Venezuela

Abstract

The production of comprehensive and reliable data for criminological research is largely, although not entirely, determined by a country's level of wealth and institutional development. Thus, it has long been observed in comparative criminology that data are relatively abundant for the wealthy nations of the world and relatively sparse for the rest. For example, "The International Crime Victim Survey" has one or more national samples for countries in Western Europe and the New World, but only single city samples for many other countries. The first International Self-report Survey on Juvenile Delinquency was likewise confined to countries with sufficient resources and research traditions to collect the data (see, generally, Newman, 1999). Venezuela is typical of many Latin American countries in that it has a relatively low rate of data production in criminology and makes only rare appearances in international studies. Accordingly, the announcement of plans to undertake a second international self-report survey on juvenile delinquency provided a good opportunity to collect valid and reliable data on the subject in a Latin American country, thereby adding an interesting and geographically distinct case to the ISRD-2 sample of countries. © 2010 Springer-Verlag New York.