Inform to relieve: perceptions regarding insecurity and wellbeing

The perception of insecurity can be measured as the percentage of the population for whom crime is a main concern. According to the 2013 CAF Survey (ECAF 2013, for its acronym in Spanish), this percentage is almost 24% higher than the percentage of the people surveyed that indicated that poverty was their main concern (13.0%), deficient health services (12.5%), and unemployment (9.2%). This perception may be related to factors that are unrelated to the crime that occurred, such as the level of media coverage; trust in police institutions; and availability of reliable statistical information; among others. If this occurs, safety policies must also include these factors. 

In order to evaluate to what degree the provision of reliable statistical information regarding crime could modify the perception of insecurity in the cities of Latin America, an experimental exercise was carried out (ECAF 2013). It consisted in providing information (from the ECAF of previous years) about the level and evolution of crime to a sub-group of homes chosen randomly in each city surveyed. The sample of homes was divided into three specific groups:

• one third of the people surveyed received information regarding the victimization rate in their city;
• another third received information regarding the level and evolution of the victimization rate during the past five years, and;
• the remaining third (control group) did not receive any information.

At the beginning of the survey the people who participated were asked what they thought was the victimization rate in their city (the average estimated that it was 47%, while the real figure was 27%), and if this rate had been increasing or decreasing in past years. Later, every person surveyed that received information regarding victimization (treatment groups), was asked if they thought the information provided was not, little, or very believable. Finally, they were asked about the perception of insecurity and about the actions each person surveyed would take to deal with this problem. 

The results of the experiment showed that individuals in the treatment group that initially over-estimated the level or growth of the victimization rate, and who also considered that the information received was reliable, reported feeling safer, assigned lesser probabilities to the possibility of being victimized, reported less concern for this probability, and were less inclined to adopt new measures to protect themselves from insecurity in the future when compared with the individuals that received no information. 

The results suggest that producing reliable, periodical, and accessible statistical information regarding the incidence of crime is a main element in a strategy to promote the moderation of expectations regarding insecurity. Not doing so may strengthen fear of crime beyond what is justified by the real incidence of the phenomena, generating behaviors that negatively affect the populations' wellbeing.