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(c) Elliott Publishing.

Always More Crime
Err Travel · March 13, 2001

In a previous column I recounted the misfortunes of fellow travelers we happened across while my wife and I hiked through the rainforests and sauntered along the beaches of Costa Rica. The lessons learned from these incidents were obvious. They were, in case you missed them:

(1) Avoid traveling alone, especially at night.
(2) Don't leave property unattended.
(3) Avoid traveling alone, especially at night. (Yep, ignoring this advice caught up with a couple of Yanquis.)
(4) Items left in a car are best secured in the trunk.

But the instruction that these incidents provide goes further. Among the many similarities that the crimes shared was this: none of the incidents were reported to the police or to the American Embassy. This fact should not be overlooked, and what it means is that there is a heck of a lot more crime that gets perpetrated against travelers than gets reported. Not just in Costa Rica, but everywhere.

What makes crime statistics wobbly is that the more crime that is prevalent, the less likely it is to be reported. This can be due to a couple of reasons.

First, victims are reluctant to report crimes when there is no incentive to do so. Certainly this is the case when law enforcement agencies have demonstrated an inability of find, prosecute, or deter criminals. What's the use of reporting crime if nothing can be done about it?

Another reason for the underreporting of crime is when law enforcement officials are in cahoots with the criminals. Victims are understandably unlikely to report crime to those who are mixed up with the perpetrators. In either case, as real crime rates climb, reported crime rates may actually fall.

Heck, not even the United States' Department of Justice believes that "reported" crime in the U.S. comes anywhere near the number of "actual" crimes. That's why it annually publishes the results of the National Crime Victimization Survey along with its annual FBI Uniform Crime Reports.

Keep in mind when you travel that reported crime is a good comparative statistic to be used in a general way when evaluating the safety of various regions, but it does not accurately describe the extent of actual criminal activity.

You can bet that crime is always, always more prevalent than what is reported.

Dr. Terry Riley is a psychologist and travel security authority. He is author of the popular book Travel Can Be Murder. Visit his site at http://www.appliedpsychology.com or e-mail him at terry@ticked.com.