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The role of social control in Brazilian homicide rates

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Abstract

Violent crime in Brazil have grown since the 1980s. The state authorities are unable to ubiquitously monitor illegitimate activities. Less effective and more territorially diffused, social controllers can act as a primary control by socializing positive (negative) beliefs of adhering (violating) to rules. The criminal-deviance density of a place could carry information about the moral cost of entering the crime “industry”, because the levels of transgression can indirectly signal the level of this deterrence. We analyze the qualitative effect of social control to illegitimate choices, along with state deterrence. In a sample of comparable minimum areas, the latent factors were extracted from a set of rules-breaking phenomena, by exploratory factor analysis, then associated with homicide rates by fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. Lower social coactivity is consistently associated with high homicide rates, when combined with high law enforcement. This research, besides constructing indicators of social coactivity levels based on violation decisions, consistently evidences a conjunctural nature between the measures of social and state control.

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Fig. 1

Source: Autor’s elaboration

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Notes

  1. Here the terms deviance and devianceness do not seek to have a biased meaning, but to indicate types of violations of exclusively non-extreme rules, such as violations of social norms, conventions, and moral codes, as opposed to violations of extreme rules such as crimes.

  2. “Comparable minimum areas” (CMAs) form a panel of geographic areas, enabling consistent comparisons, at two or more points in time, of social, economic and demographic information at the municipal level (Reis et al. 2010).

  3. Years of the last demographic census.

  4. Some of the selected phenomena are criminal decisions in Brazil, although they are dealt with here as social norm violations, such as juvenile marriage and, possibly, many cases of pregnancy in young girls (crime of pedophilia), illegal disposal of domestic waste and intellectual drop-outs (children/adolescents not attending school or who dropped out of school criminalizes their parents or guardians).

  5. Analyses of original variable distributions, with the assistance of Kernel density graphs and statistical tests (Shapiro–Francia and symmetry and kurtosis tests) identify asymmetrical distributions. Transformations of the original variables with the Box and Cox method lead to symmetrical distribution for a number of variables (divorce in 1991, monoparentality in 2000 and population without religion in every year). Non, uni and multivariate normality of the distributions make application of the maximum likelihood method impossible (Johnson and Wichern 2002).

  6. The determinants of the variance and covariance matrixes are higher than 0.0001.

  7. Lawley (equal correlation coefficients), Jennrich (variable independence), Mardia mSkewness, Mardia mKurtosis, Henze-Zirkler and Doornik-Hansen (normality) statistical tests.

  8. The juvenile marriage variable is slightly higher than 0.40 (0.4031) but was not removed from the model.

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Acknowledgements

To the members of the Postgraduate Program in Economics and the support offered by the Laboratory of Economic Studies (ECONS), of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora.

Funding

Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq), Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Level Personnel (CAPES), Support and Development Foundation for Teaching, Research and Extension (Fadepe) and Foundation for Research Support of the State of Minas Gerais (Fapemig).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Post-Graduate Program in Economics, Department of Economics, Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Rua José Lourenço Kelmer, s/n - Campus Universitário, Bairro São Pedro, Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, 36036-330, Brazil

    Sandro de Freitas Ferreira, Suzana Quinet de Andrade Bastos & Admir Antonio Betarelli Junior

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  1. Sandro de Freitas Ferreira
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  2. Suzana Quinet de Andrade Bastos
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  3. Admir Antonio Betarelli Junior
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Correspondence to Sandro de Freitas Ferreira.

Appendix

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Table 4 List of variables, abbreviations, form of construction and source
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Ferreira, S.d.F., Bastos, S.Q.d.A. & Betarelli Junior, A.A. The role of social control in Brazilian homicide rates. Qual Quant 53, 2695–2717 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-019-00886-6

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