THE four-lane highway that connects Venezuela’s third city, Valencia, with the port of Puerto Cabello is steep, twisting, pot-holed and dimly lit. Even in daylight it is treacherous and prone to landslides. At night it can be a death-trap. On the evening of January 6th, Mónica Spear, an actress and former Miss Venezuela, and her husband were both shot dead in their car by thieves after having an accident on the highway. Their five-year-old daughter, who witnessed the murder of her parents, suffered a bullet wound to the leg. Beyond the celebrity of the victims, which has prompted an outpouring of public grief and anger, there is little to distinguish this appalling crime from the daily horrors that have turned Venezuela into one of the most violent countries in the world. The government—first under President Hugo Chávez and, since April last year, his successor Nicolás Maduro—stopped publishing full murder statistics many years ago. But according to academic studies by the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (OVV), almost 25,000 homicides took place last year in this country of fewer than 30m people. That compares with under 5,000 homicides in 1998, the year before the current regime came to power.

The government denies the OVV’s figure, and claims to have reduced murders in 2013 by almost 18%. It is adept at attributing the violence to others. It has banned violent video games, and rails against “capitalist values” inherited from the old regime or fomented by its arch-enemy, “the empire” (ie, the United States). Once the transition to socialism is complete, its spokesmen argue, crime will naturally disappear.

Another favourite target is the opposition press. One newspaper was recently prosecuted for featuring on its front page a photograph of a large pool of blood, with the murder victim’s hand just visible. If it were not for sensationalist coverage by “bourgeois” media, the government claims, the public would not be suffering from the “sensation of insecurity” that causes millions to lock themselves indoors as soon as night falls.

Venezuela’s spiralling crime problem has a number of underlying causes: they include easy access to illegal weapons, a corrupt and overstretched judicial system, poorly trained and ill-equipped police, and the most violent prison system in the region. But most experts agree that sheer impunity is at the heart of it. More than 90% of murders go unpunished, and in the vast majority of cases the police make no arrests and cases languish uninvestigated. Only when a prominent individual like Ms Spear is the victim do the authorities vigorously commit resources to pursuing the murderers.

As is usual in such cases, within hours of the news of the double murder, the arrest of at least five suspects was announced. Mr Maduro promised an “iron hand” against violent criminals; General Miguel Rodríguez Torres, the interior minister, spoke of unspecified adjustments to police structures and operations as well as to existing anti-crime plans. Over the past decade, more than a score of such plans have come and gone without slowing the homicide rate.

On Wednesday, Ms Spear’s fellow actors marched on the parliament building in Caracas to demand action. In another part of the city teachers formed a human chain to protest over the murder of a university professor and his mother. But there is nothing yet to indicate that the government will carry out a radical overhaul of its crime policy. Meanwhile, for the criminals themselves, it is business as usual.