Last month, the Funes administration celebrated a decline in the country's homicide rate. Salvadorans and others hoped that the country had turned a corner in the fight against crime. Contrapunto wrote that we should be skeptical.
Well, the PNC now reports that murders increased from September to October. Two hundred twelve people were murdered in September (~7 per day). Unfortunately, October recorded three hundred forty-four murders (~10 per day).
While the PNC and government officials need to track murders on a monthly basis, we should hesitate before we jump to any conclusion based upon a single month's increase or decrease in the murder rate. In fact, we should resist any effort to celebrate an increase or decrease in murders from one year to the next. A change from one year to the next does not indicate a medium- or long-term change in the murder rate. Second, there's no really good reason why the comparison should be January 1 to December 31 rather than any other arbitrary cutoff. Finally, El Salvador will have to achieve several years progress towards decreasing the number of murders committed in the country before it is no longer of epidemic proportions.
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