A list of 2017’s 50 most violent cities in the world has been released with South America filling up the top ten spots.
It’s often said that we can become products of our environment, it can affect our way of thinking and the direction in which we choose to take our lives in.
A high crime rate can be down to a number of factors, such as lack of employment opportunities, over population -which bleeds over to lack of housing, and poor living standards, and poor education system.
These could be viable factors into why this current list features 43 cities from South American countries, with the capital city of Venezuela, Caracas, coming in at number one.
The list was released by Mexico’s Citizens’ Council for Public Security, who themselves feature in the list 8 times. Their most dangerous city, Acapulco, comes in at number two.
Data from the list is made up from the number of homicides, out of 100,000 people, recorded in each city. However the ranking only includes cities with a population of over 300,000 people.
In that list, the top two non South American cities that are considered violent and dangerous is St. Louis, USA and Cape Town, South Africa. Both came in at 14 and 13, in 2015 St. Louis had a 59.23% murder rate whilst Cape Town (who were ninth in 2015) were at 65.53%.
Interestingly enough the list does not include cities like Mosul and Aleppo, seeing as they are considered warzones/combat zones data the is unavailable.
Check out the list below:
10. Natal, Brazil
9. Valencia, Venezuela
8. Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela
7. San Salvador, El Salvador
6. Maturin, Venezuela
5. Ciudad Victoria, Mexico
4. Distrito Central, Honduras
3. San Pedro Sula, Honduras
2. Acapulco, Mexico
1. Caracas, Venezuela
A 2016 report showed that Caracas’ homicide rate rose slightly from an estimated 116 per 100,000 people in 2014 to around 120 in 2015 – that’s nearly 4000 murders in a city of almost 3.3 million citizens.
Official data was released by the country’s government last year that put their homicide rate at 70.1% per 100,000 residents.
Another interesting factor is that there were no Asian, European, or Middle Eastern cities in this year’s list.
Rotterdam in the Netherlands is ranked as the most dangerous European city, with Poland’s Lodz coming in second and the city of Newcastle at number three.
