Is Trump right about violent crime in Venezuela and the US?
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 26 October 2024
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On the campaign trail for the US presidency, former president Donald Trump has been saying that the US is becoming a more dangerous than Venezuela.
He also claims that the crime data for the US that the FBI collects is missing the most violent cities.
Is he right? Tim Harford investigates, with the help of Bastian Herre from Our World in Data and Jay Albanese from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Bethan Ashmead Latham Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison Sound Mix: Annie Gardiner Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are about to listen to a BBC podcast and I like to tell you a bit about what goes into making one. |
| 0:06.0 | I'm Siddhartha Cesset, an assistant commissioner of Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:11.0 | I pull a lot of levers to support a diverse range of |
| 0:13.7 | podcasts on all sorts of subjects, relationships, identity, comedy, even one |
| 0:18.9 | that mixes poetry, music and inner city life. So one day I'll be helping host develop their ideas, the next |
| 0:26.1 | fact checking, a feature and the next looking at how a podcast connects with its |
| 0:31.5 | audience and maybe that's you. So if you like this |
| 0:34.6 | podcast check out some others on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:37.6 | Hello and thanks for downloading the more or less podcast with a show which looks at the numbers in the news and in life. |
| 0:44.6 | And I'm Tim Harford. |
| 0:48.0 | As the noise of the US election ramps up and up and up, you may have caught a few claims on crime rates being fired |
| 0:56.8 | about indiscriminately. |
| 0:58.8 | We'll meet the next time in Venezuela because it'll be a far safer place to meet than our country. |
| 1:03.8 | Okay, so we'll go, you and I will go and we'll have a meeting and dinner in |
| 1:06.8 | Venezuela because that's what's happening. |
| 1:09.3 | Their crime rates coming down and our crime rates's going through the roof. |
| 1:13.0 | That was Republican candidate former president Donald Trump, |
| 1:16.7 | telling billionaire Elon Musk that the US is becoming a more dangerous place than Venezuela. So is the US on track to become more dangerous than |
| 1:25.8 | Venezuela? How can you compare the two? What crime statistics do you look at and how |
| 1:31.4 | robust are they? |
| 1:36.0 | Many crimes from robbery to rape are underreported and under recorded |
| 1:41.0 | and by different degrees in different places. |
... |
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