Social Cohesion, Criminal Victimization and Perceived Risk of Crime in Brazilian Neighborhoods

Ecological theories linking community characteristics to the level of crime have rarely been tested outside the context of the United States and Western Europe. In this study we examine the effects of social cohesion and neighborhood disorder on crime using data from a survey of neighborhoods in Brazil. We find that lower-income neighborhoods, including irregular settlements known as favelas, have higher levels of social cohesion. Contrary to the results of research in U.S. urban areas, we find that greater cohesion among neighborhood residents is not significantly associated with lower levels of crime, and is in fact associated with a higher perceived risk of victimization. By contrast, neighborhood social and physical disorder increases violent victimization, but does not affect residents' perceived risk of being victimized. We argue that the effect of social cohesion on risk perception is explained by the greater spread of information regarding crimes occurring in more cohesive neighborhoods where residents interact more frequently with each other.

[1]  Ralph B. Taylor.  Breaking Away from Broken Windows: Baltimore Neighborhoods and the Nationwide Fight Against Crime, Grime, Fear, and Decline , 2000 .

[2]  Matthew R. Lee.  Community Cohesion and Violent Predatory Victimization: A Theoretical Extension and Cross-national Test of Opportunity Theory , 2000 .

[3]  Ralph B. Taylor,et al.  Multilevel Longitudinal Impacts of Incivilities: Fear of Crime, Expected Safety, and Block Satisfaction , 2003 .

[4]  W. Wilson,et al.  Book Review: When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor , 1997 .

[5]  J. Perlman.  The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro , 1980 .

[6]  Fear and Its Relationship to Crime, Neighborhood Deterioration, and Informal Social Control , 1986 .

[7]  Mary E Pattillo,et al.  Sweet Mothers and Gangbangers: Managing Crime in a Black Middle-Class Neighborhood , 1998 .

[8]  Robert J. Sampson,et al.  Neighborhood inequality, collective efficacy, and the spatial dynamics of urban violence , 2001 .

[9]  I. Spergel,et al.  : Neighborhoods and Crime: The Dimensions of Effective Community Control , 1994 .

[10]  S. Raudenbush,et al.  Assessing Direct and Indirect Effects in Multilevel Designs with Latent Variables , 1999 .

[11]  Stephen W. Raudenbush,et al.  A Multilevel, Multivariate Model for Studying School Climate With Estimation Via the EM Algorithm and Application to U.S. High-School Data , 1991 .

[12]  A. Southall.  Urban anthropology : cross-cultural studies of urbanization , 1975 .

[13]  Lawrence W. Sherman,et al.  Neighborhoods and Crime: The Dimensions of Effective Community Control , 2002 .

[14]  R. Sampson.  Linking the Micro- and Macrolevel Dimensions of Community Social Organization , 1991 .

[15]  R. Assunção,et al.  [Homicide clusters and drug traffic in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais State, Brazil from 1995 to 1999]. , 2001, Cadernos de saude publica.

[16]  M. Tonry,et al.  Communities and Crime , 1989 .

[17]  Yuk Fai Cheong,et al.  HLM 6: Hierarchical Linear and Nonlinear Modeling , 2000 .

[18]  K. Ferraro,et al.  Fear of Crime: Interpreting Victimization Risk , 1995 .

[19]  Wesley G. Skogan,et al.  Coping With Crime: Individual and Neighborhood Reactions , 1981 .

[20]  L. Lomnitz,et al.  Networks and Marginality: Life in a Mexican Shantytown , 1977 .

[21]  R. Sampson,et al.  Community Structure and Crime: Testing Social-Disorganization Theory , 1989, American Journal of Sociology.

[22]  Wesley G. Skogan,et al.  Fear of Crime and Neighborhood Change , 1986, Crime and Justice.

[23]  O. Galle,et al.  Victimization Rates, Exposure to Risk, and Fear of Crime , 1984 .

[24]  Wesley G. Skogan,et al.  Disorder and Decline: Crime and the Spiral of Decay in American Neighborhoods , 1992 .

[25]  Paul E. Bellair.  SOCIAL INTERACTION AND COMMUNITY CRIME: EXAMINING THE IMPORTANCE OF NEIGHBOR NETWORKS , 1997 .

[26]  M. Janowitz,et al.  Community Attachment in Mass Society , 1974 .

[27]  K. Ferraro,et al.  Perceived Risk and Fear of Crime: Role of Social and Physical Incivilities , 1992 .

[28]  Stephen D. Gottfredson,et al.  Block Crime and Fear: Defensible Space, Local Social Ties, and Territorial Functioning , 1984 .

[29]  Lawrence E. Cohen,et al.  Social Change and Crime Rate Trends: A Routine Activity Approach , 1979 .

[30]  Kenneth C. Land,et al.  Perceived Risk versus Fear of Crime: Empirical Evidence of Conceptually Distinct Reactions in Survey Data , 1996 .

[31]  Robert J. Sampson,et al.  Systematic Social Observation of Public Spaces: A New Look at Disorder in Urban Neighborhoods1 , 1999, American Journal of Sociology.

[32]  Robert J. Sampson,et al.  Beyond Social Capital: Spatial Dynamics of Collective Efficacy for Children , 1999, American Sociological Review.

[33]  J. Figueira-Mcdonough.  : Disorder and Decline: Crime and the Spiral of Decay in American Neighborhoods , 1992 .

[34]  B. Warner.  Whither Poverty? Social Disorganization Theory in an Era of Urban Transformation , 1999 .

[35]  Robert J. Sampson,et al.  Urban Black Violence: The Effect of Male Joblessness and Family Disruption , 1987, American Journal of Sociology.

[36]  James Byrne,et al.  The Social Ecology of Crime , 1986 .

[37]  Stephen W. Raudenbush,et al.  1. Ecometrics: Toward a Science of Assessing Ecological Settings, with Application to the Systematic Social Observation of Neighborhoods , 1999 .

[38]  S. Rocha.  Pobreza no Brasil : afinal, de que se trata? , 2005 .

[39]  Kenneth C. Land,et al.  Burglary Victimization, Perceptions of Crime Risk, and Routine Activities: A Multilevel Analysis Across Seattle Neighborhoods and Census Tracts , 1996 .

[40]  P. Ward.  Colonias and Public Policy in Texas and Mexico: Urbanization by Stealth , 1999 .

[41]  Ruth Rosner Kornhauser,et al.  Social Sources of Delinquency: An Appraisal of Analytic Models , 1978 .

[42]  Robert J. Bursik,et al.  SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION AND THEORIES OF CRIME AND DELINQUENCY: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS* , 1988 .

[43]  Teresa P. R. Caldeira.  City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo , 2000 .

[44]  S. Raudenbush,et al.  Neighborhoods and violent crime: a multilevel study of collective efficacy. , 1997, Science.

[45]  Paul E. Bellair.  INFORMAL SURVEILLANCE AND STREET CRIME: A COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP , 2000 .

[46]  Br Ferrall,et al.  Illusion of order: The false promise of broken windows policing , 2001 .

[47]  Mark Warr,et al.  Fear of Victimization: A Look at the Proximate Causes , 1983 .

[48]  Barbara D. Warner,et al.  Local Social Ties in a Community and Crime Model: Questioning the Systemic Nature of Informal Social Control , 1997 .

[49]  Wesley G. Skogan,et al.  Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities by George L. Kelling and Catherine M. Coles:Life in the Gang: Family, Friends, and Violence , 1997 .

[50]  R. Sampson,et al.  ASSESSING "NEIGHBORHOOD EFFECTS": Social Processes and New Directions in Research , 2002 .

[51]  Ralph B. Taylor,et al.  FEAR OF CRIME IN URBAN RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOODS: Implications of Between‐ and Within‐Neighborhood Sources for Current Models , 1991 .

[52]  Ralph B. Taylor,et al.  Ecological assessments of community disorder: Their relationship to fear of crime and theoretical implications , 1996, American journal of community psychology.

[53]  Ralph B. Taylor,et al.  Testing Alternative Models of Fear of Crime , 1986 .

[54]  Mark Warr.  Public perceptions and reactions to violent offending and victimization. , 1994 .

[55]  H. D. McKay,et al.  Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas , 1943 .

[56]  Warren Dean,et al.  The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro. , 1977 .

[57]  Asli Demirguc-Kunt,et al.  World development report 2002 - building institutions for markets , 2001 .

[58]  A. Liska,et al.  EXTENDING SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION THEORY: MODELING THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN COHESION, DISORDER, AND FEAR* , 2001 .

[59]  C. Kubrin,et al.  New Directions in Social Disorganization Theory , 2003 .