ABC News on the (Possible?) Dangers of Belize

[KathyV]

Well, if you exclude BZ City and compare the rest of the country to Chicago, especially the neighborhoods on the south side, then Belize is a far safer, more idyllic place...

Well, that's true everywhere. I have been doing some reading about this subject because of the recent spotlight on violence in Belize. When you look at the statistics Chicago is not as dangerous as its reputation would lead you to believe. It's not in the top 100 most dangerous US cities and it doesn't even make the top 30 cities for murder rate.

There are many Chicago neighborhoods with low crime rates, but there are some Chicago neighborhoods that rank among the most dangerous places in the country, especially Austin and nearby neighborhoods on the West Side. So if you ever go to the United Center to see the Bulls or the Blackhawks play, better be careful where you park!

 

[Rusty Roo]

at the end of the day it can be down to bad luck

"A woman has died after being hit by a stray bullet while sitting in her car and talking to her father on the phone."

Dad On Phone To Daughter As Bullet Kills Her

 

[AWMIII]

My point was that normalizing rates between a population that is 10 time the population of another place makes little sense. The murder rate in my family is 0/100,000. More tourists die in snorkeling accidents in Belize than by murder.

 

[Skeptic14]

Some commenters must be missing the part about the victim doing yoga at her resort in daylight when she was murdered... otherwise I don't get the "use common sense" responses.

Unless the common sense is to avoid vacation locales with such high murder rates?

For me, there are too many great places to dive that aren't challenging for best in the world at murder.

 

[Downing]

Obviously, I was talking about using common sense in general. I think I've been pretty clear that this case in particular is especially concerning given the circumstances. But in case I haven't: this poor woman didn't do anything wrong or stupid that in any way contributed to her being murdered.

 

[katzgar]

or...you could process information better about the homicide rate and realize it is mostly local on local. Divers rarely get hurt in Belize.

 

[Skeptic14]

or...you could process information better about the homicide rate and realize it is mostly local on local. Divers rarely get hurt in Belize.

The "mostly local on local" categorization of murder isn't unique to Belize, so you can vacation somewhere with a much lower overall murder rate and still benefit from it being "mostly local on local" murder.

 

[katzgar]

that doesnt make sense. local on local is still local on local which means not on tourists what ever the rates.

 

[Skeptic14]

Mostly doesn't mean 100% so if you can multiple two fractions, it makes sense.

--------------edit----------------

It took a little digging, but I was curious so using U.S. Citizen Deaths Overseas you can look up murders of US tourist for a given time frame.

Then using google you can look for tourism numbers (finding US tourism is a bit harder but necessary for the numbers to make the most sense) for each of the countries you investigate.

So since 2010 (last six years) here is a sampling of some "vacation diving destinations".

Costa Rica 17 US tourist murdered 2.833/yr with 900k US tourists visiting every year
Belize 12 US tourist murdered 2/y with 650k US tourists visiting every year

Cancun 4 US tourist murdered .66/yr with 1.5mil US tourists per year
Caymans 1 US tourist murdered .167/yr with 1.4mil US tourists per year
Aruba 1 US tourist murdered .167/yr with 900k US tourists per year

Turks & Caico 0
BVI 0
Bonaire 0
Cozumel 0


I believe this illustrates that the overall murder rate definitely matters even if it is "mostly" local on local.