by Rod Hughes

The government has apparently given up trying to put a spin on the crime rate and invoked a high-level conference for tomorrow. President Oscar Arias has admitted that the incidence of crime in the country is real, not a perception fabricated by the press.

He is still standing behind his Minister of Public Security Fenando Berrocal, however. The President told the press that crime is the number one worry of Costa Ricans. The daily paper La Nacion noted, however, that the high cost of living tops the latest polls as the chief cause of worry.

The Arias Administration has increased the number of police and is making arrangements for further training but admitted that this is not enough. Moreover, a number of bills increasing penalties and raising some misdemeanors to the level of a crime are in congress. But they have been bumped down the list due to the rush to pass CAFTA implementation bills.

The crime rate, although not particularly alarming compared with many other countries, has increased markedly over the past two decades, from 135 per 1,000 population in 1990 to 205 in 2006. Arias pulled no punches about his view of this jump. “Gangs continue having their way in the plain view…of the people, society and government,” he said.

It has been in the robbery category that the greatest jump has occurred: an incredible 700%. Drug-related crimes are up 280%. And most chilling of all has been the number of households where someone has been a crime victim, rising from 20% in 1990 to 40% in 2004. Nor was Arias attempting to whitewash things. Crime, especially against tourists, has dropped and overall rate dropped slightly in 2007 but not enough to satisfy Arias.

But Minister of Justice Laura Chinchilla, an ex-cop herself, considers that the doubling of the physical violence rate is the most worrisome of all. Indeed, many Ticos over the age of 40 can remember when violent crime was rare and when the majority of police did not even carry firearms. Since then, crime rates have soared throughout the world but this is hardly consoling to a people accustomed to a quieter, kinder country.

Expected to attend the top-level conference are Chinchilla and Berrocal as well as Vice-Minister of the Presidency Jose Torres, Supreme Court Chief Justice Luis Paulino Mora, director of the judicial detective agency OIJ, Jorge Rojas, and the nation’s top prosecutor Francisco Dall’Anese. The latter has announced his resignation for early this year, considering that his agency is too understaffed and underfunded to accomplish its task adequately.