Thursday 3 January 2008

Murder in Venezuela















Murder per 100000 inhabitants per year


On January 3rd, Hugo Chavez announced a new cabinet. He also declared he would soon explain (again) how he was going to combat crime.

I did this graph using the stats from Seguridad Ciudadana. and the different sources present in the Wikipedia article.

You can see the development of the murder rate in Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, France and the United States. Statistics for most of Western Europe are similar to those of France.

I have very strong doubts about the latest figures for Venezuela: Jesse Chacon is said to have ordered the redefinition of what a murder as minister of (Des-)Information and then as minister of (In)Justice. Since 2003 many cases are considered "uncleared deaths" and not murders. Even the latest numbers about murders in the country do not correspond with this.

The Venezuelan government stopped sending statistics about murders to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in 2003. Here you can check the reports and the missing data for Venezuela after that date.

I will write more on this issue about statistics massage later here.
The development of crime has been more or less similar in most countries in Latin America, with some exceptions like Guatemala. So, unlike what the extreme left says, crime is specially out of control in Venezuela since 1999.

Here you can see how many ministers we have had in charge of 'solving crime':



Chavez's Ministers of Justice

Started

Remarks


Ignacio Arcaya



1999


Luis Miquelena


2000


Luis Alfonso Dávila


2000


Diosdado Cabello


2002


Lucas Rincón Romero


2003


Jesse Chacón


2004


Pedro Carreno


2007


Ramón Rodríguez Chacín


2008-?


I will be adding the results for crime counts according to different sources and also a list of the ministers declarations on crime.




Here you have an article about the conflicting statistics on murder in Venezuela (both sides are shown)


Who is right? Why don't the political actors dare to debate all their numbers live, for all Venezuelans to see and judge? Why do we always have to have a dialog of the deaf?






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