A staple of former president Donald Trump’s speeches for the law few years is an unsubstantiated claim that countries around the world are “emptying out their prisons” and “emptying out their mental institutions” and sending those people to the U.S. and he has offered no proof.
In recent speeches, Trump has added, as supposed support for his claim, that crime in Venezuela is down “a staggering 67%” in a year, while alleging that “migrant crime” is rampant in the U.S. and other times, he has put the drop in Venezuelan crime at “72% in a year.”
FactCheck.org deputy managing editor, Robert Farley, decided to take a deep dive into Venezuelan crime, prisons, and gangs. He and staff writer, Catalina Jaramillo, conducted interviews with Venezuelan experts in that country’s criminal justice system, and reviewed the available data.
What they found is in an article, “Crime Drop in Venezuela Does Not Prove Trump’s Claim the Country Is Sending Criminals to U.S.”
Rob and Catalina write, reliable crime statistics are notoriously difficult to obtain in Venezuela. In the absence of reliable government reporting, media, and nongovernmental organizations have become the most trusted sources for documenting and tracking crime.
The independent, Venezuelan Observatory of Violence in December 2023 reported a 25% decrease in violent deaths between 2022 and 2023. But the number of violent deaths has been declining for years in Venezuela, even when Trump was the U.S. president.
Roberto Briceño-León, the founder and director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, told us the drop in crime is due to worsening economic and living conditions in the country. Those conditions have led to a massive out-migration of nearly eight million persons since 2014, and coinciding with the installation of Venezuelan president and autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro.
“Crime is reduced in Venezuela due to a reduction in crime opportunities,” Briceño-León told us.
The prison population, too, is declining. But Briceño-León and others in Venezuela told us that they have seen no evidence that the drop in crime or prison population supports Trump’s claims.
—FactCheck.org