Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

Urban crime and violence: Conditions and trends
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opening of new economic frontiers, and pressures brought
to bear on developing nations to cut back bureaucracies
while increasing private-sector involvement in state enterprises.
175 The resulting destabilization has led to widespread
job insecurity and increasing social fragmentation among
young people, especially those living in distressed communities
in developed and developing nations. Gang membership
thereby provides alternative avenues relating to illicit
economic gains from robbery, extortion and other types of
crime, with violence being used as a resource to obtain social
identity. 176 Although there is variability among regions and
nations, this overall trend is not likely to be reversed in the
foreseeable future.
■ Deportation of offending criminals
Closely related to globalization is the deportation of criminals
to their countries of origin. This phenomenon, which is
quite common in Latin America and the Caribbean, where
offenders are deported from the US, in part accounts for
increasing levels of youth crime and gang-related activities in
the region. In Central America, the phenomenal growth in
youth gangs has been attributed to the deportation of young
Salvadorans from the US. This has resulted in the ‘transfer’
of gang wars from the ghettos of Los Angeles to the streets
of El Salvador. 177 Similarly, in Jamaica, where gangs have a
stranglehold on society and are at the centre of most
murders, the feeling is rife that deportees are a major part of
the crime problem. Indeed, the deportation of criminals has
been linked to escalating gang violence, extortion and drugrelated
murders experienced over the past five years. 178 In
2001, ‘an analysis by the Jamaican police concluded that
deportees, many of them gang members from the northeastern
US, were involved in 600 murders, 1700 armed
robberies and 150 shoot-outs with police’. 179 The effect of
deportees on the Jamaican crime scene is further highlighted
in a survey of deported criminals, which revealed that 53 per
cent had been involved in criminal activities since deportation.
180 Such crimes include those not reported to the
police. Among those reporting involvement in crime, 78 per
cent had committed more than one crime, and another 35
per cent indicated that they had been involved in drugrelated
offences.
Transition towards democratization
As violent crime rates have variably increased over the past
half century, cross-national, longitudinal research paints a
picture of this as an outcome, at least in part, of broad
international trends in governance. In this context,
homicide rates are used as an indicator of violent crime.
<strong>Report</strong>ing on observed trends in 44 mostly industrialized
countries over a 50-year period, research indicates that
global homicide rates have grown at about the same time as
there have been significant increases in political democratization.
181 Evidence to support this contention comes from
researchers tracking significantly increased homicides in
Latin America following widespread democratization of the
region during the 1990s. Democratization is broadly
characterized as the spread of governments that are put
El Salvador
Brazil
Bahamas
United States
Thailand
Georgia
Israel
Belgium
Estonia
Serbia and Montenegro
Portugal
Croatia
Canada
Bahrain
Kuwait
into power by majority vote and supported by civil societies
that ‘encourage citizen participation, public deliberation
and civic education’. 182 Three principal theories have been
elaborated upon in this context. They are the ‘civilization
perspective’, the ‘conflict perspective’ and the ‘modernization
perspective’. Figure 3.21 summarizes the expected
relationships between democracy and crime based on these
theories.
Results of statistical analysis suggest that nations
undergoing transition from autocratic governance to democracy
exhibit the most significant increases in homicide rates
(modernization perspective). These include countries in
Eastern Europe and the Latin America and Caribbean region.
As such nations move towards full democracy, their rates
may begin to decline, even though they will not disappear
and may, indeed, creep upward as evidenced by the data
from full democracies. Evidence to support the decline in
rates commensurate with democratization may be found in
South Africa’s murder rates, which have been declining as it
has been consolidating democratic governance. In 1995, its
murder rate was 68 per 100,000 individuals, which dipped
to 50 per 100,000 and then 48 per 100,000 in 2002. During
2003 to 2004, the rate dropped to 44 per 100,000 – still
extremely high, but an impressive 35 per cent improvement
in less than a decade. Other evidence comes from the reduction
of the murder rate in Diadema (Brazil), which has slowly
consolidated a democratic response to crime as it has
evolved from a community based on frontier justice
standards. Although still high, its murder rate has fallen
twice as fast as that of neighbouring São Paulo’s between
1999 and 2003. 183 It should be noted that the latter trends
are short term and may not be indicative of causal relationships.
Indeed, there are democratic states where violence
rates are extremely high, such as Colombia and Jamaica.
Overall
Men aged 15–29
0 25 50 75 100
Figure 3.20
Firearm homicide
rates: Victims per
100,000 individuals
among men aged 15 to
19 compared with the
overall population
(selected countries,
latest year available)
Source: Small Arms Survey,
2006a, p297
In Central America,
the phenomenal
growth in youth
gangs has been
attributed to the
deportation of young
Salvadorans from
the US