By: Staff Writer
November 28, 2023
The Gallup Global Law and Order Report said that the Latin American and Caribbean region ranks the lowest in confidence with their local police force, even behind Sub-Saharan Africa.
The report said that: “Just over seven in 10 adults worldwide (72 percent) said in 2022 that they have confidence in their local police. The results vary significantly by region, from a low of 52 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean to a high of 84 percent in Southeast Asia.”
It also said: “For years, people in Latin America and the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa have been the least likely among all global regions to feel secure in their communities. This remains true today. However, the two regions are on opposite trajectories.
“After scoring higher than Latin America and the Caribbean from 2017 to 2019, sub-Saharan Africa has trailed that region on Gallup’s Law and Order Index for the past three consecutive years. As scores in Latin America and the Caribbean improved in 2022 and the score for sub-Saharan Africa stayed the same, the gap between them has only widened.”
Since the Gallup Global Law & Order Report began polling in 2015, the LAC has consistently ranked as the worst region in the world for perceptions of crime, until 2020, when sub-Saharan Africa replaced it.
Despite the positive trajectory for the LAC, there is still much to do when we consider all of the events sweeping Central America with the police crackdowns that has fuelled extra-judicial killings in El Salvador.
Conversely, reported by Insight Crime, On the other end of the scale is El Salvador, which was perceived as the safest country in Latin America by Gallup respondents. Whereas in 2017, 54% of Salvadorans reported gang presence in their neighborhood and one in 10 people said they knew someone who had been murdered, the majority of respondents now feel safe in their country.
El Salvador’s ranking in the Gallup index began to rise in 2019, the year that Nayib Bukele was elected president. Building on past governments’ mano dura (iron fist) approach, he has taken an extreme hard line against gangs like the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) and the 18th Street Gang (Barrio 18) that once terrorized the country.
In March 2022, Bukele implemented a state of emergency following a wave of killings carried out by gangs. The state of emergency expanded police powers and suspended basic rights. Under the state of emergency, which has since been extended for 20 consecutive months, the government has imprisoned more than 72,000 people, with reports of human rights abuses including arbitrary arrest, disappearances, and torture.
The report also highlighted Mexico and Venezuela for improvements in their overall scores, but failed to mention Haiti in their assessment, something which may be seen as a failing of the report. “In Latin America and the Caribbean, small year-over-year improvements in highly populated countries such as Mexico, Brazil and Argentina (all up two points) and large increases in countries such as Venezuela (up 11 points) helped nudge the region’s overall score higher in 2022.”