Perceptions of crime in the community and intolerance of economic inequality
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15517/rr.v107i1.00008Keywords:
Violence, Crime, Social inequality, Economic Inequality, Open ScienceAbstract
Introduction: Perceptions of crime in the community may influence how people evaluate economic inequality. However, evidence on the relationship between these two phenomena is scarce in Latin America.
Objective: This study explores the relationship between perceptions of crime in the community and intolerance of economic inequality in Costa Rica, using data from the 2020 Latinobarometro survey.
Method and technique: A representative sample of 1000 individuals from the general population (52% women, Mage = 41 years) was used, along with an exploratory, descriptive, and correlational design. A hierarchical regression model was employed to analyze the relationship between the variables, controlling for sociodemographic and ideological indicators.
Results: The findings show that individuals who report the presence of crime in their community exhibit lower levels of tolerance toward economic inequality. This result holds even after controlling for gender, age, educational level, income, and political ideology.
Conclusions: The perception of crime in the community is associated with greater sensitivity to economic inequality. The need to develop public policies that address citizen security in relation to structural inequality is highlighted in order to improve the quality of life in communities affected by crime.
Downloads
References
Aldama, Abraham, Cristina Bicchieri, Jana Freundt, Bárbara Mellers y Ellen Peters. 2021. «How perceptions of autonomy relate to beliefs about inequality and fairness». PLOS ONE, 16 (1). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244387
Alexander, David. A, y Susan Klein. 2009. «Kidnapping and hostage-taking: a review of effects, coping and resilience». Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 102: 16-21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1258/jrsm.2008.080347
Almanza, Ariagor Manuel, Sergio Cáceres y Anel Hortensia Gómez. 2020. «Proceso de tratamiento a víctimas del crimen en la comunidad: Un estudio cualitativo centrado en la experiencia de psicólogos clínicos». Interdisciplinaria, 37 (1): 27-28. https://doi.org/10.16888/interd.2020.37.1.14
Bailey, Nick, María Gannon, Ade Kearns, Mark Livingston y Aliester Leyland. 2013. «Living Apart, Losing Sympathy? How Neighbourhood Context Affects Attitudes to Redistribution and to Welfare Recipients». Environment And Planning A: Economy And Space, 45 (9): 2154-2175. https://doi.org/10.1068/a45641
Bergman, Marcelo. 2023. El negocio del crimen: El crecimiento del delito, los mercados ilegales y la violencia en América Latina. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fondo de Cultura Económica Argentina.
Burgos, Jorge y Patricio Tudela. 2001. «Seguridad ciudadana en Chile: Los desafíos de la participación y la modernización para una política pública». Seguridad ciudadana, ¿espejismo o realidad?, 39: 475. https://www.flacso.edu.ec/portal/files/docs/sfsegburgos.pdf
Bussolo, Mauricio, Ada Ferrer-I-Carbonell, Ana Giolbas e Iván Torre. 2021. «I Perceive Therefore I Demand: The Formation of Inequality Perceptions and Demand for Redistribution”. The Review Of Income And Wealth, 67 (4): 835-871. https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12497
Carrillo, Luis Lauro, Francisco García y Jorge Alberto López. 2022. “La relación entre desigualdad y crimen en el contexto de los estados con mayor pobreza en México: los casos de Guerrero, Oaxaca y Chiapas». Estudios Sociales. Revista de Alimentación Contemporánea y Desarrollo Regional, 32 (59). https://doi.org/10.24836/es.v32i59.1208
Favaro, Angela, D Degortes, Giovanni Colombo y Paolo Santonastaso. 2000. «The effects of trauma among kidnap victims in Sardinia, Italy». Psychological Medicine, 30 (4): 975-980. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0033291799001877
Galván, Mauricio Luna, Hai Thanh Luong y Elisa Astolfi. 2021. «El narcotráfico como crimen en la comunidad: comprendiendo el fenómeno desde la perspectiva transnacional y multidimensional». Revista de Relaciones Internacionales, Estrategia y Seguridad, 16 (1): 197-212. https://doi.org/10.18359/ries.5412
Hernández, Roberto, Carlos Fernández y María del Pilar Baptista. 2014. «Definición del alcance de la investigación que se realizará: exploratorio, descriptivo, correlacional o explicativo». En Metodología de la Investigación, editado por Marcela Rocha Martínez, 88-101. Distrito Federal, México: Mc Graw Hill Education
IAAP & IUPsyS. 2008. Declaración Universal de Principios Éticos para Psicólogos y Psicólogas [Presentación]. https://archive.org/details/iaap-iupsys-declaracion-universal-de-principios-eticos-para-psicologas-y-psicologos/page/n3/mode/2up
Kelly, Sean y Melissa Moore‐Clingenpeel. 2012. «Contextual Effects on Attitudes toward Inequality». Population Review, 51 (2). https://doi.org/10.1353/prv.2012.a492698
Kitsnik, Joanna. 2021. «Untangling the tolerance of socioeconomic inequality: comparing Japan, the United States, South Korea, and the People’s Republic of China». Japanese Journal Of Sociology, 31 (1): 86-109. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijjs.12129
Corporación Latinobarómetro. 2020. Latinobarómetro 2020. https://www.latinobarometro.org/latContents.jsp
Mijs, Jonathan. 2018. »Inequality Is a Problem of Inference: How People Solve the Social Puzzle of Unequal Outcomes». Societies, 8 (3). https://doi.org/10.3390/soc8030064
Minkoff, Scott. L y Jeffrey Lyons. 2019. “Living With Inequality: Neighborhood Income Diversity and Perceptions of the Income Gap”. American Politics Research, 47 (2): 329-361. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673x17733799
Naciones Unidas. 2000. Convención de las Naciones Unidas contra la Delincuencia Organizada Transnacional. Palermo.
Navia, Carmen Elvira y Marcela Ossa. 2003. «Family functioning, coping, and psychological adjustment in victims and their families following kidnapping». Journal of Traumatic Stress, 16 (1): 107-112. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1022023730711
Organismo de Investigación Judicial. 2023. Consulta en línea sobre los principales delitos. https://pjenlinea3.poder-judicial.go.cr/estadisticasoij/
Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el desarrollo. 2021. Los vínculos entre violencia, desigualdad, y productividad. https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/migration/latinamerica/undp-rblac-IRDH-PNUD_C04-ES.pdf
Robles-Rivera, Francisco, Ximena Alvarenga y Gustavo Fuchs. 2023. «Austeridad y defensa: los discursos de las élites económicas centroamericanas durante la pandemia». Estudios Sociológicos de El Colegio de México, 42: 1-25. https://doi.org/10.24201/es.2024v42.e2449
Rueda, David y Daniel Stegmueller. 2016. «Las externalidades de la desigualdad: miedo al crimen y preferencias de redistribución en Europa occidental». Revista Estadounidense de Ciencias Políticas, 60: 472-489. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12212
Sain, Marcelo Fabián y Nicolas Eduardo Games. 2015. Tendencias y desafíos del crimen en la comunidad en Latinoamérica. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: UMET, Universidad Metropolitana para la Educación y el Trabajo.
Salgado, Víctor Julio. 2010. «Creencias y conductas irracionales presentes en familiares y víctimas de secuestro y extorsión». Revista Criminalidad, 52 (2): 33-54. http://www.scielo.org.co/pdf/crim/v52n2/v52n2a03.pdf
Sanmartín, José. 2007. «¿Qué es violencia? Una aproximación al concepto y a la clasificación de la violencia». Daimon Revista Internacional de Filosofía, (42): 9–21. https://revistas.um.es/daimon/article/view/95881
Shrestha, Noora. 2020. «Detección de multicolinealidad en el análisis de regresión». Revista Estadounidense de Matemáticas Aplicadas y Estadística, 8 (2): 39-42. https://doi.org/10.12691/ajams-8-2-1
Soldano, Daniela. 2016. Ciudades latinoamericanas: Desigualdad, segregación y tolerancia. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.
Son, Leanne. S, Anne Wilson, Pesro Gourevitch, Jaslyn English y Parque Sin. 2019. «Failure to Respond to Rising Income Inequality: Processes That Legitimize Growing Disparities». Dædalus, 148 (3): 105-135. https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01752
Trump, Kris-Stella. 2020. «When and why is economic inequality seen as fair». Current Opinion In Behavioral Sciences, 34: 46-51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2019.12.001
Vilhjalmsdottir, Arnis, Ragna Gardarsdottir, Jon Gunnar Bernburg e Inga Dora Sigfusdottir. 2016. «Neighborhood income inequality, social capital and emotional distress among adolescents: A population-based study». Journal of adolescence, 51: 92-102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2016.06.004
Published
Issue
Section
Categories
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Kevin Oses Berrocal, Celia Ojeda Rodríguez, Martín Camacho Pérez, Jerry Durán Alfaro, Valeria Seballos Mora, Juan Diego García-Castro (Autor/a)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Open Access Magazines Proposed Policy
The authors who publish in Reflexiones Journal agree with the following terms:
a. The authors preserve the article´s copyright and grant the journal its first publication. The work [SPECIFY PERIOD OF TIME] must be licensed after its publication under a:
a. The authors retain the copyright and grant to the journal the right of first publication, with the work [SPECIFY PERIOD OF TIME] as well as after publication is licensed under a Creative Common CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Internationa) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of authorship of the work and initial publication in this journal.
b. The authors can separately establish additional agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the published version (for example, place it in an institutional repository or publish it in a book), but, as stated above, with the recognition of its initial publication in this magazine.
c. Authors are allowed and encouraged to circulate their work electronically (for example, in institutional repositories or on their own website) before and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as an earlier and greater citation of their published works (See The Effect of Open Access).
d. Reflexiones Journal does not apply any fee or charge for the publishing process.
The authors who send their manuscripts to be evaluated by Reflexiones Journal, assign to it the publication rights for the article’s circulation in printed version or digital format. By being part of multiple indexers, databases and reference systems, the articles that are published by this journal will be available and downloaded from these websites, indicating, in all cases, the articles’ authorship, date of publication, and the number to which they correspond. All the documents published by Reflexiones can be downloaded on the journal’s website: https://revistas.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/reflexiones, and in all the databases where it is indexed.
The journal respects and follows all of the established by the Law No. 6683 Law on Copyright and Related Rights of the Republic of Costa Rica, as well as its reform in the 7979 Law.
Finally, Reflexiones applies in its publications the Creative Commons License, which can be consulted in the following link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en
