QCOSTARICA — Costa Rica closed as one of the seven countries with the highest homicide rate in Latin America for 2024.
Specifically, Costa Rica registered a rate of 16.6 cases per 100,000 inhabitants (with 880 total homicides), only above Guatemala (16.1) and very close to Mexico (19.3), as shown by the InSight Crime’s 2024 Homicide Round-Up.
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Ecuador leads this list with a homicide incidence of 38.8, followed by Venezuela with 26.2 and Colombia with 25.4.
El Salvador recorded the lowest statistic with 1.9.
“Although murders in Costa Rica decreased slightly in 2024, it was the second most violent year on record, with a homicide rate of 16.6, after the record figure of 17.2 in 2023,” the InSight Crime states.
According to this international scale, revenge, a motive linked to drug trafficking, was the main driver of violence, accounting for 70% of homicides.
According to data from the Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ), 2023 was the most violent year in the Costa Rica’s history, with 907 total homicides.
Rándall Zúñiga, head of the Judicial Investigation Department (Organismo de Investigación Judicial – OIJ), attributed the decline to Operation Caribe, a strategy aimed at reducing crime in the province of Limón, an important drug trafficking port city which had the highest murder rate in 2023. While homicides in Limón fell by 15% in 2024, it still recorded the country’s highest rate at 37.8.
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Randall Zúñiga, director of the Organismo de Investigacion Judicial (OIJ) – Judicial Investigation Agency, attributed the decline to ‘Operation Caribe’, a strategy aimed at reducing crime in the province of Limón, a major port city and epicenter of drug trafficking, which recorded the highest homicide rate in 2023.
“Although homicides in Limón decreased by 15% in 2024, the province recorded a homicide rate of 37.8, the highest in the country. Following Operation Caribe, some drug trafficking networks migrated to the coastal province of Puntarenas, which recorded the second highest homicide rate in the country in 2024,” Zúñiga explained.
At the regional level, these were the 10 countries with the highest rate of homicides:
- Ecuador: 38.8
- Venezuela: 26.2
- Colombia: 25.4
- Honduras: 25.3
- Brazil: 21.1
- Mexico 19.3
- Costa Rica: 16.6
- Guatemala: 16.1
- Panama: 12.9
- Uruguay: 10.6
Homicides on the rise
According to data from the OIJ, homicides this year continue to rise.
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This year, to date (February 26), there have been 141 homicides (118 are men and 22 are women), in contrast to 142 the previous year for the same period.
For 2025, these are the provinces that record the most homicides:
- San José: 44 homicides
- Limón: 27
- Alajuela: 22
- Puntarenas: 20
- Guanacaste: 13
- Cartago: 8
- Heredia: 7
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