of Ethnographic and Qualitative Research.

Blake’s article entitled, “Researching Violence: Conducting risky fieldwork in dangerous spaces across Latin America and the Caribbean examines the challenges researchers of violence face as they collect fieldwork data in Caribbean, South and Central American countries. He sampled 13 academics who conduct fieldwork on research topics related to organized crime, armed conflicts, drug trafficking and political violence. Blake included his fieldwork experiences on drug and political violence in Jamaica.

The findings identify the environmental, ethical, and identity (gender and race) challenges associated with conducting risky research the dangerous spaces across the Latin America and the Caribbean region. Blake’s paper outline some “pre- fieldwork” and “during fieldwork” strategies that can make qualitative fieldwork research safer for researchers and their participants.

Blake was invited to be a speaker where he conducted a workshop seminar entitled “Voice and Agency for Instructors Teaching Race in a Politically Charged Climate.”    

This research is a co-authored piece that tracks the causal association between the implementation of neoliberal Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPS) and the shift in the nature and scope of violence in Jamaica from the 1980s to the present.