Youth and social cohesion in Ibero-America: a model in the making. Summary

Includes bibliography

Criminalidade e urbanização: estudo das relações espaciais e multivariada dos crimes de tráfico de drogas e homicídio

Estudos sobre a violência urbana vêm sendo realizados no Brasil buscando encontrar correlações e associações significativas entre taxas de homicídio e/ou tráfico de drogas e indicadores sociais ou econômicos. Esses estudos costumam utilizar como unidade de análise as divisões administrativas oficiais: regiões, estados, municípios e bairros. Entretanto, não tem sido tarefa simples o desafio de encontrar evidências empíricas a respeito da relação positiva entre fenômenos socioeconômicos e taxas de homicídio e/ou tráfico de drogas no nível intraurbano. Neste sentido este trabalho tem o objetivo de estudar as relações espaciais e multivariada dos crimes de tráfico de drogas e homicídio e a urbanizaçã do município de Belém-PA. Inicialmente aplicou-se a técnica estatística análise descritiva para evidenciar as taxas dos crimes de tráfico de drogas e homicídio nos bairros de Belém. Em seguida, aplicou-se a técnica estatística multivariada análise fatorial, o que permitiu estimar os escores fatoriais, a partir dos quais pôde-se construir o índice de qualidade de urbanização (IQU), baseado em indicadores socioeconômicos e ambientais da cidade de Belém, permitindo a classificação dos bairros em péssimo, ruim, regular, bom e ótimo, de acordo com os atributos de cada bairro. Em seguida, de posse do índice de urbanização e das taxas de tráfico de drogas e homicídio pôde-se submeter esses dados a técnica estatística multivariada análise de correspondência, cujo objetivo foi averiguar o nível de correlação (associação positiva ou negativa) entre essas variáveis. Dessa maneira, dentre os principais resultados pôde-se observar que bairros com baixa urbanização estão associados à moderada ou alta taxa de tráfico de drogas e alta taxa de homicádio. Bairros com alta urbanização estão associados à baixa taxa de tráfico de drogas e baixa taxa de homicídio. Assim como, bairros com baixa taxa de tráfico de drogas possuem baixa taxa de homicídio e bairros com alta taxa de tráfico de drogas possuem alta taxa de homicídio no município de Belém.

Homicídio em Marabá: a desinformação da informação na construção do perfil da vítima, do agressor e do delito

Visando investigar a real dimensão dos homicídios no município de Marabá, localizado a sudeste do estado do Pará, este trabalho teve como propósito construir e analisar o perfil do delito e da vítima de homicídio e mostrar como a desinformação da informação dos registros de homicídio em Marabá implica a construção desses perfis e não construção do perfil do agressor. Para tanto, utilizou-se os dados dos registros das ocorrências de homicídio notificados no município, no período de janeiro de 2010 a setembro de 2013. A técnica estatística descritiva foi utilizada para escrever o perfil da vítima e do delito e posteriormente, foi calculada a taxa de homicídio no município para se ter uma real dimensão do problema. Destaca-se que houve dificuldades na construção do perfil da vítima e a impossibilidade de construção do perfil do agressor, devido à precariedade do preenchimento do boletim de ocorrência policial. Existe uma predominância de ocorrência de homicídios com pessoas do sexo masculino e jovens, com idade de 18 a 24 anos. O município de Marabá apresenta taxas de homicídios alarmantes, sendo aproximadamente 5 vezes maiores que as taxas de homicídios da capital do estado, Belém.

A potencialização dos homicídios no contexto do espaço social: o caso de Belém do Pará

Essa dissertação tem por objetivo apresentar os fatores que potencializam a incidência de homicídios no contexto do espaço social em Belém do Pará, no período de 2007 a 2010. Para tanto, o mapeamento dos homicídios foi utilizado para analisar a dinâmica deste crime violento. A partir da espacialização das ocorrências foi possível notar que sua distribuição não é uniforme e ao longo dos anos de 2004 a 2007 se concentrou mais em umas áreas que outras. Alguns bairros se destacaram pelo fato do desfecho de conflitos sociais resultarem em altas taxas de homicídios. Nesse contexto e tendo como fundamento explicações postuladas na literatura especializada a cerca do tema concluí-se que a precariedade ou ausência dos serviços públicos de responsabilidade do Município são fatores que podem estar potencializando as taxas de homicídio em alguns bairros. Em locais assim, fica claro que atuação do Estado Democrático de Direito não é eficiente no sentido de garantir direitos fundamentais, como a vida, a liberdade, a igualdade e a segurança ao cidadão.

Spatial regimes: dynamics of intentional homicides in the city of Sao Paulo between 2000 and 2008

Objective. To identify the existence of spatial and temporal patterns in the occurrence of intentional homicides in the municipality of Sao Paulo (MSP), Brazil, and to discuss the analytical value of taking such patterns into account when designing studies that address the dynamics and factors associated with the incidence of homicides. Methods. A longitudinal ecological study was conducted, having as units of analysis 13 205 census tracts and the 96 census districts that congregate these sectors in Sao Paulo. All intentional homicides reported in the city between 2000 and 2008 were analyzed. The gross homicide rates per 100 000 population was calculated as well as the global and local Bayesian estimates for each census tract during the study period. To verify the possibility of identifying different patterns of the spatial distribution of homicides, we used BoxMap and Moran's I index. Results. The homicide trends in the city of Sao Paulo in the last decade were not homogeneous and systematic. Instead, seven patterns of spatial distribution were identified; that is, seven spatial regimes for the occurrence of intentional homicides, considering the homicide rates within each census tract as well as the rates in adjacent tracts. These spatial distribution regimes were not contained within the limits of the census tracts and districts. Conclusions. The results show the importance of analyzing the spatial distribution of social phenomena without restriction of political and administrative boundaries.

Explaining the Long-Term Trend in Violent Crime: A Heuristic Scheme and Some Methodological Considerations

There has been a discontinuous but fairly persistent long-term decline in homicide rates in core European countries since about 1500. Since the 1950s, however, we observe an upward trend in violent crime not only in Europe but in almost all of the economically advanced nations that combine democratic political structures with free-market economies. The paper presents an explanatory scheme designed to account for both, the long decline and its apparent reversal. The theoretical model draws heavily upon ideas taken from the sociological work of Emile Durkheim and Norbert Elias—with some modifications and extensions. It seeks to integrate sociological and historical perspectives and to give due weight to both, structural and developmental forces. A key hypothesis is that the pacifying effects of the erosion of traditional collectivism can only be maintained to the extent by which “cooperative individualism” dominates over against the forces of “disintegrative individualism.” Some suggestions are made concerning the selection of appropriate indicators and the handling of methodological problems related to causal attribution.

Modernity Strikes Back? A Historical Perspective on the Latest Increase in Interpersonal Violence (1960-1990)

There is a plethora of criminological explanations why criminal violence increased during the three decades between the early 1960s and the early 1990s. This paper argues that most available interpretations are lacking in three respects: they lack a historical perspective that anchors the three critical decades in a wider understanding of long-term trends; they take the nation-state as their unit of analysis and disregard important commonalities across the Western world; and they pay insufficient attention to different trends in broad categories of physical violence.This paper therefore takes a macro-level and long-term perspective on violent crime, focussing on European homicide during the past 160 years. It demonstrates that the period of increase was preceded by a long-term decline and convergence of homicide rates from the 1840s to the 1950s. Also, it shows that both the decline and the increase primarily resulted from temporal variation in the likelihood of physical aggression between men in public space. It argues that explanations of these common trends need to take into account broad long-term cultural change common to Western societies. In particular, the paper suggests that shifts in culturally transmitted and institutionally embedded ideals of the conduct of life may provide an explanation for long-term change in levels of interpersonal violence.

Firearm legislation and firearm mortality in the USA: a cross-sectional, state-level study.

BACKGROUND In an effort to reduce firearm mortality rates in the USA, US states have enacted a range of firearm laws to either strengthen or deregulate the existing main federal gun control law, the Brady Law. We set out to determine the independent association of different firearm laws with overall firearm mortality, homicide firearm mortality, and suicide firearm mortality across all US states. We also projected the potential reduction of firearm mortality if the three most strongly associated firearm laws were enacted at the federal level. METHODS We constructed a cross-sectional, state-level dataset from Nov 1, 2014, to May 15, 2015, using counts of firearm-related deaths in each US state for the years 2008-10 (stratified by intent [homicide and suicide]) from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System, data about 25 firearm state laws implemented in 2009, and state-specific characteristics such as firearm ownership for 2013, firearm export rates, and non-firearm homicide rates for 2009, and unemployment rates for 2010. Our primary outcome measure was overall firearm-related mortality per 100 000 people in the USA in 2010. We used Poisson regression with robust variances to derive incidence rate ratios (IRRs) and 95% CIs. FINDINGS 31 672 firearm-related deaths occurred in 2010 in the USA (10·1 per 100 000 people; mean state-specific count 631·5 [SD 629·1]). Of 25 firearm laws, nine were associated with reduced firearm mortality, nine were associated with increased firearm mortality, and seven had an inconclusive association. After adjustment for relevant covariates, the three state laws most strongly associated with reduced overall firearm mortality were universal background checks for firearm purchase (multivariable IRR 0·39 [95% CI 0·23-0·67]; p=0·001), ammunition background checks (0·18 [0·09-0·36]; p<0·0001), and identification requirement for firearms (0·16 [0·09-0·29]; p<0·0001). Projected federal-level implementation of universal background checks for firearm purchase could reduce national firearm mortality from 10·35 to 4·46 deaths per 100 000 people, background checks for ammunition purchase could reduce it to 1·99 per 100 000, and firearm identification to 1·81 per 100 000. INTERPRETATION Very few of the existing state-specific firearm laws are associated with reduced firearm mortality, and this evidence underscores the importance of focusing on relevant and effective firearms legislation. Implementation of universal background checks for the purchase of firearms or ammunition, and firearm identification nationally could substantially reduce firearm mortality in the USA. FUNDING None.

Beyond the Pay: Current Illicit Activities of the Armed Forces in Central America

The growth of criminal gangs and organized crime groups has created unprecedented challenges in Central America. Homicide rates are among the highest in the world, countries spend on average close to 10 percent of GDP to respond to the challenges of public insecurity, and the security forces are frequently overwhelmed and at times coopted by the criminal groups they are increasingly tasked to counter. With some 90 percent of the 700 metric tons of cocaine trafficked from South America to the United States passing through Central America, the lure of aiding illegal traffickers through provision of arms, intelligence, or simply withholding or delaying the use of force is enormous. These conditions raise the question: to what extent are militaries in Central America compromised by illicit ties to criminal groups? The study focuses on three cases: Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras. It finds that: Although illicit ties between the military and criminal groups have grown in the last decade, militaries in these countries are not yet “lost’ to criminal groups. Supplying criminal groups with light arms from military stocks is typical and on the rise, but still not common. In general the less exposed services, the navies and air forces, are the most reliable and effective ones in their roles in interdiction. Of the three countries in the study, the Honduran military is the most worrying because it is embedded in a context where civilian corruption is extremely common, state institutions are notoriously weak, and the political system remains polarized and lacks the popular legitimacy and political will needed to make necessary reforms. Overall, the armed forces in the three countries remain less compromised than civilian peers, particularly the police. However, in the worsening crime and insecurity context, there is a limited window of opportunity in which to introduce measures targeted toward the military, and such efforts can only succeed if opportunities for corruption in other sectors of the state, in particular in law enforcement and the justice system, are also addressed. Measures targeted toward the military should include: Enhanced material benefits and professional education opportunities that open doors for soldiers in promising legitimate careers once they leave military service. A clear system of rewards and punishments specifically designed to deter collusion with criminal groups. More effective securing of military arsenals. Skills and external oversight leveraged through combined operations, to build cooperation among those sectors of the military that have successful and clean records in countering criminal groups, and to expose weaker forces to effective best practices.

A Study of How Economic Attitudes Are Shaped by Environmental Shocks and Life Experiences

Social attitudes, attitudes toward financial risk and attitudes toward deferred gratification are thought to influence many important economic decisions over the life-course. In economic theory, these attitudes are key components in diverse models of behavior, including collective action, saving and investment decisions and occupational choice. The relevance of these attitudes have been confirmed empirically. Yet, the factors that influence them are not well understood. This research evaluates how these attitudes are affected by large disruptive events, namely, a natural disaster and a civil conflict, and also by an individual-specific life event, namely, having children.

By implementing rigorous empirical strategies drawing on rich longitudinal datasets, this research project advances our understanding of how life experiences shape these attitudes. Moreover, compelling evidence is provided that the observed changes in attitudes are likely to reflect changes in preferences given that they are not driven just by changes in financial circumstances. Therefore the findings of this research project also contribute to the discussion of whether preferences are really fixed, a usual assumption in economics.

In the first chapter, I study how altruistic and trusting attitudes are affected by exposure to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as long as ten years after the disaster occurred. Establishing a causal relationship between natural disasters and attitudes presents several challenges as endogenous exposure and sample selection can confound the analysis. I take on these challenges by exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in exposure to the tsunami and by relying on a longitudinal dataset representative of the pre-tsunami population in two districts of Aceh, Indonesia. The sample is drawn from the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR), a survey with data collected both before and after the disaster and especially designed to identify the impact of the tsunami. The altruistic and trusting attitudes of the respondents are measured by their behavior in the dictator and trust games. I find that witnessing closely the damage caused by the tsunami but without suffering severe economic damage oneself increases altruistic and trusting behavior, particularly towards individuals from tsunami affected communities. Having suffered severe economic damage has no impact on altruistic behavior but may have increased trusting behavior. These effects do not seem to be caused by the consequences of the tsunami on people’s financial situation. Instead they are consistent with how experiences of loss and solidarity may have shaped social attitudes by affecting empathy and perceptions of who is deserving of aid and trust.

In the second chapter, co-authored with Ryan Brown, Duncan Thomas and Andrea Velasquez, we investigate how attitudes toward financial risk are affected by elevated levels of insecurity and uncertainty brought on by the Mexican Drug War. To conduct our analysis, we pair the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS), a rich longitudinal dataset ideally suited for our purposes, with a dataset on homicide rates at the month and municipality-level. The homicide rates capture well the overall crime environment created by the drug war. The MxFLS elicits risk attitudes by asking respondents to choose between hypothetical gambles with different payoffs. Our strategy to identify a causal effect has two key components. First, we implement an individual fixed effects strategy which allows us to control for all time-invariant heterogeneity. The remaining time variant heterogeneity is unlikely to be correlated with changes in the local crime environment given the well-documented political origins of the Mexican Drug War. We also show supporting evidence in this regard. The second component of our identification strategy is to use an intent-to-treat approach to shield our estimates from endogenous migration. Our findings indicate that exposure to greater local-area violent crime results in increased risk aversion. This effect is not driven by changes in financial circumstances, but may be explained instead by heightened fear of victimization. Nonetheless, we find that having greater economic resources mitigate the impact. This may be due to individuals with greater economic resources being able to avoid crime by affording better transportation or security at work.

The third chapter, co-authored with Duncan Thomas, evaluates whether attitudes toward deferred gratification change after having children. For this study we also exploit the MxFLS, which elicits attitudes toward deferred gratification (commonly known as time discounting) by asking individuals to choose between hypothetical payments at different points in time. We implement a difference-in-difference estimator to control for all time-invariant heterogeneity and show that our results are robust to the inclusion of time varying characteristics likely correlated with child birth. We find that becoming a mother increases time discounting especially in the first two years after childbirth and in particular for those women without a spouse at home. Having additional children does not have an effect and the effect for men seems to go in the opposite direction. These heterogeneous effects suggest that child rearing may affect time discounting due to generated stress or not fully anticipated spending needs.

Our Past Betrays Us: Collective Memory, Homicide and Southern Lynching

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2013

Crime rates, male youth unemployment and real income in Australia: evidence from Granger causality tests

This article applies Granger causality tests to examine the relationship between seven different categories of property crime and violent crime against the person, male youth unemployment and real male average weekly earnings in Australia from 1964 to 2001 within a cointegration and vector error correction framework. It is found that fraud, homicide and motor vehicle theft are cointegrated with male youth unemployment and real male average weekly earnings. However, there is no evidence of a long-run relationship between either break and enter, robbery, serious assault or stealing with male youth unemployment and real male average weekly earnings.

Banks and the Racial Patterning of Homicide: A Study of Chicago Neighborhoods

While bank investment is a driving force behind neighborhood viability, few studies have directly examined the effects of bank loan practices on neighborhood crime rates. This paper proposes that residential bank loan policies help explain the higher rates of homicide in minority neighborhoods in Chicago compared to white neighborhoods. It finds that black and Latino neighborhoods would experience fewer homicides if more financial capital were infused into these neighborhoods. These findings suggest that neighborhoods are shaped profoundly by the decisions of external economic actors.