Wednesday, January 02, 2008

...and Statistics

Interesting information concerning Venezuela.

The homicide rates are measured by the number of corpses that go through the morgue, but there is an additional category in public hospitals called “undetermined violent deaths. In 2004, there were 9962 homicides reported by the morgues, 2150 for “resisting the authorities” and 4298 “undetermined violent deaths”. This gives you 74 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, higher than Colombia’s 54, but that country is in the midst of a civil war.

--90,027 people have died violently since 1999 in Venezuela. This is more than the number that have died in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Iraq.

--Only 7% of homicides reach the point of someone receiving a sentence for it

--Of executions only 1.4% of the cases ends in a sentence

--The rate of homicides in jails is 20.6 per 1,000 inmates. In Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia combined; the rate is 0.6 per 1,000.

--There is an estimated 6 million weapons in Venezuela floating around, of which only 15,000 are registered.

and

Iraq’s and Venezuela’s populations are roughly comparable: 27.5 million versus 27.7 million. In the last three months, there have been 1498 civilian fatalities in Iraq. During this same time, roughly 3000 Venezuelans have been murdered.

For the last three months of 2007, a Venezuelan was twice as likely to lose his life to violence as an Iraqi.

See a blog associated with the online magazine, Salon and also check Gateway Pundit. Given that one site is noted for being on the left end of the political spectrum, and the other on the right, perhaps it is possible that these are not completely inaccurate statistics.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The murder rate in Venezuela has doubled since 1998. The source that Wikipedia cites is here. The source that Gateway Pundit uses- quoting a Venezuelan government official in the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal- gives the 2007 data- through November 30. It should be 36 instead of 33 per day, given that the murders are given only through November 30.

Anonymous said...

salon.com used to offer a blogging service/hosting/software for a cheap price per year. They have shut it down, but those in it have kept blogging. Anyone willing to pay the $40 or so yearly fee could open a blog. Thus, to suggest that there is a political view associated with them is superficial. As a matter of fact, the top blog these days is a belgian blog, number two is one on Astrology and the third one is on the war on drugs.