The Impact of Private Precautions on Home Burglary and Robbery in Brazil

Abstract

Homeowners use precaution technologies in order to supplement the protection offered by the Justice System. These technologies reduce expected victimization through reduction and diversion effects. This paper contributes to the literature evaluating the effects of private precaution technologies (window bars, extra locks, alarms and electric fences, CCTV, private security and dogs) in an effort to fight burglary and robbery against households in Brazil. To this end this paper estimates a recursive bivariate Probit using the information from the victimization supplement of the PNAD 2009. The results show that no technology is efficient to reduce burglary. However, the presence of private security and dogs showed to reduce robbery. The paper concludes that the reaction possibility of a guard can generate diversion effects that are capable of reducing the expected victimization in crimes against property.