RIVAF research: "Monitoring the impact of the global financial crisis on crime"
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is undertaking a twelve-month research project to identify how the global financial crisis and economic slowdown is affecting violent crime levels, using homicide as a proxy indicator.
Initial countries for the research include Argentina, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa and the Philippines.
The research will (a) increase the frequency of data monitoring using a long-standing annual monitoring system at national level (using web-based real-time reporting); and (b) analyse the impact of crime on the poor and vulnerable and the linkages between crime and economic and social factors, using multiple regression analysis.
Whilst homicide levels can be driven by a range of underlying factors (including levels of development, income inequality, unemployment, rule of law, weapons availability, and presence of organized crime), the project has the specific objective of understanding the relationship between the global financial crisis and homicide in the countries examined. Data will be made available to Global Pulse, allowing timely information on violent crime to be reported in the context of impact-monitoring for the global financial crisis.