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

Abstract

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. Wefind that lower-income neighborhoods, including irregular settlements known asfavelas, 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. A large body of empirical research has focused on the effect that social and organizational characteristics of urban communities have on crime rates. In contrast to criminological theories that emphasize individual correlates of criminal offending and victimization, ecological theories on which this research is based focus on the type of places where crime tends to occur. One of the best-known theories linking community characteristics and crime is social disorganization theory. Since the classic formulation by Chicago School theorists Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay (1942), researchers have argued that community characteristics such as poverty, ethnic heterogeneity and residential mobility disrupt the social organization of urban neighborhoods in such a way as to reduce their capacity to exercise social control, and are therefore conducive to higher rates of crime and delinquency. (See also Bursik 1988; Bursik and Grasmick 1993; Kornhauser 1978; Sampson and Groves 1989.) A community's low socioeconomic status (SES) in particular is thought to reduce civic participation and weaken social ties among residents. However, despite the importance early social disorganization theorists gave to poverty as a key factor disrupting communities' social organization, the extent to which the effect of neighborhood poverty on crime is mediated through community-level factors such as a loss of social cohesion among residents remains