Configurations of policing and economic-sociodemographic disorganization for high homicide rates

Brazil and macro-regions (1991-2010)

Abstract

The complex nature of crime, involving victim-criminal, public authorities, and effects at individual, family, community, and ecological levels, has opened up space for various explanations for the differences in crime rates between different regions and periods. The Theory of Social Disorganization links high crime to socially disorganized communities (at family, personal, community, economic levels). Seeking combinations of causal conditions as necessary/sufficient for high crime rates, by configurational approach, would subsidize the public debate regarding the design of territorially and temporally differentiated preventive criminal policies. Using the Qualitative Comparative Approach, it is proposed to identify and explore the complex causation of levels of policing and economic-sociodemographic disorganization for high homicide. It is evident that Brazilian municipalities have a limited diversity of consistent paths to high homicide; “high family and personal disorganization” are recurrently necessary for high homicide rates, but “high economic disorganization” and demographic imbalance are not necessarily so.