Costa Rica Travel Posts

Why Travelling in Costa Rica is Special – Low Crime Rate

By George Ellard ⋅ July 22, 2010 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

My best friend Pat (a big French Canadian lad) lives in Costa Rica. He told me when I went for my first visit to see him that because Costa Rican men are generally much smaller than Canadian men that he doesn’t get intimidated very easily. I guess size does matter after all. However I felt this same sense of ease and I am not certain it has to do with how big I was relative to other men in Costa Rica. It seemed more to do with my perceptions about Costa Rica and the feeling I got when speaking to locals. I got the impression that Costa Rican`s don’t like crime, in fact they seemed to despise it.

I find these types of feelings you have are based more on your observations of the general populace and thus if while you are traveling to Costa Rica and you don’t witness much in the way of crime (or what you think may be criminal) then that leaves an impression on you. I decided when I got back to Canada to look up crime rates in Costa Rica. Here is what I found:

According to the United Nations Seventh Annual Survey on Crime, crime recorded in police statistics shows the crime rate for the combined total of all Index crimes in Costa Rica to be 1208.2, per 100,000 inhabitants in 1999. This compares with 1529.75 for Japan (country with a low crime rate) and 4184.24 for USA (country with high crime rate).

Now I also found this a bit strange as well. Although I did not see or experience much related to crime I did encounter prostitution and cocaine use in Costa Rica which seemed fairly prevalent during my first visit. I realized soon afterwards that this impression was generated from spending 3 days in Jaco (a surfing town). Any Costa Rican or foreigner living in Costa Rica will tell you that Jaco is an exception to the rule. If you don’t believe them then read this May 2007 UN study where Costa Rica ranks last on the list of Central American countries in terms of cocaine use among adults (page 19): http://www.unodc.org/pdf/research/Central_America_Study_2007.pdf

The same study also shows Costa Rica ranking last in terms of Central Americans arrested for drug trafficking in the US (page 21); Third from last for estimated gang memberships (page 21); and by far the smallest shadow economy or black market/informal sector in relation to GDP (page 25);

Although the study claims that Costa Rica’s low crime can be related to its “longstanding democracy” and its “political stability”, I would argue that this is convenient when compared to other Central American countries. But when you stack up Costa Rica against other countries with longer standing democracy and political stability you find very much the same thing, very little crime. Others may argue that because Costa Rica is the richest of the Central American countries that this is ultimately why you have less crime. Fair enough, but the next country with the lowest crime level in Central America is bordering Nicaragua, which happens to be one of the poorest, if not the poorest (p. 30 of UNODC). I think maybe there is combination of cultural factors that can lead to both more development and while others that can lead to both development and less crime.

Perhaps one of the most startling statistics in the study is that ONLY 31% of Costa Ricans actually believe their government is winning the war on crime (p. 34). This then most likely indicates a perception amongst Costa Ricans that even though the crime rate is relatively small, what crime they do have is unacceptable to the general population and the government must thereby assist in providing solutions for this.

This then is what I would argue is why crime is low and nearly unnoticeable when you visit. As a sound piece of advice in closing: if you don’t like to witness drug trafficking, drug use or prostitution, then please stay away from Jaco… unless you`re an avid surfer you`ll thank me for it later!