Articles

Structural Breaks and Crime Dynamics in Guyana: A Longitudinal Analysis of Serious Crimes, 1990-2025

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Crime and violence remain persistent structural challenges in Guyana, with important implications for governance, public safety, and socioeconomic development. This study examines long-term serious crime dynamics in Guyana from 1990 to 2025 using a quantitative longitudinal design. The analysis integrates descriptive statistics, trend regression, structural break analysis (Bai–Perron), and category-level decomposition to assess overall crime trends, differences across offence types, and the relative contribution of each crime category to aggregate crime patterns. Data were obtained from the Guyana Bureau of Statistics and include major offence categories such as murder, manslaughter, rape, wounding, burglary, larceny, arson, and other offences. The results indicate that total serious crime does not follow a statistically significant linear trend over time, but instead exhibits pronounced temporal fluctuations and distinct structural shifts around 1994, 2012, and 2017. Property-related offences dominate the crime structure, accounting for 86.92% of total recorded crime, compared with 11.66% for violent crime and 1.41% for other offences. Burglary and larceny emerge as the primary drivers of aggregate crime variation, while violent offences such as murder and manslaughter remain comparatively stable over time. Structural break analysis further reveals that different crime categories experience shifts at different points in time, reflecting heterogeneous underlying dynamics. Overall, the findings show that changes in total crime are largely driven by property-related offences rather than uniform changes across all crime types, highlighting the importance of category-specific analysis in understanding long-term crime patterns in Guyana.

Motor Vehicle Growth in Guyana (2000–2025): Statistical Trends, Forecasting, And Infrastructure Implications

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Motor vehicle registrations are a key indicator of transport demand, economic development, and infrastructure pressure. This study examines long-term trends in motor vehicle registrations in Guyana from 2000 to 2025 and generates forecasts for 2026–2030 using time-series modelling, including an ARIMA (0,1,0) model with drift.

The results show a strong and sustained increase in total vehicle registrations over the study period, rising from relatively low levels in the early 2000s to 38,346 vehicles in 2025. Growth is characterised by marked year-to-year volatility but a clear upward structural trend, particularly after the mid-2010s and the post-2020 period. Private cars remain the dominant category throughout, followed by motorcycles, both of which drive the overall expansion of motorisation. Commercial and specialised vehicle categories such as lorries, vans, buses, and hire cars show more moderate and stable growth patterns, reflecting their close link to economic activity.

Correlation analysis reveals consistently strong positive relationships across vehicle categories, indicating broad-based expansion of motorisation rather than isolated growth. Forecast results suggest that total vehicle registrations will continue to rise steadily, increasing from approximately 39,666 in 2026 to 44,948 in 2030. Diagnostic tests confirm the adequacy of the ARIMA model, with residuals behaving as white noise and acceptable forecast accuracy.

Overall, the findings indicate structurally persistent motorisation in Guyana, with significant implications for road infrastructure capacity, transport planning, and sustainable mobility policy.