Surviving the Transition: Trends and Perceptions of Crime in South Africa

Crime and violence have dominated South Africa's transformation over the past two decades. High crime rates cause widespread feelings of insecurity and fear which undermine popular confidence in the democratisation process. Considering both trends and public perceptions, this paper explores changing crime levels over the past decade, elaborating on the problems associated with crime statistics in South Africa, and the salience of the transition for current crime levels. Data is drawn from official police statistics and from victimisation and other surveys. Crime has been increasing gradually in South Africa since 1980. It is, however, since 1990 and not more recently as is popularly believed, that levels have risen sharply. An examination of the statistics shows that despite general increases, not all crimes have been committed with equal frequency and not all areas of the country are similarly affected. These trends are a product of the political transition and are associated with the effects of apartheid and political violence, the breakdown in the criminal justice system and more recently, the growth in organised crime. High crime levels are taking their toll on South Africans. Surveys show that crime rather than socio-economic issues now dominates people's concerns, and that fear of crime is increasing. Currently, fewer people feel safe and believe the government has the situation under control than in previous years. Faced with widespread unemployment on the one hand, and the prospects of development on the other, levels of property crimes will probably continue to increase. While violent crime levels should decline over the medium term, improved relations with the police and a culture of reporting crimes like rape and assault may result in more crime being recorded.     

Forschungsfeld geografische Kriminalstrukturanalyse

This paper introduces a research interface between urban sociology and criminology, which has experienced a tremendous development elsewhere, but has been neglected as an own scientific field of research in Austria. A ?Geographic crime-patterns analysis“ represents an interesting and germane discipline for both qualitative- and quantitative- oriented social scientists. With regard to comprehensive crime prevention the discussion about the ?future of crime control institutions“ does not only evolve around crime prevention techniques, but also and foremost addresses elaborated methods of crime analysis. A sociological analysis of crime builds on the grounds of criminalistics: Crime hot spots are correlated with socio-demographic and spatial data as social conditions of the lifeworld in order to elaborate a theory of crime-opportunities and finally to inform authorities concerned with public safety. Once the police has realised that they can only guarantee public safety in collaboration with social and housing authorities, they must also accept an approach for a comprehensive analysis of crime statistics with regard to social phenomena. This paper shall present the scientific potential of a geographic analysis of crime.     

Jill Meagher CCTV

“Jill Meagher CCTV,” the security camera recording of Melbourne woman Jill Meagher's last minutes alive, registered more than 677,000 views on YouTube by early 2014. Little happens for most of its 232 seconds and, as would be expected with surveillance footage, there is no sound. In Australia, “Jill Meagher CCTV” forms part of a haunting iconography of a rape and murder victim that not only resonates with fictional narratives in other places, but also influences the way the Jill Meagher story, as a whole, is read. As Melissa Jane Hardie (2010) suggests of the “true crime” story (citing Bronski 2005, 29), the public reaction to high profile stories of violent crime “is often an emblematic cultural citation that represents a social problem or fixation.” This article considers “Jill Meagher CCTV” as such a cultural citation and goes further by highlighting its gothic tendencies. Highlighting the gothic aspects of “Jill Meagher CCTV” resonates with surrounding narratives of violence and gender justice, which have material consequences for women in the way that the most prevalent forms of violence against women continue to be downplayed in those narratives.     

Do anti-bullying laws work? New evidence on school safety and youth violence

This study is the first to comprehensively examine the effect of state anti-bullying laws (ABLs) on school safety and youth violence. Using existing data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveys and the Uniform Crime Reports, and newly-collected data on school shootings, we find little evidence that the typical state ABL is effective in improving school safety and student well-being. However, this null finding masks substantial policy heterogeneity. State mandates that require school districts to implement strong, comprehensive anti-bullying policies are associated with a 7 to 13 % reduction in school violence and an 8 to 12 % reduction in bullying. In addition, our results show that strong anti-bullying policy mandates are associated with a reduction in minor teen school shooting deaths and violent crime arrests, suggesting potentially important spillover effects.     

What can television do? Cultural representations of border violence in FX’s The Bridge

FX’s The Bridge uses the two decades of violence against women in Juárez, Mexico, as a backdrop for a crime procedural drama about a serial killer. While there is a long history of cultural activism about the murders, The Bridge is the first mainstream television show to address the violence. I argue that while the show repeatedly centers police and journalists rather than community organizers, and thus limits the possibility of representing the social geography of the US–Mexico border, its moments of contradiction open up more complicated ways to understand the violence.     

Outside Looking In: The Community Impacts of Anti-Lesbian,Gay, and Bisexual Hate Crime

Hate crime scholars have long argued that the harms of hate crime extend beyond the immediate victim to negatively impact the victim’s reference community. However, this assertion is speculative and in need of empirical support. Utilizing focus group data from 15 people who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or pansexual, this pilot study explored the extent to which the harms of anti-LGB hate crime spread beyond the immediate victim to impact nonvictims in the LGB community. The findings suggest that anti-LGB hate violence can have profound and negative effects on the psychological and emotional well-being of nonvictims who are LGB and may result in dramatic behavioral change as well. The findings also indicate that hate violence negatively affected participants’ decisions to disclose their sexual orientation to others. On a more positive note, however, awareness of such violence may also mobilize some people within the LGB community.     

Gender violence: transgender experiences with violence and discrimination

There is a pervasive pattern of discrimination and prejudice against transgendered people within society. Both economic discrimination and experiencing violence could be the result of a larger social climate that severely sanctions people for not conforming to society's norms concerning gender; as such, both would be strongly associated with each other. Questionnaires were distributed to people either through events or through volunteers, and made available upon the World Wide Web. A sample of 402 cases was collected over the span of 12 months (April 1996-April 1997). We found that over half the people within this sample experienced some form of harassment or violence within their lifetime, with a quarter experiencing a violent incident. Further investigation found that experiencing economic discrimination because one is transgendered had the strongest association with experiencing a transgender related violent incident. Economic discrimination was related to transgendered people's experience with violence. Therefore, both hate crimes legislation and employment protections are needed for transgendered individuals.     

The effect of child maltreatment on illegal and problematic behaviour: new evidence on the ‘cycle of violence’ using twins data

This paper investigates the effect of physical and sexual child maltreatment on several types of illegal and problematic behaviour. By using variation within pairs of twins, we are able to mitigate concerns about confounding factors from previous studies. Using ordinary least squares and twin fixed effects estimation approaches, we find that child maltreatment has a large effect on illegal and problematic behaviours such as drug abuse, conduct disorders, and crime. The estimated effects suggest an increase of illegal and problematic behaviour between 50 and 100%. Our findings are consistent with the so-called cycle of violence hypothesis.     

Effects of Group Practice of the Transcendental Meditation Program on Preventing Violent Crime in Washington,D.C.: Results of the National Demonstration Project,June--July 1993

This paper reports the results of a prospective experiment in which a group of approximately 4,000 participants in the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi assembled in Washington, D.C., from June 7 to July 30, 1993. It was hypothesized that levels of violent crime in the District of Columbia would fall substantially during the Demonstration Project, as a result of the group's effect of increasing coherence and reducing stress in the collective consciousness of the District. A 27-member Project Review Board comprising independent scientists and leading citizens approved the research protocol and monitored the research process. Weekly crime data was derived from database records provided by the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department (DCMPD), which are used in the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Statistical analysis considered the effect of weather variables, daylight, historical crime trends and annual patterns in the District of Columbia, as well as trends in neighboring cities. Consistent with previous research, levels of homicides, rapes and assaults (HRA crimes) correlated with average weekly temperature. Robberies approximately followed an annually recurring cycle. Time series analysis of 1993 data, controlling for temperature, showed that HRA crimes dropped significantly during the Demonstration Project, corresponding with increases in the size of the group; the maximum decrease was 23.3% (p < 2 × 10–9) [24.6% using a longer baseline, with 1988--1993 data (p < 3 × 10–5)], coincident with the peak number of participants in the group during the final week of the assembly. When the same period in each of the five previous years was examined, no significant decreases in HRA crimes were found. Robberies did not decrease significantly. However, a model that jointly estimated the effect of the Demonstration Project on both HRA crimes and robberies showed a significant reduction in violent crimes overall of 15.6% (p = 0.0008). Further analysis showed that the effect of the coherence-creating group on reducing HRA crimes could not be accounted for by additional police staffing. The time series analysis for HRA crimes gave results that are highly robust to alternative model specifications, and showed that the effect of the group size was cumulative and persisted after the Demonstration Project ended. Also, calculation of the steady state gain based on the time series model predicted that a permanent group of 4,000 coherence-creating experts in the District would have a long-term effect of reducing HRA crimes by 48%.     

Living on the Edge: Neighborhood Boundaries and the Spatial Dynamics of Violent Crime

Neighborhood boundaries are a defining aspect of highly segregated urban areas. Yet, few studies examine the particular challenges and spatial processes that occur at the bordering region between two neighborhoods. Extending the growing literature on spatial interdependence, this article argues that neighborhood boundaries—defined as sharp changes in the racial or socioeconomic composition of neighborhoods—are a salient feature of the spatial structure with implications for violent crime and other outcomes. Boundaries lack the social control and cohesion of adjacent homogeneous areas, are contested between groups provoking intergroup conflict, and create opportunities for criminal behavior. This article presents evidence linking racial neighborhood boundaries to increased violent crime. The findings illustrate the importance of neighborhood boundaries for our understanding of spatial dimensions of population dynamics above and beyond the characteristics of neighborhoods.     

Crime and perceptions after a decade of democracy

Crime has become central to any discussion about the consolidation of democracy in South Africa. Concerns about crime intensified in the years after 1994, as the country attempted to grapple with the apparent ‘crime wave’ that accompanied the transition. A decade later crime is still a priority for government and a concern among citizens, but the clamour that characterised both state and civil society responses in the early years of democracy has receded (See the article by the author in Social Indicators Research 41: 137–168, 1997). This may relate to the decrease in crime levels as reflected by various statistical sources. It is also possible that those whose voices were heard most loudly on the issue – the middle classes – have taken all available measures to protect their property and lives from crime. In all likelihood, South Africans have become accustomed to living in a violent society, and one in which other equally serious problems now require attention. Although the national obsession with crime has waned, the available data nevertheless indicate that the problem still affects many thousands of lives. The impact of crime – in terms of the costs of victimisation, negative perceptions and fear, and the cost of responding to crime – remains high for South African society. This paper considers how crime levels and perceptions about crime and safety have changed over the past decade, and what these trends tell us about the country 10 years into our democracy.     

The age of extremes: Concentrated affluence and poverty in the twenty-first century

Urbanization, rising income inequality, and increasing class segregation have produced a geographic concentration of affluence and poverty throughout the world, creating a radical change in the geographic basis of human society. As the density of poverty rises in the environment of the world’s poor, so will their exposure to crime, disease, violence. and family disruption. Meanwhile the spatial concentration of affluence will enhance the benefits and privileges of the rich. In the twenty-first century the advantages and disadvantages of one’s class position will be compounded and reinforced through ecological mechanisms made possible by the geographic concentration of affluence and poverty, creating a deeply divided and increasingly violent social world.     

Ethnic Diversity,Social Exclusion and Economic Determinants of Crimes: A Case Study of Pakistan

The eventual objective of social disciplines is to ensure the existence of peaceful and prosperous societies through the provision and protection of property rights for all segments of society. The deprived and socially excluded persons attempt to violate the formal rules and informal norms of the society. Developing countries have been facing rapidly increased number of violators of rules and norms, causing to higher crime rate which confronts multifarious ethnic problems, religion, multi-lingual problems. The case of Pakistan dose not varies when our study consider socioeconomic causes of crimes i.e. ethnic diversity and social exclusion. Present study is a contribution in this blistering issue, particularly in case of Pakistan. Therefore, our study explores the socioeconomic determinants of crime rate in Pakistan, by using bound testing and auto regressive distributive lag technique for the data period of 1970–2015. The estimated results reveal that ethnic diversity, social exclusion and deterrence have positive and significant impact on property, violence crime rates, and on overall crimes in Pakistan. While per capita income and population density, both have negative and significant impact on property and violence crimes.     

Officer friendly and the tough cop:gays and lesbians navigate homophobia and policing

Despite attempts to expand social diversity, policing is still dominated by a white, masculine, heterosexual ethos. As a consequence, employment of lesbians and gay men as police officers may be especially threatening to members of this occupation. Within the context of potential hostility and homophobia, nontraditional officers must negotiate their contradictory presence on the police force. This paper investigates that negotiation. Using the Bem Sex Role Inventory and open-ended survey data from a sample of "out" and "closeted" gay and lesbian police officers, we ask how gays and lesbians manage their images as "good cops" in the face of gender norm violations associated with their sexual orientation. Our findings indicate that masculinity and femininity do not hold together in a cohesive, dichotomous manner for these officers. Instead, other characteristics that enhance policing are emphasized to support their occupational competence. These officers see themselves as "good cops." The gendered/sexualized character of their self-perceptions appears to matter less than the context of the job, more than for a comparison sample of heterosexual police officers. We conclude that although gay and lesbian officers see their sexuality as an occupational asset, they are also likely to work harder to prove themselves as crime fighters.     

Exposure to Violence,Coping Strategies,and Diagnosed Mental Health Problems Among Adults in a Migrant-Sending Community in Central Mexico

Deadly violence has spread throughout Mexico, affecting the well-being of citizens. What is the impact of this violence on the daily lives of Mexican adults? Building upon the stress process model, we used a mixed-methods approach to examine relationships between multiple indicators of exposure to and fear of violence and four diagnosed mental health outcomes, as well as self-rated mental health, in a Mexican community using the Survey of Health and Mexican Migration (456 surveys; 49 interviews). The multivariate models provide evidence that perceptions of insecurity are associated with diagnosed depressive episode, agoraphobia, alcohol abuse, a total count of mental health conditions, and poor self-rated mental health. Past victimization is associated with anxiety. Stress and coping behaviors did not formally mediate these violence–mental illness associations. The qualitative results confirm that residents fear violence and cope by adjusting their personal behaviors. These results foreshadow the emergence of mental health conditions as a critical public health concern for Mexicans living under the threat of violence.     

Gewalt in ihren Deutungen

The article addresses relations between violence and culture. One central characteristic of violence is its culturality. Violent interactions, as well as fantasies of violence, depend on cultural patterns of meaning. A certain act of violence can be interpreted differently from one culture to the other. At the same time, cultures generate specific forms of violence. Violence is imagined, enacted and interpreted in cultural opportunity spaces. These do not necessarily limit violence to the forms already known, but they do shape their developments. The culturality of violence is countered by the possibility of its purposive culturalization. Violent action is open to interpretation, this is, multiple and disparate meanings can be given to a certain act. Also, violence is tightly connected with power. These two characteristics predestine violence as an object of conflicts about definitions. Certain meanings of violence can be propagated and thus used politically, which may also influence further violent actions. Confronting these two relations between violence and culture, the problem is addressed as to how sociological research on violence can, on the one hand, take into account the culturality of violence without, on the other hand, adopting purposeful culturalizations of violent phenomena by political forces, instead of probing into them analytically.     

Violence as Mediating Variable in Mental Health Disparities Associated to Sexual Orientation Among Mexican Youths

ABSTRACT

In this study, we explored the role of sex as an effect-modifying variable in the association between sexual orientation and mental health in Mexican youth. In addition, we tested if violent experiences in the family and the school and attitudes toward homosexuality could act as mediating variables in such association. Data from three representative surveys performed in 2007, 2009, and 2013 among Mexican high school students were analyzed. Two dimensions of sexual orientation were evaluated: romantic partnership and sexual behavior. The outcomes were negative and positive mood, suicidal ideation and intent, self-concept, and self-esteem. There were differences by gender because in males, there were more disparities in mental health associated with sexual orientation (suicidal ideation and attempt, negative and positive mood, negative self-concept, and family-related self-esteem) than in females (suicidal ideation and negative mood). Experiences of school violence were mediators in the relationship between sexual orientation and most health outcomes in males.