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Crime in Venezuela

Crime in Venezuela is widespread, with violent crimes such as murder and kidnapping increasing for several years. In 2014, the United Nations attributed crime to the poor political and economic environment in the country—which, at the time, had the second highest murder rate in the world.[1][2][3][4] Rates of crime rapidly began to increase during the presidency of Hugo Chávez due to the institutional instability of his Bolivarian government, underfunding of police resources, and severe inequality.[5] Chávez's government sought a cultural hegemony by promoting class conflict and social fragmentation, which in turn encouraged "criminal gangs to kill, kidnap, rob and extort".[6] Upon Chávez's death in 2013, Venezuela was ranked the most insecure nation in the world by Gallup.[1]

Crime has also continued to increase under Chávez's successor, President Nicolás Maduro, who continued Chávez's policies that disrupted Venezuela's socioeconomic status.[7][8][9][10] By 2015, crime, which was often the topic Venezuelans worried about the most according to polls, was the second largest concern compared to shortages in Venezuela.[11] Crimes related to shortages and hunger increased shortly after with growing incidents of looting occurring throughout the country.[4][12] Most crime in Venezuela remains unpunished according to Venezuela's Prosecutor General's Office, as 98% of crimes in Venezuela do not result in prosecution.[13][14]

In spite of significant socioeconomic problems, the murder rate in Venezuela decreased between 2017 and 2020. Venezuela's murder rate decreased from 92 per 100,000 in 2016 to 81.4 in 2018, according to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory (OVV), due in part to criminals joining millions of other Venezuelans in fleeing the country.[15] The murder rate declined even further to 60.3 in 2019.[16]

  1. ^ a b Sonnenschein, Jan (19 August 2014). "Latin America Scores Lowest on Security". Gallup. Retrieved 22 August 2014.
  2. ^ "Venezuela es el país más inseguro del mundo, según un estudio". El Espectador (in Spanish). El Espectador. 21 August 2014. Retrieved 22 August 2014.
  3. ^ "Venezuela Country Specific Information". United States Department of State. Archived from the original on 11 January 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2014.
  4. ^ a b "With 28,479 killings, Venezuela takes second spot on world murder ranking". El País. 29 December 2016. Retrieved 31 December 2016.
  5. ^ Briceño-León, Roberto (December 2012). "Tres fases de la violencia homicida en Venezuela" [Three phases of homicidal violence in Venezuela]. Ciência & Saúde Coletiva (in Spanish). 17 (12): 3233–3242. doi:10.1590/S1413-81232012001200008. PMID 23175399.
  6. ^ Werlau, Maria C. (2014). "VENEZUELA'S CRIMINAL GANGS: Warriors of Cultural Revolution". World Affairs. 177 (2): 90–96. JSTOR 43556207.
  7. ^ Kevin Voigt (6 March 2013). "Chavez leaves Venezuelan economy more equal, less stable". CNN. Retrieved 6 March 2013.
  8. ^ Corrales, Javier (7 March 2013). "The House That Chavez Built". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 6 February 2015.
  9. ^ Siegel, Robert (25 December 2014). "For Venezuela, Drop In Global Oil Prices Could Be Catastrophic". NPR. Retrieved 4 January 2015.
  10. ^ Scharfenberg, Ewald (1 February 2015). "Volver a ser pobre en Venezuela" (in Spanish). El Pais. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  11. ^ Pardo, Daniel (27 May 2015). "Why Venezuelans worry more about food than crime". BBC News. Retrieved 31 December 2016.
  12. ^ Oré, Diego (6 August 2015). "Looting and violence on the rise in Venezuela supermarkets". Reuters. Retrieved 7 August 2015.
  13. ^ Camacho, Carlos (4 June 2015). "On Venezuela's highways, a disabled truck increasingly means a looted truck". Fox News. Retrieved 5 June 2015.
  14. ^ Finnegan, William (14 November 2016). "Venezuela, A Failing State". The New Yorker. Retrieved 7 January 2017.
  15. ^ "Venezuela murder rate dips, partly due to migration: monitoring group". Reuters. 27 December 2018. Retrieved 10 April 2019.
  16. ^ "Venezuela, otra vez el país más peligroso de América Latina: registró 16.506 muertes violentas en 2019". Infobae (in European Spanish). 27 December 2019. Retrieved 27 December 2019.

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الجريمة في فنزويلا Arabic Crimen en Venezuela Spanish Venezuelan rikollisuus Finnish

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