Subscribe via E-Mail

Get all of our news delivered fresh to your inbox every morning! Just tell us your name and where to send it using the form below.

PS – We hate spam too. We don’t sell or share our list with anyone, and we never send commercial email.




luxe
Friday, January 29th, 2016  |  USD: Buy 531.29 / Sell 543.92
20 years

From rape and murder to robbery, more than 90 percent of crimes in Costa Rica go unpunished

Email this page

November 30th, 2015 (ICR News) Criminals in Costa Rica continue to enjoy more impunity for their crimes each year, according to the latest annual study that has come to be dubbed the Impunómetro (Impunity Meter), published by Jurisis, a consulting subsidiary of a law firm founded by former Minister of Public Security, Juan Diego Castro.

 

The Impunómetro uses reported crime figures from the Ministry of Public Security (MSP) for 2014 to determine what percentage of those crimes went unpunished as of the end of 2015, and the figures are startling.

 

A total of 170,979 criminal complaints of all types were filed in Costa Rica in 2014.  Of the total, just 8 percent – or 13,678 – of complaints have so far ended in a criminal conviction one year later.

 

In the case of intentional homicide, of 477 cases, only 199 have so far resulted in convictions, meaning 58.3 percent of cases remain unsolved.

 

Meanwhile 1,530 criminal complaints of rape (32.1 per 100,000 inhabitants) were reported in 2014.  A year later, only 11 percent of those cases have resulted in a conviction.

 

For its part, burglary and theft without force or violence goes almost completely unpunished.  Of 23,108 cases reported in 2014 (349 per 100,000 inhabitants), just 462, or 2 percent, have ended with a criminal conviction one year later.  The statistic may explain why, according to estimates, just 33 percent of home burglaries are even reported by victims to authorities.

 

The conviction rate for robbery (theft with the use of force and violence) didn’t fare much better.  Of 36,142 robbery complaints, only 6.7 percent have resulted in a conviction one year later.

 

If the robbery figures concern you, you should note that they are nothing new.  The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has since 2005 ranked Costa Rica as the second country in Latin America with the highest robbery figures per 100,000 inhabitants.  For comparison purposes, a combined total of 116.7 robberies, burglaries, and thefts are reported each day in Costa Rica, compared to 52.2 in Honduras, according to Castro.

 

And if you are a victim of fraud – of which there were 4,216 complaints filed last year, your chances of seeing the perpetrator behind bars is equally slim – just 2.9 percent of those cases have resulted in a conviction one year later.

 

The level of impunity for criminals in the country is no doubt responsible for the lack of confidence in the justice system amongst Costa Ricans, which at just 30 percent is one of the lowest in Latin America, according to the UNDP.

 

costa rica news

ATTENTION: If you are seeing this message,


Advertisement


Get our news delivered fresh to your inbox every morning.

Click here to subscribe to our email list. We hate spam too and never send commercial email.

Like us on Facebook and receive our news in your timeline

  • gc

    not a chance. totally false. no way that many criminals were convicted, sentenced and served. if it pays, do the crime.

    • richard schlinder

      Hi gc. Chicos have made crime a national sport.The trick is to not get caught which is in their favor.

      • duke ster

        Do you mean “Ticos” Richard?

        • richard schlinder

          My use of “Chico’s” infers teenagers.

          • mhogan

            Maybe we should call them “Ticocitos”. CR sure love the “itos”, “itas”

          • richard schlinder

            Mh. I try so hard to learn ticos expressions. They have colloquialisms just as we have in the states. I’ve heard them say ninos but they were referring to soccer players on the field.I’ve heard then call high school students chicos and also muchachos. The inference is they are young people. Ticos refers to adults or just men. They don’t say Puriscal,they say Puri especially the young people. You may have heard this one. “he walks on his elbows”. Ask your Tico friend what that means. Dialect can be challenging. Chao.

  • prdatki

    You did not mention the Politicians and Clergy who commit crimes and never get punished!!!!

  • Michael C

    These are shocking and disturbing statistics! And certainly would be missing from ANY tourism literature! And the government plans to release some of those who actually WERE sent to prison??

  • Ken Morris

    These kinds of data need to be taken with a grain of salt.

    Of the reported property crimes in the US, for example, less than a quarter of them result in arrests. Of those that result in arrests, not many end up with convictions. Prosecutors in the US are pretty good at getting convictions–I believe their conviction rate for property crimes is over 50%–but they actually don’t take the vast majority of cases to trial. Sometimes the defendant’s parole is revoked, other times the case ends with a plea bargain, and not infrequently the charges are dropped, either for lack of evidence or because a witness refuses to testify, etc. My understanding is that good prosecutors only take fewer than 10% of their cases to trial. I’m therefore not sure that the arrest-to-conviction rate would look much different in the US than it does in Costa Rica for property crimes.

    The situation is similar but not as pronounced for violent crimes in the US. With them, the US manages to make an arrest in over 40% of the cases, and at least when the prosecution is federal, those folks win convinctions in 75% of the cases they bring to trial. However, once again, they don’t bring a lot of the cases to try, for the reasons already mentioned.

    Now, the US may not be the gold standard of criminal convictions, but it does manage to incarcerate more people per capita than almost any other country (it might now have the highest global incarceration rate, though I’d have to check), and in fact by some estimates has convicted about 10,000 innocent people currently sitting behind bars. Since its arrest-to-conviction rate isn’t much, or perhaps any higher than Costa Rica’s, jumping to the conclusion that Costa Rica is slack at getting convictions may not be warranted.

    Also, consider that the data in this article only include arrests made in one year that resulted in convictions by the next year. Yeah, I realize that Costa Rica’s court system can be seriously slow, but in a major case in which the defendant has strong legal representation in the US, I’m not sure that we could expect a resolution of the case this quickly in the US either.

    Can Costa Rica do better? Of course it can. However, these data don’t highlight much in the way of unique national deficiencies. Even with vigorous policing, crackerjack prosecutors, long sentences, and the death penality, the US doesn’t do a markedly better job.

    Bottom line is that wherever you go with a functioning rule of law, you probably won’t find an overall one-year conviction rate much higher than Costa Rica’s 8%. Maybe that could be doubled–possibly tripled–but even at an ambitious tripling, over three out of four of the bad guys are going to get away with their crimes.

    Accordingly, most criminologists say, and I will repeat it, that by the time you put your faith in the cops and the courts to stop crime, you’ve already lost the battle. It’s just a statistical fact that countering crime via prevention strategies is far more effective than combating it with enforcement strategies. True, we can debate forever which prevention strategies are effective versus which are a waste, but this is another subject. There can be no debate though over the reality that once you start relying upon enforcement rather than prevention strategies, you’re playing a game in which the odds strongly favor the criminals.

    • http://insidecostarica.com/ Timothy Williams

      Ken, just to be clear – these are *reported crimes* by victims (not arrests) versus eventual convictions for those crimes (one year later), NOT arrests versus convictions (though obviously in many of the reported crimes there may have been arrests that indeed never led to convictions). However the data actually shows that in the vast majority of these (the property crimes especially) no arrest is ever made, let alone the bringing of charges or a conviction. I just wanted to clarify though that the numbers in this story are reported crimes (by victims, except of course in the case of homicides, in which case the ‘victim’ role is assigned to the state for most intents and purposes) vs any conviction one year later for the crime; not arrests from last year that led to conviction one year later. This may support or go against your hypothesis above, depending upon how one looks at it. I hope I am making sense here, I have had a long last few days.

      • Ken Morris

        Yeah, I caught my mistaken usage of arrest-to-conviction rate before I read your comment, and was already editing when you posted. It does of course make a huge statistical difference whether we start with reported crimes or arrests, but I was working with the right numbers, just used the wrong words.

        Also, as already mentioned, it’s the same in the US that property crimes rarely even result in arrests, much less convictions. (Although instead of property crimes I’m using data on nonviolent crimes, on the assumption that the categories are essentially the same.) Fewer than one in four reported nonviolent crimes in the US result in arrests, and even if all were prosecuted (and the majority aren’t) the US wouldn’t quite reach a reported-to-conviction rate of 15%. Given the failure to prosecute (although revoking parole may be as good as a conviction) I’d be surprised if the US has a reported-to-conviction rate for nonviolent crimes of 5%. Whatever the exact number, it’s pretty low.

        Thanks for your eagle editorial eye.

        • http://insidecostarica.com/ Timothy Williams

          I figured as much, that you just mixed your words, Ken. But you know me by now, I feel an incessant need to clarify such things, and indeed the correct statement would seem to further bolster your comparison, though I haven’t fact-checked your stats on the US (nor do I intend to this evening, but might be interesting for a future article).

          • Ken Morris

            You’re right about the clarity, of course, and thanks again.

            If you feel like checking the data for yourself, by all means do. You may even find some of my numbers somewhat off, although I doubt by a lot. (The general patterns are common knowledge.) However, I advise you to have a lot of time on your hands before you do. The difficulty is that the data aren’t usually gathered from reported crimes to convictions, especially the next year. There are data on reported crimes, the “clearance rate” (meaning I think the number of reported crimes that result in arrests), and the conviction rate (usually I think meaning the win rate after trials). There seems to be a huge gap in the data between the clearance and the conviction rates, since I don’t believe that most crimes that are cleared go to trial.

            Regarding this gap, I just remember an election for district attorney in the US where the opponent accused the incumbent of only convicting something less than 10% of his cases. This played well with the public, but a lawyer explained to me that this is exactly what you want your district attorney to do, namely resolve most cases without wasting the taxpayers’ money on trials, and that includes not trying cases you probably can’t win. But to my knowledge, these kinds of data on prosecutors aren’t generally collected or reported.

            This difficulty in finding data comparable to those used by this Impunómetro outfit to me raises the more serious journalistic question, which is who these guys are and what their agenda is. Clearly the data they chose to compile are not only uncoventional but also nearly the most extreme way the data could be presented to make Costa Rica’s criminal justice system look bad. (The only more extreme method would be to compare an estimate of all crimes, whether reported or not, with the conviction rates.) Since it is both unconventional and extreme, I have to suspect that its agenda is to make the country look bad. Meanwhile, somebody is paying this outfit to do this. Who is paying it and why?

            Of course, for some crazy reason Costa Rica may prefer to collect its data in this unconventional way. If so though, the relevant comparisons would either be with other countries that collect their data in this unconventional way or with similar data collected about Costa Rica in the past (to identify trends).

            However, just collected this way and then presented without comparisons would make almost every country look bad. Could that be the intent?

  • Mark Nelson

    A grain of salt? How about a block of salt?

  • Yeims

    Could there be any possible correlation with the very high crime rates across the board, and the cohort of repeated crimes?

    • richard schlinder

      There was a rash of robberies in our area in Florida. It seemed like everybody was a robber. It turned out it was only three teenagers working together causing all the havock.

    • I love CR

      Unemployment in the world is the issue.

      • Andrew

        This is true, Ben.
        If you had a job, you would spend less time in ICR.
        If you had a job, you could change your posting name again!
        I sort of like: “Employed in CR.”
        Kind of has a nice ring to it!
        Good luck with your next name, Ben.

        • I love CR

          I am not this Ben who you are stalking. Get help before your obession with Ben starts to take over your life. Do not make this a police matter.

          • I love CR

            Cyberbullying and cyberstalking, by their nature, define adversarial relationships. One person (or group), the provocateur, is exerting a view or opinion that the other person (or group), the target, finds offensive, hurtful, or damaging in some way. In a general sense, it would seem simple to legislate this type of behavior; slander and libel laws exist to tackle these situations. However, just as with slander and libel, it is important to balance the protection of freedom of speech of both parties with the need for protection of the target.

          • Andrew

            Not sure what an “obession” is, Ben, but you’re right, you definitely aren’t worth any more of my time.
            Have a nice day, Ben.
            Bye bye……..

  • richard schlinder

    Don’t tell me I need not to carry protection. In any country.

    • I love CR

      Go back to US if you don’t like CR

      • richard schlinder

        Please ,don’t insult me. I love Costa Rica.I have been here ten years and it’s great.
        What has that got to do with carrying protection? I did the same when I lived in Florida and Wisconsin.

        • I love CR

          If Costa Rica is your home you should say the good things about living in a country with no army and good health care and good education. The police in Costa Rica do a good job with the budget they have. Be proud to live in Costa Rica. No place is perfect in the world. God Bless Costa Rica.

          • richard schlinder

            We all have our biases. You are an optimist and there is nothing wrong with that. I am a realist and try to see and understand the whole picture and there i nothing wrong with that. Gringos come down and they want to visit the beach. I tell them to lock their car and don’t leave your backpack unattended. You see,this is not being negative.It is only a precaution so their experience here came have a positive effect.

          • I love CR

            Costa Rica is great. Never had any problems in Costa Rica or anywhere in Central America. Be happy that you live in Costa Rica.

        • I love CR

          Gun’s are not what Costa Rica needs. Why do US people always love gun’s so much? Glad to see you like Costa Rica. Trust the police they try hard to help.

      • Andrew

        Let’s all give a warm Inside Costa Rica “welcome back” to Ben/Truth Teller/Joe/I love CR
        A daily reader will remember that Ben/Truth Teller/Joe/I love CR promised to leave ICR when he was discovered to be lying about his military service in Iraq. He “re-appeared” a couple hours later as “Truth Teller” to again claim military service in Iraq.
        The editor of this publication then offered Ben/Truth Teller/Joe/I love CR two million colonies to prove that he had served in Iraq.
        What Tico crackhead living in his mom’s house would turn down an easy 2 million C?
        Welcome back Ben/TT/Joe/ILCR.
        The place hasn’t been the same without your anti-American rhetoric. (Please note the proper use of apostrophe in “hasn’t”)

        • http://insidecostarica.com/ Timothy Williams

          Side note, we never banned Ben from the comments, nor hindered his commenting account, nor did we ever tell him that he wasn’t welcome to continue commenting here. I don’t know if this is the same person or not, just felt I should say that. In the last three years we have only banned 2 commenters, and neither one of them was Ben. It takes a lot to get outright banned here: we believe in free speech to the core.

        • http://insidecostarica.com/ Timothy Williams

          At any rate, let’s not encourage nonsense in our comment section; I kindly ask that all commenters do their best to stick to the subject matter of the story that appears above the comments, that’s all.

        • I love CR

          Who is Ben? Stop with your Racist comments about Costa Rica and the people of Central America.

          • Andrew

            LOL.
            OK Ben.
            Bye bye.
            Gun’s LOL

          • I love CR

            You really hate this guy Ben. Learn to be happy. I am not Ben. Andrew you need to relax and stop stalking this guy Ben.

          • Andrew

            OK, Ben.
            But I’m's not’s stalking’s you’s.
            I promise’s you’s that’s.
            Have’s a great’s day, Ben.

      • Captmhd

        Are you saying that you think that we should like those statistics! That sounds like Ben, idiot!

Popular Content