Who are the victims of property crime in Mexico?

Abstract

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of social exposure activities, risk awareness measures, individual and family characteristics and the socioeconomic environment where the individual resides on the probability of property crime victimization.Design/methodology/approach– A state preference model of crime is employed using victimization surveys data for several years complemented with municipality level data from population census. Logit regressions for the probability of victimization are run for males and females separately and using different specifications.Findings– Regression estimates show that self-protection measures do not offset significantly the probability of victimization and that the likelihood of repeat victimization is highly significant. The most likely victims of property crime in Mexico do not live in highly marginalized communities. Finally, the covariates related to income are stronger predictors of victimization than the level of social exposure.Research limitations/implications– Further research is needed that considers other types of crime and complements the victimization data with police resources data.Social implications– This paper helps to obtain a better understanding of property crime in Mexico and its victims. The main results can help policy makers to allocate scarce resources more efficiently and design more efficient measures to fight property crime in Mexico.Originality/value– The data set used combines individual and family data from several victimization surveys and complements it with municipality level characteristics from population census. The analysis of victimization is made for the entire country and not for large cities only.