Purpose The determinants of the fear of crime have been extensively investigated over the past three decades, yet few studies are comparative, include data from developing countries or use attitudes toward the police as explanatory variables. Understanding how perceptions of police performance influence fear of crime is essential to developing strategies which will reduce citizens’ isolation and reluctance to exert informal social control in their communities. Such lack of engagement creates opportunities for increased crime and disorder and heightens fear of crime. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach This study examines the mediating effect of perceived confidence in the police on citizens’ fear of crime in seven developing Caribbean region countries using structural equation modeling. The data were collected in a 2011 United Nations survey from representative samples in each nation. Findings The results indicate that confidence in the police plays a significant and partial mediating role in explaining fear of crime and that community- and individual-level characteristics influence the level of confidence and independently affect fear of crime as well. Originality/value This is one of the few studies that employs comparative victimization data in the Caribbean to examine the role that confidence in the police has on fear of crime. The findings of this study will contribute to fill the gap in the understanding of the drivers of fear of crime in developing countries.

This paper addresses the underlying causes of problems and risks faced by poor and excluded people, focusing on youth of 10-24 years of age. We develop a survey instrument that addresses poverty in broad sense including hunger, early pregnancy and fatherhood, violence, crime, drug use, low levels of social capital, and low educational attainment. The paper also sheds light on intergenerational transfer of risks that are considered to induce poverty, e.g. in early pregnancy and education attainment. We document simple findings based on the survey data gathered in three poor urban neighborhoods in Fortaleza in the Northeast Brazil. Our main findings show that: (i) poor youth are at considerable risk of growing up without their father-only 7 percent grow up with their father present in the household; (ii) the intergenerational transmission of low education attainment is at play, but it is diminishing; (iii) the risk of early pregnancy and fatherhood is large; 31 percent of the youth had their first child before age 16, triple that of the adult population; (iv) the risk of sexual abuse and violence within the household exists-6 percent of the youth answered that they had their first sexual relationship with a family member and 13 percent grow up in household with violence; (v) the social capital levels are low-only five percent of the youth and 9 percent of the adults have measurable social capital; and (vi) the risk of growing up in a violent neighborhood is large-59 percent of the youth claim that they live in a violent neighborhood, 80 percent feel unsafe in their neighborhood and 50 percent feel unsafe at home. 1 The authors would like to thank Josbertini Clementino, Egidio Guerra, Virginia Martins, and the members of MH2OCE and IPOC for their invaluable contribution to this project. We would also like to thank the people in the neighborhoods who helped elaborate this survey instrument which helps us to better understand the issues faced by youth and adults in poor urban neighborhoods.

The allegedly complex relationship between trust and victimization has rarely been modeled and, when done, the effect of trust on victimization has been found not statistically significant. This study finds otherwise, estimating an instrumental model with community data from Cali, Colombia. Cali’s dismal levels of victimization were only second to Medellin, the most violent city of the world in the 1990s. But Cali also pioneered a strategy of social capital formation as the backbone of a deliberate public policy to crack down on high levels of crime. This article first develops a model of victimization that includes interpersonal trust as determinant and then instruments interpersonal trust with district-level average trust. We argue that an individual-specific level of trust in his or her community members does not affect the community level of interpersonal trust in the margin. However, the levels – or perceived levels – of interpersonal trust in the community may affect the specific level of trust of an individual in other members of that community, along with personal characteristics and experience. Using GMM estimates, this study finds evidence of a relationship between interpersonal trust and victimization, statistically significant and negative in sign. The result is robust across specifications of trust, victimization, and estimating techniques. We conclude that increasing trust in trusting communities contributes to reducing victimization in its own right, although the effect is modest. Consequently, strengthening interpersonal trust is another bullet to combat victimization but it is not a silver bullet.

Purpose – In almost all modern societies, police forces are at the forefront of ongoing activities to reduce and prevent crime. Both in practice and in popular belief, police forces are the visible presence for maintaining security and safety to citizens in municipalities, towns and cities, and from cities to local neighborhoods. This paper aims to investigate how efficiently the police in Guatemala are in combating crime using data envelopment analysis (DEA). Design/methodology/approach – The study used DEA to measure the efficiency of police stations in fighting crime in Guatemala based on their inputs and outputs. Findings – The analyses showed that only four out of 22 police departments were considered efficient. The average efficiency score for the 22 police departments was 62 percent. Research limitations/implications – Data on crime and police are limited in Guatemala. Further research using DEA would be particularly relevant if the methodology included: a wider range of inputs/outputs, longer panel data, and more precise estimates of the effect of contextual variables. The findings of the study can inform police managers and policymakers to allocate security resources more efficiently. Practical implications – Given the low levels of inefficiency of police departments in Guatemala, police management would have to ensure that clearance rates increase significantly by either increasing the human resource capacity of the police departments according to the needs so that clearance rates can be improved and be more effective and efficient in combating crime. Originality/value – This is the first in depth study of police efficiency in Central America. In an increasingly resource strapped environment employing DEA might be a useful tool to improve human and financial resource allocation.

Close to 25 years after the legislation known as the Clery Act was passed, student victimization, especially sexual assault, remains a pressing and serious issue for higher educational institutions. The Clery Act (20 U.S.C. §1092(f)), which was reauthorized as the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act in 2013, and Title IX inform how universities should work to prevent and respond appropriately to incidents of sexual assault on their campuses. However, students-and the federal government-are increasingly putting public pressure on higher education institutions to improve their response to campus sexual assault (Steinhauer, 2014). In April 2014, the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault released its report encouraging colleges and universities to conduct surveys to get a more accurate estimate of the prevalence of sexual assault (Anderson & Zezima, 2014). Shortly after