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Urban crime and violence: Conditions and trends67Almost half of Pakistani women who report rape toauthorities are jailed as a result of the Hudood Ordinances,which criminalize sexual relationships (including rape)outside of marriage. Pakistani women are also victims ofhonour killings, which are private acts condoned by socialand cultural norms. Hundreds of women are victimizedand killed each year by burnings or acid attacks from theirintimate partners. 123 A sizeable majority of women inEthiopia, Thailand, Samoa, Peru and Bangladesh view IPVas acceptable behaviour from their partner in response tounfaithfulness. Between 60 and 80 per cent of women inEthiopia believe that enduring violence at the hands oftheir intimate partner is an acceptable consequence forfailing to complete housework or for disobeying one’shusband. 124Cultural and social expectations of violence, coupledwith young male ‘hyper masculinity’ values, pervade manyBrazilian favelas, Colombian barrios, Jamaican slums andNorth American ghettos – where marginalized young menare expected to revenge insults with injury or death, oftenusing guns. On the other side of the spectrum, culture canmediate crime. For example, in Hong Kong, Confucianismbasedfamily-oriented values, extended kinship structuresand a generally compliant ‘pro-social’ population, whofavours a government hostile to crime and corruption, areseen as major factors in keeping crime and violence rateslow. 125 Similarly, in the Middle East and Arab states, thecomparatively low homicide and crime rates are, in part,attributed to the religious and social values prevalent insuch cultures. Crime and violence is thus significantly influencedby prevailing social and cultural norms, includingreligious values, which often overpower official and legalpronouncements. But, they may also be encouraged bylegislation, as in the case of the Hudood Ordinances notedabove.PovertyIt is clear that crime is a survival strategy for many urbandwellers whose attitudes and perceptions are shaped bypoverty. For example, a survey of residents of the SouthAfrican town of Greater East London suggests thatunemployment and marginalization have dramatic impactson attitudes towards violent crime. 126 A significantly largerproportion of unemployed respondents were more tolerantof crime than those who were employed. Murder, theft fromvehicles and domestic violence were considered by morethan half of the unemployed respondents not to be takenseriously. While some of the tolerance for violence is attributedto the residual climate of the anti-apartheid era, apossible rationale for the tolerance of domestic violence isattributed to tensions between jobless men and women. 127Women are often employed in domestic work, a sector thatis not equally available to men. In Jamaica’s poorest neighbourhoods,young people are accustomed to seeing violenceat home and on the street. The high homicide rates inJamaica are partly due to urban poverty and gang warfare, aswell as political parties arming young men with guns in theirstruggle for political control. 128At the global level, rates of violent death generallyvary with income. The WHO estimates presented in Table3.5 show that in 2000, the rates of violent death for highincome countries (14.4 per 100,000 individuals) were lessthan half that of low- to middle-income countries (32.1 per100,000). 129 Survey data from Brazil, as indicated in Figure3.19, show that as family income increases, residents areless likely to have relatives that have been murdered.While economic prosperity is associated with lowerdeath and homicide rates, income inequality, as discussedbelow, is likely to be a more salient operative factor affectingcrime rates. Indeed, a body of international evidenceconnects poverty levels as well as income inequality to crimeand violence rates, although the connections are still subjectto debate in the literature. 130 The direction of the causal linkbetween poverty and violence has been questioned, withsome researchers noting that violence promotes povertysince it degrades the physical and social capital in affectedareas. This is borne out by studies on the concentration offirearms and violence-related property crimes in the favelasof Brazil. At the national level, economic data suggests thatviolence drives out capital and depresses economic growthso that it further impoverishes poor nations and communities.Moreover, there are desperately poor communitiesthroughout all regions of the world where crime rates areconstrained by prevailing cultural and social values. This isthe case in parts of Ghana and Indonesia, where powerfulinformal social control mechanisms serve to keep crimerates low. 131 The same is true for Hong Kong and Japan,where the influence of informal and cultural systems tendsto moderate many risk factors that are normally associatedwith crime. 132 Evidence from poor Latin American communitiesin the US suggests that community characteristics thatstress protective norms and building social capital can helpto protect adolescents from the negative effects of poverty,including crime. 133InequalityThe relative distance between the richest and poorestmembers of society is as important as, or even more importantthan, levels of poverty in affecting crime and violence.Closely associated with inequality are key exclusionaryfactors relating to unequal access to employment, education,health and basic infrastructure. 134 Research has consistentlyfound that income inequality measured by the Gini coefficient(a measure of the inequality of a distribution) isstrongly correlated with high homicide rates. 135 Forexample, two major comparative studies – one of 18 industrializednations using data for 1950 to 1980 and the otherof 45 industrialized and developing countries with databetween 1965 and 1995 – concluded that income inequalityhad a significant and positive effect on homicide rates. 136Growth in GDP has been found to be negatively correlatedwith homicide rates, although this was offset byincome inequality. This has been the general finding forviolent crimes, although the reverse holds true for propertycrimes: the higher the growth in GDP, the higher the level ofproperty crime rates. This indicates that increasing levels ofA body ofinternationalevidence connectspoverty levels aswell as incomeinequality to crimeand violence ratesThere aredesperately poorcommunitiesthroughout allregions of the worldwhere crime ratesare constrained byprevailing culturaland social values