Remaking Jamaica

Christopher Morris / VII for TIME

Jamaica's head of government, Prime Minister, Portia Simpson Miller. Portia Simpson Miller, is the leader of the governing People's National Party (PNP)

At the height of his criminal reign, Christopher "Dudus" Coke was more than a violent drug lord whose powerful street gang helped turn Jamaica into a murder capital. The President, as Coke was called, was the political don and de facto ruler of a chunk of inner-city Kingston, Jamaica's capital. When the government finally moved to arrest him and extradite him to the U.S. in 2010 on drug-trafficking charges, 76 people died in clashes between security forces and his army of supporters.

Coke was sentenced in June to 23 years in a...

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