Which Latin American Countries Got Safer in 2017?

The region is still the world’s most murderous, but some countries saw improvement. As in previous years, many Latin American and Caribbean countries are still contending with disproportionately high levels of crime and violence. The five countries registering the highest homicide rates internationally in 2017 are all located there, including El Salvador, Honduras, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Venezuela. That said, even some of these countries and cities managed to make a sizeable dent in their murder problem. El Salvador, for example, dropped its homicide rates by 34 percent between 2016 and 2017. The current national homicide rate of 60 per 100,000 still places it at the top of the global ranking, but it is almost half of the 2015 rate of 103 per 100,000. The drop comes after years of investment in police training, criminal justice reform and investments in violence prevention.

Read more about how other countries in the region have managed to drop homicide rates