Costa Rica Rated Tops in Public Security
by Rod Hughes
The headline in the daily paper Al Dia said it all ¨”Believe it or not, we´re number one in security.” But, according to a poll of businessmen and multinationals conducted by the Miami weekly, The Latin Business Chronicle, Costa Rica is the safest place in Latin America for crime.
The disbelief implied in the headline comes on the heels of a major push by government to beef up laws and enforcement. (See previous blogs.) Most Costa Ricans will tell you that crime is the worst in living memory here, perhaps in history, as the mobilization of law enforcement, police training and special budgetary injections prove. Of course, the nation was hardly a lawless Wild West before the crime figures turned bad…
Wisely, government officials, while pleasantly surprised, are taking the rating as encouragement, not an indication that the job is done. Vice President Laura Chinchilla, herself a former high police official, cautioned that simply to get a top rating is no excuse to “let our guard down since indicators of criminality are on the rise and we could get a bad rating later on.”
This is precisely the reason for the governmental push against crime and the comprehensive crime bill, currently stalled in the Legislative Assembly in the traffic jam backed up behind the CAFTA implementation bills. Judges, previously cushioned by being appointed, not elected, are also feeling public pressure to abandon their former “boys will be boys” attitude toward offenders and to get tough. One-time President Daniel Oduber once explained that the Costa Rican culture makes judges “reluctant to deprive their fellows of their liberty.”
Nor is Minister of Public Security Fernando Berrocal ready to rest on his oars. “Much remains to be done, everything is not rosy. But we’re putting effort in combatting narcotraffic and organized crime,” he said.
This country was not the only surprise in the survey. Chile and Uruguay trailed Costa Rica in the list. Chile was at the top last year, according to Latin Business Chronicle. The two biggest economies in Latin America, Brazil and Mexico, remain among the five most hazardous nations in the region. Haiti is at the bottom of the list, a rating explained by Latin American security expert Frank Holder this way: “(Haiti) continues to have civil and political disturbances, an extremely high level of homicides and other crimes.”
Latin Business Chronicle publisher Joachim Bamrud explained that the rating was built on “a data base of murders, crimes, thefts and robberies. The data is obtained from police, public and private institutions. This will help the country a great deal to attract foreign investments.”