Historical chart and dataset showing Antigua and Barbuda crime rate per 100K population by year from 1990 to 2021.

Historical dataset showing Antigua and Barbuda crime rate per 100K population by year from 1990 to 2021.

91,4 (cases per 100,000 population) in 2018. "Robbery” means the theft of property from a person; overcoming resistance by force or threat of force. Where possible; the category “Robbery” should include muggings (bag-snatching) and theft with violence; but should exclude pick pocketing and extortion. (UN-CTS M3.5)

77,9 (cases per 100,000 population) in 2022. “Burglary” means gaining unauthorised access to a part of a building/dwelling or other premises; including by use of force; with the intent to steal goods (breaking and entering). “Burglary” should include; where possible; theft from a house; appartment or other dwelling place; factory; shop or office; from a military establishment; or by using false keys. It should exclude theft from a car; from a container; from a vending machine; from a parking meter and from fenced meadow/compound. (UN-CTS M4.6)

Brazil led the list with a total of 4,390 kidnapping cases in the latest available data. Ecuador followed with 1,246 occurrences in 2022. On the flip side, there was only three reported kidnapping in the Antigua and Barbuda during that year. Homicides, another recurrent problem in Latin America Among the region's prevalent offenses, intentional homicide emerged as one of the main concerns in the region. Nonetheless, the rates vary among the different countries. Brazil leads the ranking of the most number of homicides in Latin America, as well as being the most populated country by far. On the other hand, Jamaica holds the top position according to the homicide rate, reporting nearly 61 instances per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023. Nevertheless, even with these varying homicide rates across countries, four out of five of the world's most perilous urban centers are situated in Mexico, with Colima leading the pack at a 2024 homicide rate of 140 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Cost of violence in Central America Following criminal acts, the responsibility for addressing the consequences falls squarely on the government, causing government expenditure to surge, called the cost of violence. Notably, Panama is more severely impacted in Central America, with the economic cost of violence per inhabitant accounting for over 3,771 U.S. dollars in 2022. In terms of a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), El Salvador takes the first place with a value of 15 percent of their GDP.

Abstract

This research is an Indicator Survey conducted in Antigua and Barbuda between June and October 2011 as part of the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) Enterprise Survey 2010, an initiative of the World Bank. An Indicator Survey, which is similar to an Enterprise Survey, is implemented for smaller economies where the sampling strategies inherent in an Enterprise Survey are often not applicable due to the limited universe of firms.

In Antigua and Barbuda, data from 151 establishments was analyzed. Stratified random sampling was used to select the surveyed businesses.

The objective of the survey is to obtain feedback from enterprises on the state of the private sector as well as to help in building a panel of enterprise data that will make it possible to track changes in the business environment over time, thus allowing, for example, impact assessments of reforms. Through face-to-face interviews with firms in the manufacturing and services sectors, the survey assesses the constraints to private sector growth and creates statistically significant business environment indicators that are comparable across countries.

Questionnaire topics include firm characteristics, gender participation, access to finance, annual sales, costs of inputs/labor, workforce composition, bribery, licensing, infrastructure, trade, crime, competition, land and permits, taxation, informality, business-government relations, innovation and technology, and performance measures.

Geographic coverage

National

Analysis unit

The primary sampling unit of the study is an establishment. An establishment is a physical location where business is carried out and where industrial operations take place or services are provided. A firm may be composed of one or more establishments. For example, a brewery may have several bottling plants and several establishments for distribution. For the purposes of this survey an establishment must make its own financial decisions and have its own financial statements separate from those of the firm. An establishment must also have its own management and control over its payroll.

Universe

The whole population, or the universe, covered in the Enterprise Surveys is the non-agricultural economy. It comprises: all manufacturing sectors according to the ISIC Revision 3.1 group classification (group D), construction sector (group F), services sector (groups G and H), and transport, storage, and communications sector (group I). Note that this population definition excludes the following sectors: financial intermediation (group J), real estate and renting activities (group K, except sub-sector 72, IT, which was added to the population under study), and all public or utilities sectors.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The study was conducted using stratified random sampling. Three levels of stratification were used in the sample: firm sector, firm size, and geographic region.

Industry stratification for the Indicator Surveys is designed to obtain 75 interviews in manufacturing and 75 interviews in service sectors. Frequently, due to the size of the manufacturing sector, less than the full 75 interviews are achieved.

Size stratification was defined following the standardized definition for the Enterprise Surveys: small (5 to 19 employees), medium (20 to 99 employees), and large (more than 99 employees). For stratification purposes, the number of employees was defined on the basis of reported permanent full-time workers. This seems to be an appropriate definition of the labor force since seasonal/casual/part-time employment is not a common practice, except in the sectors of construction and agriculture.

In Antigua and Barbuda, due to the size of the sample target, the entire country was treated as one geographical location.

The sample frame for Antigua and Barbuda was produced from the following collection of sources: TradeBoss.com, GMDU.net, Manta.com, the Antigua and Barbuda Hotel guide, the Business Directory of Antigua and Barbuda, The Antigua and Barbuda Web Directory, Antigua and Barbuda Accommodations, the Antigua and Barbuda Yellow Pages, CaribSeek.com, AntiguaNice, and the Caribbean Yellow pages.

The sample frame was then used for the selection of a sample with the aim of obtaining interviews with 150 establishments with five or more employees.

The quality of the frame was assessed at the outset of the project through visits to a random subset of firms and local contractor knowledge. The sample frame was not immune from the typical problems found in establishment surveys: positive rates of non-eligibility, repetition, non-existent units, etc. In addition, the sample frame contains no telephone/fax numbers so the local contractor had to screen the contacts by visiting them. Due to response rate and ineligibility issues, additional sample had to be extracted by the World Bank in order to obtain enough eligible contacts and meet the sample targets.

Given the impact that non-eligible units included in the sample universe may have on the results, adjustments may be needed when computing the appropriate weights for individual observations. The percentage of confirmed non-eligible units as a proportion of the total number of sampled establishments contacted for the survey was 9.1% (28 out of 309).

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The current survey instruments are available: - Services Questionnaire; - Manufacturing Questionnaire; - Screener Questionnaire.

The Services Questionnaire is administered to the establishments in the services sector. The Manufacturing Questionnaire is built upon the Services Questionnaire and adds specific questions relevant to manufacturing.

The survey topics include firm characteristics, gender participation, access to finance, annual sales, costs of inputs/labor, workforce composition, bribery, licensing, infrastructure, trade, crime, competition, capacity utilization, land and permits, taxation, informality, business-government relations, innovation and technology, and performance measures. Over 90% of the questions objectively ascertain characteristics of a country's business environment. The remaining questions assess the survey respondents' opinions on what are the obstacles to firm growth and performance.

Cleaning operations

Data entry and quality controls are implemented by the contractor and data is delivered to the World Bank in batches (typically 10%, 50% and 100%). These data deliveries are checked for logical consistency, out of range values, skip patterns, and duplicate entries. Problems are flagged by the World Bank and corrected by the implementing contractor through data checks, callbacks, and revisiting establishments.

Response rate

The number of realized interviews per contacted establishments was 0.49. The estimate is based on the total number of firms contacted including ineligible establishments. This number is the result of two factors: explicit refusals to participate in the survey, as reflected by the rate of rejection (which includes rejections of the screener and the main survey) and the quality of the sample frame, as represented by the presence of ineligible units. The number of rejections per contact was 0.28.

Complete information regarding the sampling methodology, sample frame, weights, response rates, and implementation can be found in "Description of Antigua and Barbuda ES 2010 Implementation" in external resources.

In December of 2020, nine countries in Latin America and the Caribbean had laws that considered private, consensual sexual acts between adults of the same sex a crime or illegal.

Which countries in the Caribbean criminalize same-sex relations? Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lucia categorize consensual sexual acts between adults of the same sex either as "buggery" or "gross indecency". In Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Lucia, for instance, only homosexual relations between men are considered illegal. Despite this, Latin America and the Caribbean shows a generally high level of LGBT-friendliness toward consensual same-sex acts.

Where was same-sex intercourse first legalized in the region? Haiti has the oldest legal framework that did not criminalize homosexual relations in Latin America and the Caribbean, dating back to 1791, when it was still under French rule. This makes it one of the first countries in the world to not consider same-sex intercourse a crime. Other pioneering countries on the matter were the Dominican Republic and El Salvador, whose laws did not consider same-sex sexual acts a crime since the 1820s.