Crime in Venezuela is widespread. In the early 2000s, violent crime—such as murder, kidnapping, and robbery—began to surge as a consequence of the 2002–2003 Venezuelan general strike against President Hugo Chávez, which was caused by the institutional instability of his Bolivarian government, underfunding of police resources, and extreme inequality. From then on, homicide rates began climbing dramatically each year. By 2008 Venezuela became among the most violent countries in the world. In 2014 the United Nations attributed crime to the poor political and economic environment in the country—which, at the time, had the second highest murder rate in the world. Chávez's government sought a cultural hegemony by promoting class conflict and social fragmentation, which in turn encouraged "criminal gangs to kill, kidnap, rob and extort", according to Maria C. Werlau, a Cuban-born anti-Castro activist and founder and executive director of the think tank Free Society Project. Upon Chávez's death in 2013, Venezuela was ranked the most insecure nation in the world by Gallup.

Crime has also continued to increase under Chávez's successor, President Nicolás Maduro, who continued Chávez's policies that disrupted Venezuela's socioeconomic status. By 2015, crime, which was often the topic Venezuelans worried about the most according to polls, was the second largest concern compared to shortages in Venezuela. Crimes related to shortages and hunger increased shortly after with growing incidents of looting occurring throughout the country. Most crime in Venezuela remains unpunished according to Venezuela's Prosecutor General's Office, as 98% of crimes in Venezuela do not result in prosecution.

In spite of significant socioeconomic problems, the murder rate in Venezuela decreased between 2017 and 2020. Venezuela's murder rate decreased from 92 per 100,000 in 2016 to 81.4 in 2018, according to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory (OVV), due in part to criminals joining millions of other Venezuelans in fleeing the country. The murder rate declined even further to 60.3 in 2019.

Homicide and violent crime

History Twentieth century In the early-20th century, Venezuela was limited to violent crimes occurring in rural areas. In the 1950s, the rapid urbanization of the population saw some rises in violent crime. In the 1960s following the restoration of democracy, insecurity rose when FALN leftist guerrillas participated in violent confrontations with the government, though such clashes subsided due to lack of public support for the guerrilla movement. Between the 1960s until the late-1980s, the murder rate stood between 8 and 10 homicides per 100,000. Following the "institutional crisis" surrounding the Venezuelan government and the socioeconomic issues shown during the Caracazo riots in 1989 and Hugo Chávez's 1992 coup attempts, homicides increased in Venezuela. This introduced to the Venezuelan population the notion of not following the societal rules and using violence to achieve goals, such as widespread looting during the Caracazo or by attempting to commit undemocratic coups such as in 1992. By 1993, Venezuela's murder rate stood at 21 homicides per 100,000 people. In 1994, when Rafael Caldera became president, he attempted to strengthen Venezuela's "institution", staying in the center of political issues, performing both conservative and reformative actions that resulted in the increase of the murder rate stopping; though his popularity and the public's trust in the political system decreased. According to the OVV, since 2000, some 250,000 homicides have been committed, most of them with firearms.

Bolivarian Revolution

Under Hugo Chávez, Venezuela institutionality deteriorated, with political instability, impunity and violent government language increasing. According to Gareth A. Jones and Dennis Rodgers in their book Youth violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice in Perspective, "With the change of political regime in 1999 and the initiation of the Bolivarian Revolution, a period of transformation and political conflict began, marked by a further increase in the number and rate of violent deaths" showing that in four years, the murder rate had increased from 25 per 100,000 in 1999 to 44 per 100,000 in 2003. The Bolivarian Revolution attempted to "destroy what previously existed, the status quo of society" with instability increasing. The Bolivarian government then believed that violence and crime were due to poverty and inequality, though while the government boasted about reducing both poverty and inequality, the murder rate continued to increase in Venezuela. The rise of murders in Venezuela following the Chávez presidency has also been attributed by experts to the corruption of Venezuelan authorities, poor gun control and a poor judiciary system. The Chávez government banned private gun ownership in 2012 but the overall crime rate continued to increase. In some cases, crime has grown so pervasive in Venezuela that the military is ordered to avoid public places during nighttime hours since criminals often attempt to steal their weapons, with robberies in the country often targeting unaware individuals using a 'kill first, steal later' method.

Escalating violent crime, especially murder, had been called "perhaps the biggest concern" of Venezuelans during the nationwide crisis. According to The New Yorker magazine Venezuela had "by various measures, the world's highest violent-crime rate" in 2017, and almost none of crimes that are reported are prosecuted. InSight Crime says the crisis has "all too often been obscured by the government's reluctance to release damning crime statistics". The New Yorker reporter found that even stairwells in a public hospital were not safe from robbers, who preyed on staff and patients despite the large number of security forces guarding the hospital, saying this was because the police were assigned to contain journalists who might embarrass the government with exposés on the state of the hospital; they were not assigned to protect its occupants. The police allegedly collaborated with the robbers, receiving a cut of what they stole.

The U.S. Bureau of Diplomatic Security says most of the violence comes from organized street gangs, and attributes criminal activity to four factors: "often corrupt" underpaid police, an "inefficient and politicized judicial system", problems in the prison system, and widespread availability of weapons.

Homicide data Venezuela is currently among the countries with the highest murder rates in the world. Recently, the murder rate in Venezuela is the subject of some dispute according to the Associated Press, since Bolivarian government slowly denied access to homicide statistics. A non-governmental organization known as the Venezuelan Violence Observatory (OVV), which collects crime data from seven different universities around the country, provides data of homicide rates in Venezuela.

In 2010, The New York Times stated that according to news reports, data from human rights groups, such as the OVV's statistics, may actually be undercounting the number of those murdered in Venezuela. According to the Venezuelan non-governmental organization PROVEA, unlike other NGOs, the Venezuelan government excludes homicide data that includes fighting or police related deaths in its murder rate statistics. PROVEA figures provided in the UN's 2014 Global Homicide Book put Venezuela's homicide rate at 53.7 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2012, closer to the Venezuelan government's 2012 estimate, but still the second highest peacetime murder rate in the world after Honduras (estimated at 90.4).

The OVV puts the homicide rate for 2013 at approximately 79 per 100,000 and the murder rate in the capital Caracas at 122 per 100,000 residents. According to the Venezuelan government, the homicide rate in 2013 dropped from 50 to 39 per 100,000. In 2015, the OVV's murder rate data showed an increase of the rate to 90 per 100,000 with an estimated 27,878 Venezuelans murdered adding up to nearly 20% of murders in the Latin American region. Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz stated to the United Nations that the rate was 62 per 100,000 for 2014, nearly twice as high as claimed in 2013. According to the World Bank, the 2016 homicide rate was 56 per 100,000, making Venezuela third in the world, after El Salvador and Honduras. OVV data has 23,047 homicides committed in Venezuela in 2018, a rate of 81.4 per 100,000 people, with the decline being attributed to emigration. The government says there were 60 daily homicides in 2016, and 45 daily in 2015, corresponding with Venezuela's downward economic spiral, according to NBC News; the OVV says the numbers are higher. In 2017, Luisa Ortega stated that Public Ministry had registered a rate of 70 per 100,000.

By 2018, Venezuela's murder rate–described as the highest in the world–had begun to decrease according to the OVV, with the organization stating that this downward trend was due to the millions of Venezuelans that emigrated from the country at the time. The U.S. Bureau of Diplomatic Security stated that there were 73 daily violent deaths in 2018. In 2019, the murder rate declined significantly to 60.3.

Other homicide data According to Sanjuan, 95% of Venezuela's homicide victims are men with 69% of them being between ages 15 and 34. In 2000, the homicide rate for young men was 225 per 100,000. Sanjuan data from 2000 shows that in the capital city of Caracas, 92% of homicides are due to firearms and that 83% of homicide victims died near their homes, 55% in public altercations and 55% of the homicides occurred on the weekend. A more recent 2014 UNICEF report titled Hidden in Plain Sight, it was stated that in Venezuela, along with other Latin American countries, the leading cause of death for males between 10 and 19 is murder.

Censorship of violence In 2009, it was reported that Venezuelan authorities would assign judicial police to Caracas area morgues to speak with families. At that time, they would advise families not to speak to report the murder of their family member to the media in exchange to have the process of recovering the victims body in an expedited manner. It was also reported that police would intercept the families of the victims and take them to the library of the University Institute of the Scientific Police (IUPOLC) where authorities offered families ways to "streamline procedures and advise them not to give information to the press in return for their aid". The cover ups were possibly performed following an El Nacional cover story showing piles of corpses scattered throughout a morgue in Venezuela.

Violence against women

Kidnappings

Director James Brabazon stated that "kidnapping crimes had skyrocketed ... after late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez freed thousands of violent prisoners as part of controversial criminal justice system reforms" while also increasing due to Colombian organized crime as well. He further explained that criminals felt that the Venezuelan government did not care for the problems of the higher classes, which in turn gave them a sense of impunity that created a large business of kidnapping. Both the rich and poor are victims of kidnapping and criminals even fear being kidnapped by more powerful gangs.

In leaked government INE data for kidnappings in the year 2009, the number of kidnappings were at an estimated 16,917, contrasting the CICPCs number of only 673, before the Venezuelan government blocked the data. According to the leaked INE report, only 1,332 investigations for kidnappings were opened or about 7% of the total kidnapping cases, with 90% of the kidnappings happening away from rural areas, 80% of all being express kidnappings and the most common victim being lower-middle or middle class Venezuelans and middle-aged men.