Democracy and crime: a multilevel analysis of homicide trends in forty-four countries, 1950 to 2000

Lafree, G and Tseloni, A ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6443-7012, 2006. Democracy and crime: a multilevel analysis of homicide trends in forty-four countries, 1950 to 2000. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 605 (1), pp. 25-49. ISSN 0002-7162

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Abstract

This work investigates association between crime and democracy drawing on information for 44 countries during the second half of the 20th century. Crime is indicated by national homicide rates, which minimize reliability problems implicated in cross-national and/or longitudinal comparisons of police recorded crime rates. Democracy is measured by the set of indicators included in the Polity data set, University of Maryland, U.S. Multilevel or hierarchical repeated measures models of homicide rates over each democracy indicator are estimated while controlling for time, population profile, economic development and inequality as well as regional idiosyncracies. The multilevel specification allows for country and annual random variations of the predicted values and estimated relationships. Apart from complete lack of any relationship three types of links are plausible between crime and democracy. Democracy may increase crime due to instability and lax state control over its citizens. It may reduce it owing to citizens’ enhanced sense of communal responsibility and trust in their political institutions. Finally democracy and crime may exhibit an inverted-U relationship. The first and last relationships are evidenced in the present -and to the authors’ knowledge only international- study on crime and democracy to date depending on the severity of autocracy democracy is contrasted with.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Creators:	Lafree, G. and Tseloni, A.
Publisher:	Sage
Date:	2006
Volume:	605
Number:	1
ISSN:	0002-7162
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1177/0002716206287169 DOI
Rights:	© 2006 by Sage Publications. All rights reserved. No portion of the contents may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	EPrints Services
Date Added:	09 Oct 2015 11:08
Last Modified:	09 Jun 2017 13:50
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/23229

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