Tarik Weekes

TARIK WEEKES- Since 2012, he has been the Founding Principal Investigator for a Gang Observatory and Mapping Project (GOMP). This ongoing initiative was the first to be undertaken in Jamaica using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and has informed much of his understanding of criminal gangs and the embeddedness of organized crime. For the last 15 years, Weekes has been involved in crime and violence prevention and behavior change research initiatives in Jamaica, St. Lucia, Dominica, Grenada, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Since 2017, he has worked alongside academic researchers in El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela and Guatemala and the United Kingdom to apply methodologies for i) a better understanding of how safer spaces are constructed ii) to monitor fatal police shootings of civilians.

Weekes was a co-author in justice and security for the evaluation of European Union Budget Support to Jamaica 2008-2021, a co-author of Jamaica’s Citizen Security Plan (2019) and has been a member of the team conducting and authoring a national security threat assessment for the Turks and Caicos Islands government. He has served as a member of the Caribbean Expert Group contributing to the Global Index on Organized Crime (2021,2023) and the Technical Working Group co-chaired by the Jamaica Constabulary Force, Ministry of National Security and Major Organized Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency,  developing Jamaica’s national counter organized crime strategy with the support of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). He is also a member of the expert group on security priorities and public spending established by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research.