Cross-national Criminal Victimization: Confronting the Neglected Regional Effects

• In Event: 033 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 04. Communities, Institutions and Violence

Abstract

Based on national surveys of 153 nations, this study is able to fully explore regional effects on criminal victimization cross-nationally. Two regions, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa are far above the rest of the world in terms of victimization rates. It turns out that nearly all the standard social variables found to be important in previous cross-national studies no longer have significant effects when controls for these two regions are imposed. While a Latin America regional dummy variable is often used as a proxy for macho culture, this study uses a direct measure and finds that it has one of the largest effects on victimization, net of region, and also explains portions of both regional effects.

Authors

• Katie E. Corcoran, West Virginia University

• Rodney Stark, Baylor University