Criminalidade E O Tamanho Das Cidades Brasileiras: Um Enfoque Da Economia Do Crime

This paper investigates criminality causes in cities and their relationship with the city size. For this goal, a formal model is presented based on Glaeser and Sacerdote (1999), however it incorporates the contributions of the ecological approach proposed by Brofenbrenner (1979). In the model, the criminality in cities can be explained by local characteristics in that the context and the individual's history affect the criminality. An econometric model using panel data from Brazilian cities in the nineties tests the theoretical model. The findings confirm the relevance city size in the explanation of the criminality. The paper also confirms the role of the income inequality and of the poverty as factors that enforces the criminality in cities. In the paper is also discussed the importance of the family and of the school in the criminality explanation. The obtained results show that problems in the family structure and the inefficiency of the basic school in Brazil affect positively the criminality. In this paper, the benefits of the crime and the opportunity costs are divided, that allows concluding that the economic growth doesn't implicate directly in the criminality increase. Because, if there is an increase in the income of the more poor the criminality will decreases.