Measuring Household Wealth with Latent Trait Modelling: An Application to Malawian DHS Data

Public perceptions of crime and victimisation can influence an individual’s subjective well-being. Research into the impact of the fear of crime and victimisation on subjective well-being, however, has been limited; particularly with respect to the relative contributions of real versus perceived crime towards an individual’s self-reported life satisfaction. Improving our understanding of the relationship between crime and well-being is important, as public resources assigned to reducing or controlling crime could be assigned to addressing other social concerns. This paper extends the literature by exploring the contribution of real and perceived crime in an individual’s local area to their self-reported life satisfaction. Our results indicate that: (1) individuals’ perceptions of crime in their local area are far greater than actual levels of crime; (2) the gap between perceived and real crime is widening as real crime rates fall faster than the perceived rate of crime; (3) real crime rates detract more from an individual’s self-reported life satisfaction than perceived rates of crime; however, (4) perceived rates of crime have an adverse impact on life satisfaction beyond those associated with real crime; and (5) there is significant heterogeneity in the life satisfaction effects of real and perceived crime among groups of individuals. These results, together with empirical evidence highlighting successful strategies for moderating perceptions of crime, facilitate the development of more informed public policy that will improve individual life satisfaction and, ultimately, community well-being.     

上海流动人口犯罪特征及原因分析——透过新闻资料的梳理、分析

流动人口犯罪是目前城市犯罪的主要构成因素之一,上海流动人口犯罪比重已占到城市犯罪总数的60%左右,并呈继续上升趋势。透过新闻资料对上海流动人口犯罪特征及原因进行具体分析,可以看出上海流动人口犯罪表现出了犯罪的一些共性,也反映了上海城市犯罪的一些个性特征:侵财型犯罪比重大;流动人口共同结伙犯罪、团伙犯罪比重较大;犯罪成员年龄结构轻;犯罪发案时间季节性明显;罪案主要集中于城郊结合部。导致流动人口犯罪的首要因素是社会环境。因此,应加强社会公平性建设,加强城市流动人口社会保障制度建设,建立有效的流动人口管理机制和统一的流动人口管理机构,加强对流动人口的法制教育和技能培训。     

The Association Between the Fear of Crime,and Mental and Physical Wellbeing in New Zealand

Researchers have provided clear evidence that the fear of crime can lead to various mental health-related issues including anxiety and psychological distress. However, studies on the effects of fear of crime on physical health are limited. Adding to and extending this literature, we evaluated the association between fear of crime and mental and physical health outcomes in a new setting (New Zealand) and at a national scale. As an added contribution to the literature, we examined whether the fear of crime is independently associated with mental and physical wellbeing, regardless of neighbourhood crime rates. Using data from the New Zealand General Social Survey, the 2006 census and the New Zealand Police, we fitted linear and two-level hierarchical linear models regression models to assess the impact of fear of crime on mental and physical health, at varying stages of individual and area-level confounder adjustment. Even after adjusting for a number of individual- and area-level factors that are related to social inequalities in health in the country, a significant effect of increased fear of crime on lower mental and physical wellbeing was detected. We did not, however, detect significant independent effects for neighbourhood crime rates for either outcome. Our findings indicate that fear of crime, rather than recorded crime rates, was associated with detrimental mental and physical health outcomes. As such, efforts to not only reduce crime but perceived risk of crime could yield public health and social wellbeing benefits.     

教育对犯罪率的影响研究

在理论上,教育同时具有犯罪预防效应和犯罪扩张效应,因此,教育对犯罪率的净影响是不确定的,同时,不同层次的教育对犯罪率的影响也并非是单调的。文章以中国2000～2008年的地区数据为样本,研究发现,总体的教育扩张显著降低了中国的犯罪率,这主要受益于小学、初中和高中教育,且其犯罪预防效应随着教育层次的提高而递增;但大学教育不仅未能降低中国的犯罪率,反而还显著促增了诈骗一类的高技能型犯罪。     

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.     

Evaluations of Antigay Hate Crimes and Hate Crime Legislation: Independent and Differentially Predicted

Minimal studies have investigated individuals’ evaluations of antigay hate crimes and hate crime legislation simultaneously, with most research focusing on one or the other. In a sample of 246 heterosexual undergraduates, the present study found that evaluations of antigay hate crimes and hate crime legislation were unrelated. Higher social dominance orientation (SDO) and crime control orientation scores were associated with more positive evaluations of antigay hate crimes. Positive evaluations of hate crime legislation were associated with more positive attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. We also found that the relationship between SDO and evaluations were mediated by crime control beliefs (for hate crimes evaluations) and antigay attitudes (for hate crime legislation evaluations). The present findings have possible implications for the manner in which organizations advocate for the extension of hate crime legislation to include sexual orientation.     

Safety in urban neighborhoods: A comparison of physical characteristics and informal territorial control in high and low crime neighborhoods

This study addressed the issue of how some urban neighborhoods maintain a relatively low level of crime despite their physical proximity and social similarity to high crime areas. The study explored differences in physical characteristics and various dimensions of the concept of territoriality in three pairs of neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia. Neighborhoods within pairs were adjacent and were matched on racial composition and economic status but had distinctly different crime levels. The results indicated that differences in physical characteristics distinguished between matched high and low crime neighborhoods to a far greater extent than did differences in the measures of territoriality. The flow of outsiders into and out of low crime neighborhoods was inhibited because land use was more homogeneously residential, there were fewer major arteries, and boundary streets were less traveled than was the case in high crime neighborhoods. There were relatively few differences in informal territorial control between high and low crime neighborhoods. Where differences existed, informal territorial control was more characteristic of high crime than of low crime neighborhoods.This paper is based on a larger study funded by the Community Crime Prevention Division, National Institute of Justice (Grant No. 79-NI-AX-0080). This study was completed when the senior author was at the Research Triangle Institute. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Dr. Stephanie Greenberg, Social Systems Research and Evaluation Division, Denver Research Institute, University of Denver, Denver, CO 80208.     

Crime and Crime Control

Social Indicators Research - This article provides an overall picture of crime and crime control in Korea over the past 30 years. By using official crime data, we examined general trends and...     

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.     

Dynamic Reflections of Crimes,Quasi Democracy and Misery Index in Pakistan

Massive increase in crimes has coexisted with rising inflation and high unemployment for the last couple of decades especially during democratic governments in Pakistan. In this paper, we explore the relationship between crime rate, misery index and democracy in Pakistan from 1975 to 2013. Granger causality test proposed the unidirectional causality running from misery index to crime rate in Pakistan. Estimating the crime function via Pasaran’s conditional error correction model, we found the significant long run equilibrium relationship between Okun’s misery index and crime rate which implies that rising inflation and unemployment rate are the major driving forces towards increasing crime rates in Pakistan. Finally, empirical evidence from Okun’s misery index suggested that people are three times more miserable in quasi democratic periods than that of dictatorship. The Barrow’s misery index model verifies that people are twice worsening in quasi democratic periods. Likewise, reported crimes are nearly twice during quasi democracy than quasi dictatorship. The crime model provided the evidence that people during quasi democratic governments are more likely tending towards crime as compared to quasi dictatorship during the study period in Pakistan. This implicitly advocates the fact that half hearted efforts and ill structured apparatus of democracy can augment the tendency of crime and misery rather than solution of such concerns of the economy.     

Resilient or Resigned? Criminal Victimisation and Quality of Life in South Africa

A victimisation study conducted among 3300 householders in South Africa’s Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality (NMMM) in the Eastern Cape Province aimed to inform a crime prevention strategy for the metropolitan area. The study found that the variables ‘fear of crime’ – measured in terms of perceived likelihood of victimisation – and concern about ‘personal safety’ had greater negative influence on life satisfaction than actual victimisation. Individual crimes against the person had greater negative influence on subjective wellbeing and feelings of personal safety than property and other household crimes. Individuals who perceived themselves to be at risk of becoming a victim of crime also perceived greater risk of other misfortunes. However, materially better-off victims reported higher levels of life satisfaction than non-victims in spite of their crime experience. South Africa has high crime rates by international standards and fighting crime presents the country with one of its major challenges in the second decade of democracy. Nevertheless, findings suggest that the negative impact of crime issues on achieving the good life are overshadowed by issues of racial inequalities and poverty. The conclusion is drawn that residents of Nelson Mandela Metropole are hardy when it comes to living with crime but nonetheless suffer stress in doing so. From a methodological perspective, the discussion considers whether subjective crime issues such as fear of crime and personal safety should be regarded as personal or neighbourhood quality-of-life issues. Based on survey findings, the conclusion is drawn that concern for personal safety is both. However, a crime-as-neighbourhood-issue is more likely to attract remedial action on the part␣of␣local authorities to better protect citizens and allay their fears of crime.     

Sexual Orientation in State Hate Crime Laws: Exploring Social Construction and Criminal Law

Several studies have described and analyzed the development and diffusion of hate crime laws in the United States, but none specifically examined state-level differences in protected categories. Forty-five of the 50 states have a hate crime statute, but only 30 of those include sexual orientation. In this study the social construction framework is applied to the hate crime policy domain in order to determine whether or not variations in the social and political status of gays and lesbians are associated with the inclusion of sexual orientation in state hate crime laws. Content analysis of daily newspapers in six states revealed that a positive social construction is associated with groups seeking hate crime law protections, and that political influence may also be a key factor.     

A New Perspective on Violent Crime Burden Index: Evidence from Indian Districts

Given limited resource availability in a developing nation like India, faced with high incidences of crime, it is important to optimize on the resources spent in combating crime by channelling them to proper direction. This requires an understanding of the actual and overall level of crime across India. Our paper provides a complete understanding of the various indicators of violent crime and the determinants of these crimes in India using district level data for three census years, namely, 1981, 1991 and 2001. We construct three alternative crime-burden indices. Including a variable like voter turnout in state election at the district level, we document significant impact of public awareness to reduce and combat crime. The constructed crime burden index shows that states located in northern parts of India have more incidences of crime compared to states in the south. We also find that our estimated crime-burden indices tend to report in general a higher level of crime-burden than the average based index. This suggests controlling for the factors beyond population while constructing the aggregate crime-burden index for any country is essential. Our work although is limited to the Indian data, we however, believe that this can be easily applied to various other countries.     

Volatile Places,Volatile Times: Predicting Revolutionary Situations with Nations’ Governance and Fragility Indicators

In the last decade, Mexico, the second largest economy in Latin America, has seen high poverty, inequality, and increasing homicide rates, which has led to widespread fear of crime. Two important challenges to understand the elevated levels of fear of crime are the lack of agreement on how to measure it and the debate on whether it responds to actual crime or to a general feeling of vulnerability associated with poverty. Moreover there is little research in Mexico examining the complex influence of social context at the municipality level, on the relationship between person-level characteristics and fear of crime. Using Mexico’s 2015 National Survey of Victimization the goal of the study is to estimate a two-level hierarchical regression analysis combining the effects of person-level predictors and municipality level context variables to explain fear of crime in Mexico´s urban population. Our results show that some person level attributes—victimization, incivilities, trust, police effectiveness, and collective organization—are consistently associated with the three domains of fear of crime: feelings of insecurity, perceptions of risk, and avoidance behaviors. The study shows that homicide rates at the municipality level are directly associated with feelings of insecurity and avoidance behaviors. In addition, high multidimensional poverty and inequality at the municipality level amplified the rate by which incivilities affect perceptions of risk. Unexpectedly, collective efficacy at the municipality level and collective organization to solve crime at the individual level were positive and significant predictors for fear of crime in Mexico.     

The effects of building size on personal crime and fear of crime

The research that formed the basis of Newman's bookDefensible Space demonstrated that building height is one of the leading predictors of robbery rate in low-income public housing projects. Research reported in this article was undertaken to extend the scope and detail of the earlier work and, most importantly, to examine the causal mechanisms underlying the relationship of physical design to crime and fear of crime. The study sites in this new research are moderate-income, federallyassisted housing developments and low-income public housing projects. The major source of data is a household survey of residents. The findings provide important empirical support for the postulates of defensible space theory by showing that building size affects personal crime and fear of crime through residents' control and use of the space outside their apartments. Building size has a large total effect on residents' fear of crime, but despite its important indirect effects on personal crime, the total effect of building size on personal crime is not as strong as expected. Possible reasons for this unexpected finding are used to suggest refinements to defensible space theory.This paper is based on the final report of a study of crime and instability supported by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, U.S. Department of Justice, Grant 76-NI-99-0036-S-2. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association in Toronto, August, 1981. The authors are grateful to Ralph Taylor and anonymous reviewers for their suggestions.     

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.     

Effective International Tourism Management: A Strategic Approach

The objective of the study was to explore the relationship between international tourism indicators, crime rate, and vulnerability in a panel of 16 tourist-oriented countries over the period of 1990–2014. The study constructed a vulnerability index by using three socioeconomic factors, (1) poverty, (2) income inequality, and (3) unemployment rate. The results show that crime rate and vulnerability both decreases international tourism demand, which were mediated through inadequate education and health resources. Trade openness moderately supported the international tourism demand under the crime rate and vulnerability index. The results confirmed the crime Kuznets curve that turned into inverted U-shaped relationship between crime rate and per capita income, while this relationship was not confirmed for vulnerability index. The panel causality relationships confirmed the unidirectional causality between crime-vulnerability and international tourism. Growth-fueled tourism demand was analyzed under a crime and vulnerability index. The study concludes that international tourism is an implied solution to reduce human costs by involving tourists to in pleasure activities to at tourists’ destinations.     

Does Municipal Socioeconomic Development Affect Public Perceptions of Crime? A Multilevel Logistic Regression Analysis

Chile is considered as one of the safest countries in Latin America, with a below-the-average world crime rate. However, during the last few decades, the country has experienced a deterioration in public perceptions of safety. This paper investigates public perceptions of crime in the 52 municipalities of the metropolitan area of Santiago, by employing an index of socioeconomic development for each municipality. Multilevel logistic regression analysis is used in order to assess the impact of individual and municipal-level variables on perceptions of crime in these municipalities. The results show that women exhibit higher perceptions of crime, while people living in rural areas, inactive people, and people with higher education and income have generally lower perceptions. Multidimensional poverty is positively associated with high perceptions of crime, while municipal spending on health and/or education does not show a relationship with perceptions of crime. Regarding socioeconomic development level of municipalities, the results show that people living in municipalities of high development show the lowest perceptions of crime, despite the fact that these municipalities do actually exhibit the highest crime rates, a fact confirming the ‘perception gap’ and the ‘neighbourhood favouritism’ theories. The results and conclusions of this study can be used not only by local policy-makers but also by officials in other cities that—like Santiago—are characterised by high urban segregation.     

Social factors as predictors of internal migration patterns in Israel

The influence of 1975 crime and poverty-dependence factor scores on 1976–1980 internal migration rates in Israel was studied. Lag correlations between the two factor scores and in and out migration revealed that poverty-dependence was strongly and negatively related to in-migration and moderately and negatively related to out-migration. No relationship was found between crime and in-migration over the five year period, but a strong positive relationship was indicated between crime and outmigration. It was thus shown that social indicators such as crime and poverty-dependence revealed lasting effects on migration rates, and may be an aid to social planners.     

青少年人口犯罪中刑罚预防作用的调查分析——以天津市为例

刑罚无疑具有预防犯罪的价值,这种价值体现在犯罪人作案前对刑罚风险的主观估计,而犯罪人自身对刑罚认知上的偏差,会影响刑罚预防价值的发挥。传统上,青少年犯罪常被认为是一种"不计后果"的犯罪,其实犯罪青少年对刑罚风险的感知、判断并不弱于其他犯罪人,刑罚对青少年犯罪仍有重要的预防作用,只不过其作用的大小因犯罪青少年的年龄、性别、文化程度等有所差异。另外,一些相关因素也造成了刑罚对部分犯罪青少年预防作用的"缺失"。