I knew things looked good but not this good

Carlos Mendoza and the good people at the Central American Business Intelligence have an update on where Guatemala is likely to end the year in terms of homicide rates. Using homicide data from the National Civil Police and population estimates from the National Statistics Institute, it looks like Guatemala will end the year with its fifth consecutive year of lower homicide rates. That would be an 8 percent improvement over 2013. An estimated year-end homicide rate of 31.4 per 100,000 Guatemalans would put it in Colombia territory so that is good but still about 10th dangerous in the world.

I also like to treat the PNC's numbers as the lower bound and INACIF as the upper bound. They are also estimates as some murders are not actually characterized as murders, some bodies are disappeared, and the population estimate is an estimate.

However, five consecutive years of decreasing homicide rates is something to celebrate.