This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, August 25th, 2010. I'm Caleb Brown.

The crime rate in Venezuela is rising. Murders in Venezuela, according to the New York Times,

now claim more lives than drug war violence in Mexico.

Venezuela is a much smaller country.

The statistics stand in stark contrast to those in Colombia, where crime has fallen

markedly in recent years.

Juan Carlos Adago, Project Coordinator for Latin America

at the Cato Institute, explains part of the disparity.

Venezuela stopped publishing

Murder Statistics in 2003, how do we know how many murders are being

committed in Venezuela now?

Because they keep keeping statistics and this is

the statistics have been leaked to them to NGOs and from there to the

media so that's why we know that the number has been increasing dramatically in the last few years.

And the numbers are staggering.

For example, the murder rate in Venezuela back in 1998 when President Chavez came to power

was 19 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.

Now it's 49 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.

That means that during the whole period where

since President Chavez has been in power,

around 118,000 Venezuela's have been killed.

That's like a fifth of the DC population,

...