http://www.trinidadexpress.com
Posted on 11/02/2003 9:29:19 AM PST by Pikamax
http://www.trinidadexpress.com
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Date: |
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November 02, 2003 |
| Category: | News |
The following crime figures help place Trinidad and Tobago’s crime problem in context.
Based on a per capita murder rate for every 100,000 people Venezuela (population—24.6 million) has a rate of about 13.2; Mexico (population —104.9 million) has a rate of 13; Lebanon (population—3.7 million) has a rate of 13 and Sri Lanka (population—19.7 million) has a rate of 12 per 100,000.
New York, with a population of eight million, has a per capita rate of 7.1 per 100,000, while Mexico City, with close to 18 million people, has a rate of 8.2 per 100,000. The US city of Los Angeles, which has been plagued with gang violence for years, has a per capita rate of 18 murders per 100,000. If there are 250 murders committed in Trinidad and Tobago this year then we could well end up above Los Angeles with a 19.2 per 100,000 figure.
Homicide rates in countries such as Indonesia and some of the former Soviet republics, places where political violence and terrorist attacks account for most of the murders, were all below 12 per 100,000 people.
Some of the safest countries in the world include Canada, where the murder rate is per 100,000 persons 1.8, Australia—1.9 per 100,000 and the United Kingdom with an average of 2.
•Sources for the figures presented in this story include: The Homicide Bureau of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service; The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook—url cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook; nation.master.com/graph-T/cri_mur_cap; iafrica.com; cnews.canoe.ca; infoplease.com; newsbbc.co.uk; newsmax.com. Information was also sourced from the BBC, CNN and Reuters.
By DARRYL HEERALAL
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO has a murder rate of 14.7 per 100,000 persons, placing it second to Jamaica in the region in murders and making us more homicidal than countries such as Lebanon, Mexico, Sri Lanka and the United States.
The local per capita murder rate also places Trinidad and Tobago above some of the more violent cities in the world, including Mexico City and New York.
Highest murder rates in the world were recorded for countries such as South Africa and Colombia, which had an average of 50 homicides for every 100,000 people over the past 22 months.
South Africa, with a population of 42.7 million, recorded 21,000 murders last year and about close to 20,000 for this year so far, while Colombia, with a population of 41.6 million, has recorded close to 24,000 murders this year.
As of October 31 there were 191 murders reported in Trinidad and Tobago and, based on CSO figures of a population of 1.3 million, there is one murder for every 6,806 persons in this country.
If current murder trends continue and projections are correct, with about 250 murders by the end of this year, the homicide rate per 100,000 persons will jump from 14.7 to 19.2, placing us even higher in the worldwide homicide rankings.
Since 2001, when there were 151 murders, the per capita rate has jumped from 11.6 to 14.7 per 100,000.
In 2002 there were 172 homicides reported, at a rate of 13.2 per 100,000, while the average homicide rate over the last 22 months was 13.9 per 100,000.
Prime Minister Patrick Manning has publicly admitted that Trinidad and Tobago has a very high murder rate and the government has instituted several measures in an attempt to stem the upsurge in homicides and other violent crimes.
In the six years between 1996 and 2001 there was a total of 662 murders while, over the last 22 months, 362 murders have been committed, slightly more than 50 per cent of the 1996-2001 figure.
And if homicide trends are maintained and 250 murders are committed by year’s end, the 24-month period between 2002 and 2003 will have recorded 422 killings, 29 more than the rate between 1996 and 1999, when 393 murders were investigated by the police.
Police sources say close to 50 per cent of the murders in the past 22 months are gang-related and are a direct result of corruption and ghost gangs within the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP) and National Housing Authority housing refurbishment project and a fight among gangsters for the biggest share.
As was the case last year, close to 70 per cent of the 191 murders have been committed in the area between East Dry River and Arima.
Of the homicides committed along the East/West Corridor more than 75 per cent have been concentrated in the Laventille /Morvant/East Port of Spain districts and were gang-related.
The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom have all issued travel warnings to tourists about the increasing incidence of homicide and kidnapping for ransom in this country.
Based on data available on several websites on the Internet this country has a higher per capita murder rate than the United States, Venezuela, Lebanon, Sri Lanka and several Eastern European and former Soviet bloc nations.
According to a United Nations document using data from 2000, when there were 118 murders in Trinidad and Tobago at a rate of nine per 100,000 people, this country placed among the top 15 nations which included countries like Colombia, Russia, Jamaica, Mexico, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Lebanon and several former Russian republics including Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
The website, nation. master.com/graph-T/cri_mur_cap, referred to the Seventh UN Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of the Criminal Justice System and—while Trinidad and Tobago was not named in the document—- an examination of the per capita murder rates cited shows this country was in the top 15 in 2000.
The current rate of 14.7 murders per 100,000, when compared with the per capita rate in some of the nations surveyed by the UN, puts Trinidad and Tobago ahead of some of the former Soviet republics, Sri Lanka and Lebanon.
In the English-speaking Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago ranks behind Jamaica which had a murder rate of 44 for every 100,000 people last year, and 32 for this year so far.
With over 16,000 murders last year and close to 15,000 for this year to date, the US has had a 100,000 per capita average of between five and seven murders over the last two years, based on a population size of 290.3 million.
NYC is ranked 208 (not a typo) in violent crime, among US cities.
The few people I've met from T&T are ~90 IQ.
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