Crime and local inequality in South Africa

The effect of reporting errors on the cross-country relationship between inequality and crime

“…Nevertheless there is likely to be remaining measurement error from lack of cross-country comparability and other sources, which will also affect the other covariates. 7 These results mirror those reported by Demombynes and Özler (2005) for South Africa, where robbery has the lowest reporting rate at 42 percent and car theft has the highest reporting rate at 95 percent. Even the reporting rate for homicides in South Africa is only 84 percent, contradicting the assumption of FLL that homicide would be the most reliably measured crime.…”

The measurement of unemployment when unemployment is high

“…areas of good amenities attract crime and are distant from food production. Research for South Africa finds that property and vehicle crimes are greater in high income areas (Demombynes and Ozler, 2004). Although our equations do control for per capita income and some community characteristics, these may be less than perfectly measured.…”

Modeling violent crime rates: A test of social disorganization in the city of Tshwane, South Africa

“…The NCPS acknowledged that it was particularly Black citizens who lived in formerly segregated township communities who were unemployed post-apartheid and that the absence of social support systems for these residents could lead them to crime. Whilst unemployment had been highlighted as one of the main ecological determinants of crime in the country (see, e.g., Demombynes & Özler, 2005;Strydom & Schutte, 2005), the findings of this study suggested that unemployment coupled with social deprivation had a causal effect on crime.…”