Violence is an imbalance in the exercise of power in which the victims are the weakest. An exercise in power in which vulnerabilities are exploited through the use of firearms or blades, surprise, physical strength, agility, speed and hundreds of other things.
So how to make ourselves less vulnerable to violence? How to face a danger that uses our weaknesses to defeat us? The obvious answer is prevention, but despite it, more and more victims are added to the list.
To understand the vulnerability of the victims we must know them. The first thing is that violence in our country has a very clear type of victims: young men with limited resources and brown skin.
According to the data, 93% of the victims were male, in other words, 4,389 people had this characteristic, the rest, 6.7%, were female.
The largest number of victims were brunettes, 57.2%. that is, 2,709, 21.2% of the cases, 1,003 people, were described as white. Among the victims there are almost no blacks, 103 people, 2.18% of the total.
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Regarding the socioeconomic situation, data collected by the Monitor’s team such as: place of residence, where the crime occurred, educational level of the victim and their occupation, show their position.
Thus we arrive at the characteristics of the victims of violence.
Children victims of trust
Children and adolescents represent 6% of the victims in the last five years, a total of 287 victims.
Children (aged between 0 and 12 years) have abuse, mistreatment and gender violence as the main causes of violent death, 22 of the 42 victims died that way. The second cause, with eight murders, was getting caught in the line of fire. Three children died in fights, three in revenge and one in a resistance to authority.
For children, the house is not a safe place. In total, 23 of 42 children were killed in their homes, another 12 died on public roads, two in commercial establishments, and one at school.
Another fundamental aspect is that the victims were killed by acquaintances, relatives, friends, neighbors, that is, trusted people ended up being the murderers.
Adolescent: the police as victimizers
In the period analyzed, 242 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17 were murdered. A clear change is observed in the type of perpetrators, the majority are unknown, 152 of the victims did not know their murderers, while 59 did.
The mobiles also vary, and with them their protagonists. The police begin to appear as perpetrators, 79 adolescents (32% of the dead) were murdered in 65 cases of alleged executions and in 14 cases of alleged resistance to authority. However, 129 perpetrators were civilians, in other words more than half (53%).
The revenges cost 36 deaths, while 25 lives were taken from being crossed in the line of fire, the fights ended with 19 adolescents and 17 died in robberies, 12 were killed in cases of gender violence.
Now the violence comes from the victims’ houses, 165 adolescents died on public roads, however 56 died in their homes, 34 of them died at the hands of the police.
Young people feed on the fire of violence
With 2,624 deaths, young people between the ages of 17 and 34 are the main victims of violence in the capital.
In this group, the role of violence is almost divided in half between police officers with 45% of the murders, representing 1,189 deaths, and civilians with 1,179 deaths (45%).
We found 806 cases of murders in alleged executions by police forces, and 332 cases of resistance to authority. In 383 deaths during robberies, 289 account adjustments; 146 fights and 86 cases of deaths in the line of fire.
In this group there is a notable jump in deaths due to gender violence, with 24 murders.
The public highway is the most insecure place, 70% of the young people murdered died in the streets, while 24% were murdered in their homes.
It grows and the violence continues
As people grow older, violence seems to recede, in the case of adults between the ages of 35 and 55 the number of deaths falls to 761 murders, which represents 16% of violent deaths.
Here civilians take center stage with 560 victims, almost 75% of the victims, and crimes move away from police action, robbery (240), revenge (97), fights (95) are the main causes. The police contribute their quota with 99 murders.
Gender violence continues to claim a significant number of lives, 23 women from this age group were murdered.
The public highway with 73% of the deaths is the place where the most murders occur.
grow old and die
Reaching the elderly or the third could lead us to assume that people will stay away from violence, but this is not the case with 206 deaths, adults contribute 4% of the victims in Caracas.
In this segment, the main cause of deaths is robbery with 118 deaths, followed by fights (18), revenge (14), stray bullets and gender violence, nine each, kidnappings with four deaths.
Once again, the victims’ homes became the least safe place, 97 elderly people were killed in their homes, and more than 90% were killed by civilians.
would complement
Understanding the victims
Violence varies according to the age of the victims, children, young people and older adults have different characteristics and vulnerabilities.
Data compiled by the Victims Monitor between May 2017 and September 2022 recorded the murder of at least 4,715 people in Caracas.
The first data that we are going to analyze is geographical: where do more people die? 58.
By parishes, Petare, in the Sucre municipality, is the most violent in Caracas with 344 deaths, followed by Sucre, in Libertador with 283. Then El Valle (234), La Vega (182), Coche (163), Antímano (145) and Saint John (101).