Determinants of fear of crime in Brazil

While some studies suggest that the nature of one´s interactions with the community influences one’s perceived risk of criminal victimization, only a few pieces of research have tested this association in Brazil. Using four previously existing Brazilian victimization surveys, we conducted logistic models to examine whether social ties and social cohesion are associated with perceived risk and fear of crime. The results showed that only in some contexts did social cohesion manifest an association with fear of crime. Specifically, two components of social cohesion may be relevant for this purpose: trusting neighbours and getting help; and the ability to distinguish neighbours from strangers in the street.

Crime under Lockdown: The Impact of COVID-19 on Citizen Security in the City of Buenos Aires

This paper studies the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown on criminal activity in the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. We find a large, significant, robust, and immediate decline in crime following quarantine restrictions. We observe the effect on property crime reported to official agencies, police arrests, and crime reported in victimization surveys, but not in homicides. The decrease in criminal activity was greater in business and transportation areas, but still large in commercial and residential areas (including informal settlements). After the sharp and immediate fall, crime recovered but, as of November 2020, it did not reach its initial levels. The arrest data additionally allow us to measure the distance from the detainees address to the crime location. Crime became more local as mobility was restricted.

Methodological Issues in the International Study of Victimization

Victimization studies, which became popular in the 1970s, are largely based on surveys of the population. As of the late 1980s, the potential for internationally comparable surveys emerged with the first round of the International Crime Victim Survey (ICVS). Starting from early international studies and using the ICVS as a prominent example, an examination of the characteristics of victimization surveys is given, both in terms of content and methodology, their potential and limits, which make them suitable for international use. Multi-country surveys can provide indications from different countries about major crime problems, the most vulnerable population groups at risk of victimization, and perceptions and opinions about fear of crime and the performance of delegated authorities. Victimization surveys initially covered several types of conventional crime directly experienced by respondents and progressively expanded and specialized to measure bribery and corruption, both among individuals and businesses, as well as violence against women through dedicated surveys. Considering that surveys are an effective tool to measure crime and victims’ perceptions where institutional capacity is weak, the possibility to bridge knowledge gaps and engage developing countries has been identified as a major potential. Despite some methodological challenges, further use and expansion of victimization surveys is in progress (e.g., for measuring some indicators for Sustainable Development Goals [SDG]).

Small Area Estimation for Crime Analysis

Victimization surveys provide key information about crimes known and unknown to the police, and are the main source of data to analyze perceived safety and trust in the police. These surveys, however, are only designed to allow the aggregation of responses and production of reliable direct estimates (i.e., weighted means or totals) at very large spatial scales, such as countries or states. Sample sizes are generally too small to produce direct estimates of adequate precision at the increasingly refined spatial scales of the criminology of place. Model-based small area estimation may be used to increase the reliability of small area estimates produced from victimization surveys. Small area estimation techniques are designed to produce reliable estimates of parameters of interest (and their associated measures of error) for areas for which only small or zero sample sizes are available. In 2008, the US Panel to Review the Programs of the Bureau of Justice Statistics recommended the use of small area estimation to produce subnational estimates of crime. Since then, these techniques have been applied to study many variables of interest in criminology. This chapter introduces theory and a step-by-step exemplar study in R to show the utility of small area estimation to analyze crime and place. Small area estimates of trust in the police are produced from European Social Survey data.

Violence and Avoidance Behavior: The Case of the Mexican Drug War

This paper examines the effect of violence, originated from the Mexican Drug War, on avoidance behavior. The analysis uses three different variables to capture avoidance behavior by easiness to do, during the past year: refrained from going out at night (easy-to-avoid), refrained from carrying cash (medium-to-avoid) and refrained from using public transportation (hard-to-avoid). Data comes from different government sources and crime victimization surveys. Results suggest a violence effect of 6.72% on refrained from going out at night, 3.52% on refrained from carrying cash and 1.20% on refrained from using public transportation.

5. Understanding recent trends in crime

What is happening to crime? Are things getting better or worse, and in what ways? ‘Understanding recent trends in crime’ examines recorded crime trends and data from victimization surveys from America, Canada, England and Wales, and Australia. All four Western democracies display similar patterns: rising crime in the post-war years, hitting a peak somewhere between the late 1980s and late 1990s, then falling steeply for the fifteen‒twenty-five years since. This leaves two big questions: why did crime increase in the early decades after the Second World War; and, why has it been declining in the past fifteen‒twenty-five years? The reasons for the post-war crime explosion are discussed.

4. How do we measure crime?

‘How do we measure crime?’ considers the two main measures that are generally used for counting crime—information from law enforcement bodies and victimization surveys—looking at the pros and cons of different approaches and outlining a series of provisos or caveats. Law enforcement statistics do not include all crimes, they are not consistent, not all crime is reported, and not all reported crime is recorded. Despite crime surveys indicating that fewer than one in two crimes are reported to law enforcement, it is thought that they also under-report. Other issues with crime surveys concern their sampling procedures and targeting of individuals only and not businesses.

Participatory design of a thematic questionnaire in the field of victimization studies

The paper introduces the results of a two-step process that led to the design of a new questionnaire in the field of victimization studies. A desk-based review of national Crime and Victimization Surveys from five EU countries was performed and resulted in identifying opportunities to improve the consistency among these surveys as well as the need to include more independent variables in order to measure fear of crime and its correlation with sociological variables. Then 12 experts in survey-based measures of crime-related issues were involved in a Delphi panel with the objective of enhancing a participatory design of a new questionnaire addressing individual and space-based determinants of the perception of insecurity, which has been poorly explored to date.