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12Understanding Urban Safety and SecurityRates of violentcrime acrossneighbourhoodswithin most citiesvary considerably,with higher ratescorrelated withlower incomes and,increasingly, withdrug-relatedbehaviourFigure 1.2Violence-related deathsamong young menSource: Stephens, 1996, p21Death rates per 100,000200150100500São PauloNon-deprived100,000 people, while the rates for other ‘establishedmarket economies’ are around 1 per 100,000. 20 These ratesare interesting because they suggest cultural and institutionaldifferences surrounding violent behaviour. 21Further variation in crime rates is found withincountries, between rural areas and cities, and between citiesof different sizes, with higher rates within larger cities.Cities such as Los Angeles and New York have much higherhomicide rates than other cities. All of this data is illustrative,but must also be qualified in terms of the well-knowndifficulties of obtaining reliable data concerning crime andviolence, not only in one city, but even more so when anyeffort is made to compare across cities, within countries andeven on a global basis. Such data and methodological issueswill be addressed in later sections of this Global Report.Within this context, additional threats to individualsecurity are cumulative and exist on top of chronic patterns.For example, the incidence of death that can be attributed tocrime and violence among young males in most cities hasincreased significantly over the past two decades. Figure 1.2compares death rates among young men (from deprived andnon-deprived neighbourhoods) in São Paulo (Brazil), NewOrleans (US) and US urban centres as a whole. The figuresuggests that male adult longevity rates reflect growing deathsfrom violent crime in cities in both rich and poor countries.The highest cause of death of African–American males in UScities is from violent crime, with rising rates of imprisonmentas well. Death rates in cities such as gang-ridden San Salvadorin El Salvador or São Paulo in Brazil are similarly high. Deathrates from violent crime in the Middle East and Asia are generallylower, while violence in African cities such as Cape Town,Johannesburg or Lagos is quite high. An important threshold iscrossed when crime and violence show up in health statistics.A key point here is that local cultural factors play a significantrole in explaining local variation.The hypothesis that cities would experience violentcrime is of long historical origin. In a classical essay of 1903,the sociologist Georg Simmel argued that the anomie incities and poverty resulting from the industrial revolutionexplained increasing urban violence. 22 This, in fact, did nothappen in Europe; but it seems to have occurred in anothercontext, in cities in developing countries where recentNew OrleansDeprivedUrban USmigrants often find themselves in contexts lacking communalvalues governing individual and collective behaviours. IfSimmel’s hypothesis did not hold at the city level in Europe,it is probably more robust when tested across various neighbourhoodswithin cities. Rates of violent crime acrossneighbourhoods within most cities vary considerably, withhigher rates correlated with lower incomes and, increasingly,with drug-related behaviour.Studies of the origins and motivations for crime andviolence have covered a wide spectrum. On one side, thereare many psycho-social theories and explanations focusingon the socialization of individuals, including intra-familydynamics and violence, to the birth of aggression and lack ofself-esteem, and to peer experiences in school, in gangs andin the streets, much of this captured in the notion of theecological model. 23 This model connects four analytic levelsin explaining interpersonal violence: individual, socialrelationships, community and society. 24 As shown in Chapter3, there are also opportunity and place-based models withinthis broader ecological perspective.The interactions between these levels are wellreflected in a chapter title ‘The family as a violent institutionand the primary site of social violence’ in a recent book. 25The authors quote a young boy in Bogotá who says: ‘Violencebegins at home, and it is one of the most important factors inthe harmony of the community, and this brings about lack ofrespect in everyone.’ 26 The problem of intra-family violenceincludes domestic and sexual abuse of women and younggirls. As the quotation from the boy in Bogotá suggests, intrafamilydynamics carry out to the street as well, as behaviourslearned or accepted at home become socialized and directed,often randomly, at the society at large. These include behavioursdirectly connected to gender, as shown in studies ofviolence and ‘manliness’ in the southern US. 27Other less psychological but significant explanationsof violence and crime are more socially based understandings,seeking to identify societal forces and place-basedfactors that generate violent responses to relative deprivation.These explanations are well captured in theobservation that ‘in reality, violence is constructed, negotiated,reshaped and resolved as perpetrators and victims tryto define and control the world they find themselves in’. 28From this perspective, crime and violence may be quitefunctional to urban survival. 29 In this regard, crime andviolence can also be politically and socially constructed.There are many cases where downturns in theeconomy lead to attacks by local residents on foreignworkers – for example, in Ghana during economic recessionin the 1970s when Beninois and Nigerians were sent out ofGhana back to their own countries in convoys of trucks. Thisepisode was followed by retaliatory measures by theNigerian government in the 1980s. In some cases, sociallyand racially excluded groups strike back, as in the riots inLondon in 1981, Los Angeles in 1992 or in Paris and in manyother French urban areas in 2006, where several weeks ofburning of cars, arson and attacks on property reflectedyears of frustration with French government policies andwith the complicated mechanisms of social and economicexclusion.