Country profile - JAM

Corruption in Jamaica

6 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 62.5 (2022).

Grand: 37.9 Petty: 80.5 Latest observed: 2019

Jamaica: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Jamaica is Kingston, St Andrew (60/100), and the least corrupt is St Ann, St Catherine (64.3/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 6 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Jamaica's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 62.5/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Kingston, St Andrew (SCI 60/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: St Ann, St Catherine (SCI 64.3/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 37.9/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 80.5/100 (last directly observed in 2019).
  • Trend: Jamaica's SCI moved from 54.7/100 (1995) to 62.5/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 6 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Jamaica compares: SCD vs. the CPI and World Bank

The Subnational Corruption Index is scored 0–100 on the same orientation as Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (higher = cleaner). The difference: the CPI and the World Bank measure the perceptions of experts and business executives and report one national number, while the SCI is built from what ordinary households perceive and experience — and it breaks Jamaica into 6 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 62.5 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 44 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption 0 ≈ −2.5 to 2.5 Aggregated expert sources

Most recent year — SCI 2022, CPI 2022, CCI 2022. The SCD also publishes region-anchored SUB-CPI and SUB-CCI series so the CPI and World Bank measures can be read at the regional level.

SCI trajectory - 1995-2022

Country-level mean of the Subnational Corruption Index, averaged across all 6 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

65 47 1995 2022

Source: SCD v1.0 (Comprehensive Dataset). Years where the panel was filled by inter/extrapolation are included in the country mean.

Regions (6)

Each row is a sub-national region with its latest SCI score. Click into any row for the region's full time series.

# Region GDL code Years Latest SCI
1 Kingston, St Andrew JAMr101 1995-2022 60
2 Trelawny, St Elizabeth JAMr104 1995-2022 61.1
3 St Thomas, Portland, St Mary JAMr102 1995-2022 62.3
4 St James, Hanover, Westmoreland JAMr105 1995-2022 63.7
5 Manchester, Clarendon JAMr106 1995-2022 63.8
6 St Ann, St Catherine JAMr103 1995-2022 64.3

Download Jamaica

Per-country panel slice in CSV format. Columns: iso, country, gdl, region, year, sci. Direct dataset citations should reference the Figshare deposit (see How to cite).

Download JAM.csv