Quote:
Security minister asserts that crime is going down
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Arias administration is pointing to a decrease in the number of 2009 murders and in fewer home invasions and car thefts as an achievement.
The statistics came Monday from Janina del Vecchio, the minister of security, who gave the annual summary in the presence of President Óscar Arias Sánchez. She has been criticized for being a political choice with little background in law enforcement.
She said the numbers came from the Judicial Investigating Organization and were based on reports from January through November. Robberies in San José were down 4.9 percent and home invasions were down 8.8 percent, she said.
Ms. del Vecchio credited among other factors the success of the Tribunales de Flagrancia that have been instituted by the Poder Judicial. Criminals caught in the acts or nearly so sometimes are tried and sentenced within hours. The Poder Judicial is trying to put the concept into effect nationwide.
The Fuerza Pública and its dependency have confiscated 92,974 kilos of cocaine since the start of the Arias administration in May 2006, the agency said.
The security ministry conducted three sweeps of Limón province in 2009 which resulted in arrests and confiscation of weapons and drugs. The ministry credits these sweeps for reducing the murders there by 23 percent.
There are 40,000 more policemen on the force now. This was a campaign promise by Arias, and the budget of the ministry has gone from 62 billion colons to 124 billion proposed for 2010, about $219 million.
In addition, the administration has raised police base wages some 25 percent.
This is the last full year of the Arias administration. He leaves office in May. He is known to be troubled by the public perception of a rising crime rate.
(emphasis mine)
This is great news. I'm thinking of all the money I can save on taxis at night by walking through Barrio Cuba or Barrio Mexico. /sarcasm off
There is a famous quote, often attributed (dubiously) to Mark Twain that goes: "Lies, damned lies, and statistics." We certainly have some statistics here, alrighty!
I'm not going to do an in depth analysis of this article because it's not worth the effort. But it is worth a few observations. The Limon murder statistics... I guess I can believe that. It has a population of about 75,000. The murder rate in all of Costa Rica is around 10 per 100,000. Though Limon is likely higher, that would amount to about 8 murders per year following the national average. So if this year we had 6 murders, the rate would be down 25%. Obviously it doesn't take a major change to move the rate with such a small sample. So 2 less murders in Limon and we have a nice stat to throw at the clueless press.
Robberies are down, in theory, around 5%. Naturally, these are reported robberies, assuming the statistics are accurate. I know several Chicas who had their phones and purses stolen who didn't even bother going to the police. Why bother, was their attitude. Home invasions? These probably do get reported. It is possible the number is down, though there certainly have been quite a few reported in the media in the past year. Maybe Ms. del Veccio deserves credit here, maybe it's a statistical blip, maybe the numbers were cooked, I can't say.
The seemingly big cocaine confiscations are another bragging point, apparently. How much is 90 thousand kilos in terms of what passes through Costa Rica? Does anybody know? Does anybody even have a wild ass guess? I don't. If this is more than was confiscated in previous years, cool. Is it because more is being shipped through CR or is it because a higher pct. is being nabbed? Beats me. But it makes for positive PR.
And that's basically my point. It's PR. We have an election coming up. The ruling party wants to put the best face possible on things so they can get their candidates elected. I don't feel any safer now than I did a year ago, but then, I don't have any statistics to back that up.
http://www.usexpatcostarica.com/2009/12 ... -down.html
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