LGBT Rights in Jamaica - Laws

Laws

The Offences Against the Person Act (OAPA) provides as follows:

Section 76. Unnatural crime. Whosoever shall be convicted of the abominable crime of buggery ... shall be liable to be imprisoned and kept to hard labour for a term not exceeding ten years.

Section 77. Attempt. Whosoever shall attempt to commit the said abominable crime, or shall be guilty of any assault with intent to commit the same, or of any indecent assault upon any male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convicted thereof, shall be liable to be imprisoned for a term not exceeding seven years, with or without hard labour.

Section 79. Outrages on decency. Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or is a party to the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convicted thereof shall be liable at the discretion of the court to be imprisoned for a term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.

"Gross indecency" is not defined by the OAPA but has been interpreted as "referring to any kind of physical intimacy".

Read more about this topic:  LGBT Rights In Jamaica

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