tulio writes:
Crime also skyrocketed under Chavez despite whatever improvements he made for the poor.
The crime wave was extremely high for decades before Chavez even got in, especially in the 1980’s. Crime has been out of control in Venezuela for maybe 50 years now.
The most bizarre thing about this critique is that it actually blames a President for a crime wave. Now how on Earth could a government cause a crime wave? Can you show me how any government on Earth right now is actually causing a crime wave? It’s not even possible.
Take that argument to any criminologist. Tell him Chavez caused a crime wave in Venezuela, and he will cruelly laugh right in your face.
Crime is a sociological problem, which is why criminology is a branch of sociology. It is caused by various factors in societal, most of which the government has little or no control over.
Crime skyrocketed in the US in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Have you ever heard of one person saying Johnson, Nixon, Ford or Carter actually caused the crime explosion? How the Hell did they do that? How could they? How could a US government cause a crime wave anyway? Show me one crime wave in the US that was ever caused by the government.
Crime is very bad in Venezuela, but the Opposition is crying crocodile tears. It is not they who are being victimized by all this crime. There is little serious violent crime going on in the wealthy areas. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, vast slums popped up all over the outskirts of Caracas and other big cities. These slums were disastrous places to live as all slums are. It is here that almost all of the violent crime is occurring. In a word, the poor are slaughtering each other in their favelas and ramshackle neighborhoods. And why should the Venezuelan rich care about that? They don’t. In fact, it probably makes them happy.
Honduras is also experiencing a crime wave now, as is El Salvador and Guatemala and Mexico.
The Salvadoran crime wave has been ongoing over 25 years through various different governments with little change. How about if someone explains to me how these various Salvadoran governments caused all this crime.
Similarly, there has been wild crime via several regimes in Guatemala. Can someone explain to me how these different Guatemalan regimes all caused this crime wave?
Honduras has the worst crime on Earth right now. Have you ever heard anyone blame it on the government? Can someone tell me how these various Honduran governments are causing all this crime?
The Chavistas have done most of the things that a state can do in these circumstances. They put a lot more cops on the street I believe, and they undertook a major reform of the police. The police are part of the problem. In Venezuela, “police” and “criminal” mean the same thing. The cops are the criminals are the same people. Most of the cops are crooks themselves. A lot of the people committing all this crime are the Venezuelan police. They also have a reputation for extreme brutality ,and there have been efforts to re-educate them in that regard.
Venezuelan prisons are some of the worst Hellholes this side of the Styx River. In fact, they serve as an excellent example of the insane conservative attitude that if you only made prisons evil and horrific enough that no sane person would want to spend an hour there, this would be a great way to reduce the crime rate via the threat of being thrown into a Hellhole.
But Venezuela has some of the worst prisons on Earth, and this has been the case for a long time now. Clearly creating diabolical prisons doesn’t do much to lower the crime rate.
There has been a major effort underway to reform Venezuela’s prisons as the thinking is that these horrific prisons are actually causing a lot more crime than they are preventing, which is often the case in lands with horrible prisons.
My understanding is that all of these governments, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Venezuela, have done about all they can do to stop these crime waves, but there is only so much the state can do short of putting in totalitarianism. I would like for someone to tell me how Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras could end their crime waves. Anyone?
I would like the Chavista critics to tell me a few things.
- How did Chavez cause this crime wave? Please explain in detail. I am very curious about this as I am dumbfounded about how governments cause crime waves.
- How exactly are the Chavistas supposed to deal with this crime wave? What sort of steps should they be taking that they are not doing? I am not aware of any.
- How exactly was the Venezuelan opposition going to end this crime wave? They talked it up a lot during the election campaign, but they were short on details. Actually they had no details whatsoever. Please explain what the Opposition would do differently to fight this crime wave and how they would be better at it than the Chavistas.
- Cities and states that are run by both Chavistas and the opposition equally have horrible crime. Explain how this makes sense, that governors and mayors of both the Chavistas and the opposition have been unable to dent the crime wave.
