Statistics Institute releases results of Survey on Food Consumption in Fast Food Establishments

PRESS RELEASE
DR. MARIO MARAZZI‐SANTIAGO
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

March 28, 2018

AUTHORIZED STATEMENTS BY THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE OF STATISTICS ON STATEMENTS MADE BY THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE FINANCIAL ADVISORY AUTHORITY AND FISCAL AGENCY OF THE GOVERNMENT OF PUERTO RICO

Faced with the enormous fiscal and credibility challenges facing our Government, we renew our invitation to the Executive Director of AAFAF to demonstrate his real commitment to financial transparency, providing us with access to the “general ledger” of AAFAF and all the other subsidiaries it manages, so that we can incorporate them into the Puerto Rico Financial Transparency System, managed by the Institute: Financial Transparency. pr.

The “general ledger” is the accounting database that records every expense or revenue transaction of an organization. It contains information about who receives each payment, when they receive it, how much they received it and what they received it for.

Since 2016, the Institute has invited all public entities to join the System. So far, AAFAF has shown no interest in participating in the System, despite the fact that this server personally presented the System to AAFAF and invited not only AAFAF to join, but AAFAF to order the entire Government to join.

Globally, more and more countries, states and cities are using open data portals, such as the Financial Transparency System, to report to their citizens on how every penny of public funds is spent. In addition, as soon as the information is recorded in the System, great cost and efficiency are achieved in the management of public financial information.

All the information on the Institute's operating expenses is available there, in an open format that allows data to be downloaded, analyzed and visualized.

For example, one of the lines requested by AAFAF is the expenditure on the employer's contribution to the health insurance of the Institute's employees. If he spent about five minutes, the Director could see that the Institute has spent a large total of $41,844 on health insurance for its employees so far so far in fiscal year 2018:
Fiscal 2018: http://www.transparenciafinanciera.pr/

For more information on the Institute's finances, you can view all of the Institute's audited financial statements, together with the auditing reports that the Office of the Comptroller has carried out on the Institute's finances, at: Mission-and-Vision.

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Press Contact: Sandra Morales Blanes (787) 688-0401

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Data presented from the Report on Violent Deaths in Puerto Rico

639 homicides and 215 suicides were reported in Puerto Rico in 2021

The Puerto Rico Violent Death Notification System (PRVDRS) of the Puerto Rico Statistics Institute (Institute), presented data from the Puerto Rico Violent Deaths Report for 2021. The report reports that in 2021, 816 incidents of violent deaths occurred, with a total of 880 fatalities. Of the total number of violent deaths, 97% were distributed as 639 by homicides and 215 by suicides, with the remaining 26 violent deaths (3%) due to other causes.

In 2021, 72.6% of victims of violent deaths were incidents of single or multiple homicides and 24.4% were incidents of suicide. Two homicide-suicide incidents were reported, resulting in 4 fatalities. In addition, during this period, 2 violent deaths attributed to legal intervention (0.2%), three violent deaths from unintentional self-inflicted firearms (0.3%) and 21 violent deaths with undetermined intent (2.4%) were documented. In 2021, approximately 9 out of 10 victims of violent deaths (92.0%) were men. The crude rate of violent deaths for Puerto Rico in 2021 was 27.0 per 100,000 inhabitants, 52.5 in men and 4.0 in women.

Of the 880 violent deaths recorded in 2021, 639 were homicides (72.6%). The majority of homicides occurred between the ages of 15 and 39. In these age groups, 73.1% of all homicides occur among men and 59.5% among women. The primary mechanism of the homicides was firearms. In Puerto Rico, according to the report, 91.5% of homicides were committed with firearms, more than double the global average of 47.0%.

In 2021, the majority of homicides occurred in an environment of collective violence. In 358 of the 639 homicides (56.0%) recorded in 2021, they occurred in a context related to criminal groups, involved in the trafficking of illegal drugs.

In 2021, 31 fatal victims of family violence were reported. Family violence (violence between family members) includes child or adult abuse and violence against an intimate partner. The majority of these cases were related to violence in an intimate or former partner environment (20 cases, 64.5%). There were 11 fatal incidents among family members (35.5%). The majority of victims of intimate partner violence were women (18 cases, 90.0%). More than half of these women were victims of their current spouse or partner (61.1%), while 38.9% were victims of their ex-spouse or ex-partner. In addition, a firearm was used in 11 of the 18 femicides/femicides (61.1%).

As for suicides in Puerto Rico, the report highlights that the frequency is lower than that of homicides. However, as in homicides, suicides are more frequent in men (86.5%). In 2021, the crude suicide rate was 6.6 per 100,000 inhabitants, 12.0 in men (1 of 124 men) and 1.7 in women (1 of 774 women). The main mechanism was asphyxiation (64.5% in men and 55.2% in women).

Mariluz Bezares Salinas, Manager of Statistical Projects at the Institute and co-principal investigator of the Report on Violent Deaths in Puerto Rico, explained that the collection of this type of data could involve fieldwork that takes more than two years, from the moment the incident occurs until the collection and review of the data is completed.

“This system for reporting violent deaths is a reliable, complete and unique reference source that helps describe the context of violent deaths in the victim-aggressor relationship and the magnitude, trend and characteristics of violent deaths in Puerto Rico,” said Dr. Diego Zavala, epidemiologist and co-principal investigator of the PRVDRS.

For the Executive Director of the Institute, Dr. Orville M. Disdier, these statistics are one of the main tools to combat the phenomenon of violence in Puerto Rico. “These data, among others, serve as the basis for establishing effective measures for the prevention of violence in Puerto Rico, from multiple social, health and economic approaches. Our commitment at the Institute is to continue strengthening this statistical and epidemiological system, to continue improving the quality of this type of data,” argued Dr. Disdier.

The PRVDRS is an epidemiological surveillance system affiliated with the Institute of Statistics and designed to obtain a complete and standardized census of violent deaths in Puerto Rico. The PRVDRS began its participation in the National Violent Death Notification System (National Violent Death Reporting System, NVDRS) in September 2016, through a collaborative agreement granted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute is an autonomous governmental entity responsible for coordinating the Government's statistical production service to ensure that the data collection and statistics systems, on which public policies are based, are complete, reliable, and have quick and universal access.

For more information you can visit the website: https://estadisticas.pr/en/prvdrs or write to preguntas@estadisticas.pr. They can also follow social networks through Facebook (@estadisticas .pr), X (@EstadisticasPR), LinkedIn (Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico) and Instagram (@institutodeestadisticas) accounts.

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