Law and Order Index for Security in Latin America, Gallup Poll

by Jan Sonnenschein From Gallup World / Eight out of 10 countries with the highest homicide rates are located in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the region accounting for 36% of the world’s homicides in 2012, according to a United Nations report. Furthermore, the Americas have overtaken Africa — where index scores are only slightly higher — as the region with the most murders, largely because of a surge in organized crime.

Venezuela’s index score of 41 is the worst not only in the region, but also in the world. In 2013, just 19% of Venezuelan adults said they felt safe walking alone at night in the city or area where they live. Furthermore, just 26% of Venezuelans expressed confidence in the local police and 22% reported that money had been stolen from them or another household member in the last 12 months. The ongoing political and economic crisis in Venezuela has contributed to a surging murder rate, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. In 2012, Venezuela had the second-highest murder rate in the world after Honduras, at 53.7 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Nicaragua, Panama, and Chile have the highest index scores in the region, and each has seen sizable increases since 2009. The biggest jump was in Ecuador, where all three indicators (number of thefts, perceived security, and confidence in the police) improved considerably. Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa attributes his administration’s success in fighting crime to improving arms control, increasing the judiciary’s independence, and campaigns reinforcing efforts to capture the country’s most dangerous criminals.

THINKING OF MOVING TO ECUADOR – SAFETY AND SECURITY IN ECUADOR – READ THIS BOOK

INDEX CONSTRUCTION

The Law and Order Index incorporates three simple “Yes/No” questions that gauge respondents’ sense of personal security and the incidence of crime:

In the city or area where you live, do you have confidence in the local police force?

Do you feel safe walking alone at night in the city or area where you live?

Within the last 12 months, have you had money or property stolen from you or another household member?

Index scores are calculated at the individual record level. For each individual record, the following procedure applies: The three items are coded so that positive (or favorable) answers are scored a score of “1″ and all other answers (including don’t know and refused) are assigned a score of “0.” If a record has no answer for an item, then that item is not eligible for inclusion in the calculations. An individual record has an index calculated if it has two scores for two out of three items. A record’s final index score is the mean of valid items multiplied by 100. The final country-level index score is the mean of all individual records for which an index score was calculated. Country-level weights are applied to this calculation. The regional numbers are population-weighted in order to reflect the population size of each country within a region.

Data on these individual items are available in Gallup Analytics. For complete data sets or custom research from the more than 150 countries Gallup continually surveys, please contact us at: http://www.gallup.com/contactUs/default.aspx

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone and face-to-face interviews with approximately 1,000 adults in each country, aged 15 and older, conducted in 2009 and 2013. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error ranges from ±2.1 percentage points to ±5.6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The margin of error reflects the influence of data weighting. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

For more on this story go to: http://www.gallup.com/poll/175082/latin-america-scores-lowest-security.aspx

Read Article