The Devil's Excrement

In Spanish here

When Alek Boyd sent me the link for the INE report on crime this morning, I wished that I did not have to work, so I could read it and analyze it. It raises a number of questions about definitions, some of which are difficult to understand. For example, I am not sure how they define the number of total homicides, there seems to be two definitions.

But it is very clear from the report, who in Venezuela suffers the most from the rampant crime that Chavismo has refused to fight. You guessed it: The poor!

This is shown in the graph above. The purple line is the percentage of the population that is in each social strata according to the INE (National Institute for Statistics) report. The reddish line indicates the percentage of homicides that occurs in each strata. As you can see, the lowest strata of the population (5) represent 7.52% of the population, but nevertheless are the victims of 27.12% of all homicides. Similarly, those in the next lowest (4) strata, represent 34.02 of the population, but are the victims of 56.52% of all homicides.

In contrast those in levels 2 and 3 are best off, they are 43.04% and 13.7% of the population respectively, but only suffer from 12.4% and 1.91% of the homicides in the country. Those at the top don’t have it so good, they are 1.72% of the population, but are victims of 2.02% of  all homicides. This may indicate that those in what INE classifies as the top strata, either are victims of their own geography or victims of their life style, maybe showing off too much, driving fancy cars and the like.

But clearly, you don’t want to be in strata 4 or 5, which comprise 41.54% of the population, but are victims of 83.64% of all homicides in the country.

You definitely don’t want to be poor in Venezuela, but that is precisely where Chavez’ supporters are.

And who defends them from this?

For those that want to see it per  inhabitants in each strata, of course it is worse for the poorest (However, I think there is an additional normalization factor, the number of homicides is absolute, the population in each strata is not, the conversion factor seems to be 28.8 million/1.82 million (INE population in study)~52 times smaller, that is each number has to be divided by 52, :

This table is taken from an official document  from the National Institute for Statistics (page 67). As you can see, INE estimates there were 21,132 homicides in Venezuela in 2009, a horrifying figure, larger than the estimates that Andres Izarra laughed at in CNN, where he questioned the studies, the methodology and the seriousness of the numbers that were being given.

But beyond the homicides, note there were also 26,873 kidnappings, 9,205 cases of sexual abuse and between robbery and theft there were 1,916,625 crimes of those two types in Venezuela. Given that INE projects the population to be today 28,833,845, the last number implies that in the last year alone, one out of every fifteen Venezuelans was robbed.

These are appaling numbers, but we are sure Izarrita is still laughing, that is what he gets paid to do.

Thanks AB!