Historical chart and dataset showing Puerto Rico crime rate per 100K population by year from 1990 to 2020.

In 2024, Puerto Rico recorded around 15.3 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. The homicide rate registered an increase of one point compared to the previous year. In 2019, the number of individuals killed per 100,000 population peaked at 20.1. At least 450 people are murdered every year in Puerto Rico.

Illegal appropriations are the most common property crimes in Puerto Rico. More than 9,600 crimes classified as illegal appropriations were recorded in the island nation in 2024. In addition, over 2,300 breaking and entering crimes were reported in 2024.

Historical dataset showing Puerto Rico crime rate per 100K population by year from 1990 to 2020.

Up to 464 people died as a result of intentional homicide in Puerto Rico in 2023. The number of victims has decreased since the previous year, when 572 murders were reported in the Caribbean nation. Even though Puerto Rico still faces serious challenges in reducing crime and violence, the country has been able to decrease the murder levels registered at the beginning of the decade. For instance, 1,179 people were murdered in 2011 alone, making it the deadliest year in the indicated time period.

In 2024, the highest homicide rate among 22 Latin American and Caribbean countries surveyed was in Haiti, with around 62 murders committed per 100,000 inhabitants. Trinidad and Tobago came in second, with a homicide rate of 46, while Honduras ranked seventh, with 25. In the same year, the lowest rate was recorded in El Salvador, with a homicide rate of 1.9 per 100,000 inhabitants. A violence-ridden region Violence and crime are some of the most pressing problems affecting Latin American society nowadays. More than 40 of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world are located in this region, as well as one of the twenty countries with the least peace in the world according to the Global Peace Index. Despite governments’ large spending on security and high imprisonment rates, drug and weapon trafficking, organized crime, and gangs have turned violence into an epidemic that affects the whole region and a solution to this issue appears to be hardly attainable. The cost of violence in Mexico Mexico stands out as an example of the great cost that violence inflicts upon a country, since beyond claiming human lives, it also affects everyday life and has a negative impact on the economy. Mexicans have a high perceived level of insecurity, as they do not only fear becoming victims of homicide, but also of other common crimes, such as assault or rape. Such fear prevents people from performing everyday activities, for instance, going out at night, taking a taxi or going to the movies or the theater. Furthermore, the economic toll of violence in Mexico is more than considerable. For example, the cost of homicide and violent crime amounted to 2099.8 and 1778.1 billion Mexican pesos in 2023, respectively.

San Juan was one of the most dangerous cities in the Caribbean, at least when it comes to the number of homicides. For instance, the Puerto Rican capital registered a total of 172 homicides in 2019. Like its capital, Puerto Rico ranked as one of the most dangerous countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region in 2020.

Historical dataset showing Puerto Rico murder/homicide rate per 100K population by year from 1990 to 2020.

V8 release notes: Adds 2017 data.V7 release notes: Removes SPSS (.sav) and Excel (.csv) files. Changes column names for clearances to "tot_clr_..." to make explicit that this is all clearances, not just adult clearances. The formatting of the monthly data has changed from wide to long. This means that each agency-month has a single row. The old data had each agency being a single row with each month-crime (e.g. jan_act_murder) being a column. Now there will just be a single column for each crime (e.g. act_murder) and the month can be identified in the month column. Adds a month column and a date column. This date column is always set to the first of the month. It is NOT the date that a crime occurred or was reported. It is only there to make it easier to create time-series graphs that require a date input. Removes all card columns. This was done to reduce file size. Reorders crime columns to the order of assaults/deaths of officers, actual crimes, total clearance, clearance under age 18, unfounded. Within each category the columns are alphabetized.Monthly data and yearly data are now in different zip folders to download.V6 release notes: Fix bug where Philadelphia Police Department had incorrect FIPS county code. V5 release notes: Changes the word "larceny" to "theft" in column names - eg. from "act_larceny" to "act_theft."Fixes bug where state abbrebation was NA for Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Canal Zone.Fixes bug where officers_killed_by_accident was not appearing in yearly data. Note that 1979 does not have any officers killed (by felony or accident) or officers assaulted data.Adds aggravated assault columns to the monthly data. Aggravated assault is the sum of all assaults other than simple assault (assaults using gun, knife, hand/feet, and other weapon). Note that summing all crime columns to get a total crime count will double count aggravated assault as it is already the sum of existing columns. Reorder columns to put all month descriptors (e.g. "jan_month_included", "jan_card_1_type") before any crime data.Due to extremely irregular data in the unfounded columns for New Orleans (ORI = LANPD00) for years 2014-2016, I have change all unfounded column data for New Orleans for these years to NA. As an example, New Orleans reported about 45,000 unfounded total burglaries in 2016 (the 3rd highest they ever reported). This is 18 times largest than the number of actual total burglaries they reported that year (2,561) and nearly 8 times larger than the next largest reported unfounded total burglaries in any agency or year. Prior to 2014 there were no more than 10 unfounded total burglaries reported in New Orleans in any year. There were 10 obvious data entry errors in officers killed by felony/accident that I changed to NA.In 1974 the agency "Boston" (ORI = MA01301) reported 23 officers killed by accident during November.In 1978 the agency "Pittsburgh" (ORI = PAPPD00) reported 576 officers killed by accident during March.In 1978 the agency "Bronx Transit Authority" (ORI = NY06240) reported 56 officers killed by accident during April.In 1978 the agency "Bronx Transit Authority" (ORI = NY06240) reported 56 officers killed by accident during June.In 1978 the agency "Bronx Transit Authority" (ORI = NY06240) reported 56 officers killed by felony during April.In 1978 the agency "Bronx Transit Authority" (ORI = NY06240) reported 56 officers killed by felony during June.In 1978 the agency "Queens Transit Authority" (ORI = NY04040) reported 56 officers killed by accident during May.In 1978 the agency "Queens Transit Authority" (ORI = NY04040) reported 56 officers killed by felony during May.In 1996 the agency "Ruston" in Louisiana (ORI = LA03102) reported 30 officers killed by felony during September.In 1997 the agency "Washington University" in Missouri (ORI = MO0950E) reported 26 officers killed by felony during March.V4 release notes: Merges data with LEAIC data to add FIPS codes, census codes, agency type variables, and ORI9 variable.Makes all column names lowercase.Change some variable namesMakes values in character columns lowercase.Adds months_reported variable to yearly data.Combines monthly and yearly files into a single zip file (per data type).V3 release notes: fixes a bug in Version 2 where 1993 data did not properly deal with missing values, leading to enormous counts of crime being report

Several countries located in Central America and the Caribbean registered some of the highest homicide rates in the Latin American region in 2022. Jamaica ranked first, with around 53.34 homicides committed per 100,000 inhabitants. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines came second, with 40.41 homicides per 100,000 people. The source defines intentional homicide as the unlawful death inflicted upon a person with the intent to cause death or serious injury. When it comes to the total case count, Brazil was the Latin American country with the largest number of homicide victims. Central America and the falling rates El Salvador was commonly named the murder capital of the world for a few years. The inability of previous governments to control organized crime and gangs resulted in the highest homicide rate in the world for a couple of years. Nonetheless, the current administration and the measures applied during the Emergency State had an incredibly positive impact in terms of the security of the Salvadorean citizens. But not only El Salvador has seen a considerable reduction in its murder rate in Central America. Honduras and Guatemala are also two great examples of crime reduction, introducing new policies, institutions, and changes to their judicial system to achieve better results.
The Caribbean still ridden by crime Some islands in the Caribbean are not only known as tax heavens, as some nations in the region are considered the main enablers of tax evasion in the world, but also for being ridden by crime. Haiti is one example of the still rising levels of criminality. As a country with precarious conditions and extreme food insecurity, the homicide rate has been on the rise for almost four consecutive years. Another one is Jamaica, the top of the Latin American ranking, that has also seen an increase in the youth involved in organized crime due to lack of employment and economic conditions.

V6 release notes: Fix bug where Philadelphia Police Department had incorrect FIPS county code. V5 release notes: Changes the word "larceny" to "theft" in column names - eg. from "act_larceny" to "act_theft."Fixes bug where state abbrebation was NA for Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Canal Zone.Fixes bug where officers_killed_by_accident was not appearing in yearly data. Note that 1979 does not have any officers killed (by felony or accident) or officers assaulted data.Adds aggravated assault columns to the monthly data. Aggravated assault is the sum of all assaults other than simple assault (assaults using gun, knife, hand/feet, and other weapon). Note that summing all crime columns to get a total crime count will double count aggravated assault as it is already the sum of existing columns. Reorder columns to put all month descriptors (e.g. "jan_month_included", "jan_card_1_type") before any crime data.Due to extremely irregular data in the unfounded columns for New Orleans (ORI = LANPD00) for years 2014-2016, I have change all unfounded column data for New Orleans for these years to NA. As an example, New Orleans reported about 45,000 unfounded total burglaries in 2016 (the 3rd highest they ever reported). This is 18 times largest than the number of actual total burglaries they reported that year (2,561) and nearly 8 times larger than the next largest reported unfounded total burglaries in any agency or year. Prior to 2014 there were no more than 10 unfounded total burglaries reported in New Orleans in any year. There were 10 obvious data entry errors in officers killed by felony/accident that I changed to NA.In 1974 the agency "Boston" (ORI = MA01301) reported 23 officers killed by accident during November.In 1978 the agency "Pittsburgh" (ORI = PAPPD00) reported 576 officers killed by accident during March.In 1978 the agency "Bronx Transit Authority" (ORI = NY06240) reported 56 officers killed by accident during April.In 1978 the agency "Bronx Transit Authority" (ORI = NY06240) reported 56 officers killed by accident during June.In 1978 the agency "Bronx Transit Authority" (ORI = NY06240) reported 56 officers killed by felony during April.In 1978 the agency "Bronx Transit Authority" (ORI = NY06240) reported 56 officers killed by felony during June.In 1978 the agency "Queens Transit Authority" (ORI = NY04040) reported 56 officers killed by accident during May.In 1978 the agency "Queens Transit Authority" (ORI = NY04040) reported 56 officers killed by felony during May.In 1996 the agency "Ruston" in Louisiana (ORI = LA03102) reported 30 officers killed by felony during September.In 1997 the agency "Washington University" in Missouri (ORI = MO0950E) reported 26 officers killed by felony during March.V4 release notes: Merges data with LEAIC data to add FIPS codes, census codes, agency type variables, and ORI9 variable.Makes all column names lowercase.Change some variable namesMakes values in character columns lowercase.Adds months_reported variable to yearly data.Combines monthly and yearly files into a single zip file (per data type).V3 release notes: fixes a bug in Version 2 where 1993 data did not properly deal with missing values, leading to enormous counts of crime being reported. Summary: This is a collection of Offenses Known and Clearances By Arrest data from 1960 to 2016. Each zip file contains monthly and yearly data files. The monthly files contain one data file per year (57 total, 1960-2016) as well as a codebook for each year. These files have been read into R using the ASCII and setup files from ICPSR (or from the FBI for 2016 data) using the package asciiSetupReader. The end of the zip folder's name says what data type (R, SPSS, SAS, Microsoft Excel CSV, Stata) the data is in. The files are lightly cleaned. What this means specifically is that column names and value labels are standardized. In the original data column names were different between years (e.g. the December burglaries cleared column is "DEC_TOT_CLR_BRGLRY_TOT" in 1975 and "DEC_TOT_CLR_BURG_TOTAL" in 1977). The data here have standardized columns so you can compare between years and combine years together. The same thing is done for values inside of columns. For example, the state column gave state names in some years, abbreviations in others. For the code uses to clean and read the data, please see my GitHub file h

Porto Rico: Homicides per 100,000 people: Pour cet indicateur, The UN office on drugs and crime fournit des données pour la Porto Rico de 1990 à 2017. La valeur moyenne pour Porto Rico pendant cette période était de 21.7 homicides per 100,000 people avec un minimum de 15.7 homicides per 100,000 people en 1999 et un maximum de 31.4 homicides per 100,000 people en 2011.

Between 2020 and 2023, motor vehicle theft has fluctuated around 3,00 and 4,000 thefts per year in the Dominican Republic. In 2023, 3,328 vehicle thefts.

Porto Rico: Thefts per 100,000 people: Pour cet indicateur, The UN office on drugs and crime fournit des données pour la Porto Rico de 2008 à 2016. La valeur moyenne pour Porto Rico pendant cette période était de 770 thefts per 100,000 people avec un minimum de 631 thefts per 100,000 people en 2016 et un maximum de 888 thefts per 100,000 people en 2008.

Porto Rico: Kidnappings per 100,000 people: Pour cet indicateur, The UN office on drugs and crime fournit des données pour la Porto Rico de 2016 à 2017. La valeur moyenne pour Porto Rico pendant cette période était de 1.2 kidnappings per 100,000 people avec un minimum de 0.9 kidnappings per 100,000 people en 2017 et un maximum de 1.4 kidnappings per 100,000 people en 2016.

Cuba is one of the Caribbean nations with the highest prison population rate as of August 2024. According to the latest data available at that time, there were 794 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants on this island, followed by the Bahamas, with 409 prisoners per 100,000 population. In some Caribbean countries, over 10 percent of the prison population were foreign nationals.

The Global Peace Index 2024 ranked 163 independent states and territories based on their level of peacefulness. In 2024, Argentina scored 1.86 out of 5 points, placing the country in the 47th position in the global rank, and in 1st place within Latin America and the Caribbean. Uruguay and Costa Rica were ranked 2nd and 3rd in the region with 1.89 and 1.95 points, respectively.