Criminality, Public Security, and the Challenge to Democracy in Latin America

Chapter Three: Rising Crime in Mexico and Buenos Aires: The Effects of Changes in Labor Markets and Community Breakdown

c ha p t e r t h re e Rising Crime in Mexico and Buenos Aires The Effects of Changes in Labor Markets and Community Breakdown marcel o berg man By the late 1990s crime rates in Buenos Aires and Mexico City had more than doubled compared to the early part of the decade. For the first time in recent history, crime became a major public concern, and citizens began to rank feelings of insecurity as one of two top concerns. Both cities, particularly Buenos Aires, which has been one of the less crimeridden cities in the region, changed abruptly. There are no comprehensive explanations of why crime has risen so sharply in these cities and throughout the region. Several theories on criminality have been advanced to account partially for these new trends. Economic recession, rising poverty, debilitated state institutions, inadequate judicial organizations, and outdated legal statutes as well as poor 62 Rising Crime in Mexico and Buenos Aires 63 police performance have been proposed to explain—at least partially— these changes in the social and political landscape. In this context, the goal of this chapter is twofold. First, I will document with available data the recent trends in criminality. This may seem trivial but is in fact an important milestone because most studies about the region rely on “snapshot information,” and there are only time series data for homicides (Fajnzylber, Lederman, and Loayza 2001). So the goal here is to describe a similar process for two very different cities experiencing a remarkably similar trend: the slow but steady rise in crime rates, which is compounded by a spike in levels of crime over a two year period. Second, I attempt to make sense of these overlapping trends by identifying the “usual suspects” that explain criminal activity. The type and quality of data does not allow theories to be adequately tested, so I provide crime correlates associated with major changes in the urban landscape and the economic and social changes of the 1990s. Despite the absence of a sound data collection system, different available measures show that the total number of offenses increased significantly over the 1990s. Because of severe problems with the validity and reliability of data collection, it is best to use longitudinal data, as “snapshots” of cross sectional information cannot be trusted, particularly for comparative analysis. Conversely, time series of same measures allow one to identify and track changes, as the same method of collection is usually applied over years, even if this is far from accurate. In other words, it is best to identify trends rather than determine crime rates. An analysis of this data suggests that the surge in delinquency does not follow a stable pattern. In addition to a moderate upward trend in criminal activity, there was a sharp increase in both cities in 1994–1996. According to different measures, criminal activity in 1997 was at least double that of 1994. In other words, this study identifies two clearly distinctive processes: a modest upsurge over the last fifteen years, on the one hand, and a significant leap in a short two year span, on the other. In short, this paper focuses on the 1990s because it was during that decade that the drastic increase in criminality was observed. Although crime fell slightly between 2003 and 2007, it has never returned to the relatively low levels of criminality that existed before the 1990s. The argument here is that the sharp rise in criminality in both cities is strongly correlated with major social transformations in the 1990s such 64 Marcelo Bergman as unemployment, the composition of relative size cohorts, and the structure of the labor market. This macrolevel transformation and new social contexts gave rise to very explosive social conditions. In short, the slow increase in criminality documented from the 1980s onwards (and perhaps even before) was compounded by a more explosive surge in the mid-1990s as social conditions facilitated a rapid rise in criminal activity. It appears that the slow increase produced by changing labor market conditions and marginality exploded with the severe economic crisis in Mexico and Argentina, increasing the number of potential delinquents to unprecedented new levels. NEW TRENDS IN CRIMINALITY: HOMICIDE RATES Due to the different nature and the coding of the information on criminality in both metropolitan areas, it is necessary to provide separate trends for each city. Given standard concerns about the collection of information , the...