Survey Indicates Crime Is Up Sharply In Argentina

Crime appears to have risen sharply over the past year, according to a new study published last week by Torcuarto Di Tella University.

The study, which surveys households in 40 urban centers around the country, shows that 32.3% of these homes reported that at least one person living in that household was the victim of a crime within the past 12 months. That puts the university’s “victimization rate” up 20% from March 2008.

In 40% of the crimes reported a gun was used while in 63% of the cases at least two people were involved in perpetrating the crime.

Crimes were more common in March in larger urban areas such as Greater Buenos Aires, Greater Rosario and Greater Mendoza. Crime was also up in cities like Buenos Aires, though the increase was less dramatic. Some 30.7% of homes in the City of Buenos Aires had at least one victim, compared with 33.3% in Greater Buenos Aires and 36.7% in the areas surrounding Cordoba, Mendoza, Rosario and Tucuman.

The most common kind of crime was violent theft (46%), followed by the theft of personal objects (24%). In 97.8% of the cases the crime was committed by male aggressors.  In 81.6% of the cases the victims did not suffer physical harm while in 13.3% they suffered only minor bruises. Victims were gravely injured just 5.1% of the time.

So, despite the bad news, the silver lining – if there is one - is that in the vast bulk of cases nobody was seriously injured.

Di Tella’s survey was conducted on 1,204 people via telephone.

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