Temporal evolution of homicide mortality in Brazilian capitals from 2005 to 2019

Purpose This study aims to improve our understanding of violence, focusing on the analysis of the relation between socioeconomic factors and homicide rates from 2005 to 2019 in Brazilian capitals. Design/methodology/approach Multilevel Poisson models were used to estimate the homicide risk in men and women. The response variable was the homicide rate. Fixed effects were estimated for age group, year and gross domestic product (GDP). Findings The average homicide rate over the 2005–2019 period was 5.83/100,000 and 83.72/100,000 for women and men, respectively. In both sexes, the homicide rates increased over the period. The highest mortality rates were observed in North and Northeastern capitals. The peak homicide rates were 2010–2014, the risk of homicide decreased as age increased, and the capitals with GDP lower than US$5,000 showed a greater homicide rate. Originality/value Brazil remains among the countries with the highest risk of homicide, especially in the north and northeast regions, where socioeconomic conditions are more unfavorable. The improvement of socioeconomic conditions may contribute to changing this situation.

National Culture and the Stream Analogy of Lethal Violence

This is the first study to explore the relationship between Inglehart and Baker’s national cultural measures and the stream analogy of lethal violence. Using data for 70 developed and developing countries, the regression analysis indicates that a country with self-expressionism or secularism is likely to have a high suicide rate relative to its homicide rate. In contrast, a country with a survivalism or traditionalism orientation is likely to have a high homicide rate relative to its suicide rate. This study suggests that national culture is related to the direction of lethal violence (i.e., suicide vs. homicide).

Assessing the Impact of Public Policy on Homicide Rates in Brazil: The Case of PRONASCI Program

The current study evaluates the impact of the National Public Security with Citizenship Program (PRONASCI) on the homicide rate in Brazilian municipalities. PRONASCI program was implemented in Brazilian metropolitan regions and urban territories with high violent crime rates in 2007. In this study, we have applied a spatial difference-in-differences model with matching approaches. Municipalities that did not receive funds from the program made up the control group. We found that the program was inefficient to reduce the homicide rate in all of the municipalities that had received funds from it, compared to those that had not, even considering their potential spatial spillover effects. This result was expected due to the program complexity, in particular due to its ineffective management and the resistance from municipalities to change with the program.

Norske drapsmenn (og kvinner) 1955-1982

Homicides are rare in Norway; the country’s homicide rate is among the lowest in the world (UNODC, 2013). This might be why homicides always receive attention in the national news. The topic has also received attention on a governmental level. Reducing the number of homicides is an expressed goal in several official reports. However, preventive efforts require knowledge. While a handful of studies have been conducted using a variety of disciplinary approaches and methods, several recent reports point out that homicide is not a prioritized research field in Norway (NOU 2010:3; FHI rapport, 2012; JBD, 2018). This is the first article from the project »Homicides in Norway, 1955-1982, a historical-criminological study«. Studies using historical methods on homicide in the contemporary era have not previously been conducted in Norway. The projects aim is to provide historical insight into the rates and patterns of Norwegian homicide during the period 1955 to 1982, based on material originally collected by psychologist Ragnar Christensen (1922-2011) over the course of three decades.

Spatial Externalities of Income Inequality on Security in Latin America

The aim of this research is to analyse the effect of income inequality on the homicide rate. The study is carried out in 18 Latin American countries for the period 2005–2018. The methodology used is the Generalized Least Squares (GLS) model and the data were obtained from World Development Indicators, the World Health Organization and the Inter-American Development Bank. Thus, the dependent variable is the homicide rate and the independent variable is income inequality. In addition, some control variables are included, such as: poverty, urban population rate, unemployment, schooling rate, spending on security and GDP per capita, which improve the consistency of the model. The results obtained through GLS model determine that inequality has a negative and significant effect on the homicide rate for high-income countries (HIC) and lower-middle-income countries (LMIC), whereas it is positive and significant for upper-middle-income countries (UMIC). On the other hand, the control variables show different results by group of countries. In the case of unemployment, it is not significant in any group of countries. Negative spatial dependence was found regarding spatial models such as: the spatial lag (SAR) and spatial error (SEM) method. In the spatial Durbin model (SDM), positive spatial dependence between the variables was corroborated. However, spatial auto-regressive moving average (SARMA) identified no spatial dependence. Under these results it is proposed: to improve productivity, education and improve the efficiency of security-oriented resources.

Terminal velocity: The speed of extortion in Guatemala City

Guatemala City is racked by the practice of extortion: the act of obtaining goods and/or money through the threat of force. Transportation workers are a particularly vulnerable population, with a homicide rate four times the national average. While social scientists, policy experts, and asylum advocates rightly observe that extortionists control territory, lost in this literature is an appreciation for how these violent actors also govern victims’ experience of time and velocity. This article, in response, develops ethnographically the concept of terminal velocity to assess how the violent extraction of payments from transportation workers routinely presses these drivers up against the practical limits of Guatemala City. This includes the downward pull of extortion, which compels them to drive at ever-increasing speeds, and the upward drag of road congestion, poor infrastructure, and human fatigue that inevitably caps their acceleration.

Economic governance and homicide: Some theory and empirics, 1990–2017

This article posits that free-market institutions and practices reduce economic distortions that provide rents for underground organizations, which ultimately form criminogenic environments. Rents from market distortions provide ‘lootable income’ that feeds ‘criminal organizations’, which rely on violence for enforcement of contracts. Using an index of economic freedom, this study contrasts several relevant measures of political freedoms, political discrimination of individuals and groups, and measures of equal access to state ‘goods’ as proxies for political legitimacy and discrimination on the homicide rate. Fixed effects regression results suggest robustly that economic freedom, not political legitimacy, inclusive politics, or state capacity, reduces the homicide rate, results that are stubbornly significant and substantively large. The basic results are robust to a barrage of model specifications, different sample sizes, and estimation strategies, including instrumental variables analysis. The evidence suggests that unusually high homicide rates might be based in quotidian organizational activities related to ‘illegal’ markets rather than to political grievance-based explanations relating to relative deprivation and political legitimacy. Countries wishing to encourage growth-promoting policies need not fear higher levels of interpersonal violence based on various arguments linking free-market policies to societal disarray.

Policing the Palestinian National Minority in Israel: An International Human Rights Perspective

Palestinians make up 64% of homicide victims in Israel, even though they constitute 20% of the population. The homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants in Arab towns in Israel is 5.5 times higher than in Jewish towns. The turbulent relationship between the police and Palestinian minority is a key factor for understanding high crime rates in Arab towns. This relationship can by characterised by over-policing political activities and under-policing ordinary crime. This article analyses the policing of the Palestinian minority in Israel from a human rights perspective. It suggests that the policing of the Palestinian citizens in Israel is inconsistent with international human rights standards. Furthermore, eradicating institutional bias against the Palestinian citizens within the police force requires broader political and constitutional changes.