Street crime as a cultural issue

[AlexanderB]

I've been traveling a bit lately, and I'm currently spending some time in my not-so-distantly-ancestral home of Yerevan, Armenia. I was thinking about all the street crime-related discussions we have here.

I think you guys are right in some ways. The more I travel, the more I am inclined to draw the conclusion that petty, street-level crime is a cultural proclivity, not a socio-economic one, as I had always taken for granted.

Armenia is considerably poorer than some Latin American countries I have traveled to, but I haven't heard of anyone getting mugged, robbed, broken into, etc. here. Oh, I'm sure it happens, as it does anywhere, but it's not a regular occurrence on an anecdotal level. Indeed, I haven't been accosted by anyone since I got here, even walking through some of the shadier parts of the city. Such an irregular occurrence is it that my own grandmother--by all accounts quite paranoid for my safety--is not in the least bit worried about me walking around Yerevan at night alone.

Argentina (per-capita GDP PPP of US$17,400) is a much wealthier country than Armenia (per-capita GDP PPP of US$5,400), but being beaten senseless for your wallet or mobile in Buenos Aires is a very real concern shared by virtually everyone I know there, not just the alarmists on this forum.

 

[nicoenarg]

Alexander, I think you nailed it right there. What can I say, nothing to add to that.

 

[mendozanow]

Careful, you might be labeled as a racist by the overly sensitive here!

 

[LorenzoQuiero]

It's interesting how these things work within a culture. My wife is Armenian, and after spending 6 months in Buenos Aires in 2010, I went immediately to Yerevan to meet her family (she was my girlfriend at the time, and I had to ask her father for her hand).

In my 3 weeks there, I never felt the slightest bit threatened, though I was constantly alarmed walking around late at night having just come straight from BsAs.

In the last few years I've been fortunate enough to visit a lot of places, and have spent a lot of time thinking about why some feel (and/or are) dangerous, and others not.

Some places that obviously have a lot of poverty feel quite safe, Hanoi for example, any of the big cities in India, even in the slums, or even Bangkok (which was seedy, but didn't feel dangerous to me). Other places there is an edge of violence hanging over everything. BsAs, increasingly it seems even since I've left, Rio, or Johannesburg, which I was just in recently.

I think you've put it as well as anybody can Alexander. I've come to the conclusion that some cultures are just more tolerant of violence/street crime than others.

 

[AlexanderB]

Some of it is definitely a matter of policy instrumentation too, though. Sakashvili is renowned for having completely renovated the Georgian police force and taken an extremely tough stance on common crime, resulting in a very, very safe Tbilisi that is widely lauded. Of course, I have only anecdotal evidence of this.

As for perception, perception of safety is a funny thing. Some places that seem to objectively be dangerous "feel" very safe (like BsAs was during my relatively brief visit), while some perfectly safe places intuitively seem quite dangerous.

 

[LorenzoQuiero]

Good points Alexander. I don't know what the stance is in Armenia on street crime. I do know, anecdotally, of the corruption of the police force in Yerevan. I witnessed it multiple times over little things like traffic stops when I was there. How that does or doesn't contribute to violent crime I don't know. I do know that people I talked to there were hopeful that reform of the police similar to Georgia would happen in Armenia.

As for perception, it's an odd thing. And you are right, there were places in Pretoria and Johannesburg that seemed like they would be quite safe, leafy and green, that apparently were anything but, and places like the Dharavi slum in Mumbai, that at first glance would seem likely to be terribly dangerous, but in actuality wasn't.

I try to be perceptive when I am in a new place, and (knock on wood) have yet to be assaulted or robbed. I didn't think BsAs felt particularly safe (though nothing happened to me in six months), but that may have been because of all the stories I heard about it not being safe, and the large numbers of people I knew who had been assaulted or robbed there.

 

[kurtdillard]

In my opinion, this is a pointless discussion without statistics. The crime rate in Buenos Aires and Corrientes where we live, feels like its on the rise to me. But my feelings are strongly influenced by my family's experiences and what I see & read in the news and this forum. My wife's purse was snatched last year, our 7000 watt backup generator was stolen from our locked garage a month ago, one of my in-laws has been mugged 3 times in the past 12 months in Bs. As., and people post a lot of negative experiences and observations here. But that doesn't mean Argentina has a worse crime rate than LA, NYC, or London. Its frustrating that government agencies down here publish few reliable stats about much of anything so its difficult to make an unemotional comparison between Argentinian cities and similarly-sized cities in the US or Europe. I agree with you guys that it feels a lot less safe now than it did 5 or 10 years ago down here, but I would greatly appreciate it if someone could point to solid research with sound statistics.

 

[nyer4ever]

I don't think it's a "cultural issue," I think it more be a wealth disparity issue. I think the larger the wealth gap, the more crime you will find. Cue Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo ... etc.

I don't think Armenia and Vietnam have as many wealthy people as Buenos Aires does.

Just look at the contrast of Villa 31/Recoletta or in Rio Rocinha/Sao Conrado.

I think the visual reference of the wealth gap may fuel more crime.

My 2centavos.

 

[rrptownley]

I've been traveling a bit lately, and I'm currently spending some time in my not-so-distantly-ancestral home of Yerevan, Armenia. I was thinking about all the street crime-related discussions we have here.

I think you guys are right in some ways. The more I travel, the more I am inclined to draw the conclusion that petty, street-level crime is a cultural proclivity, not a socio-economic one, as I had always taken for granted.

Armenia is considerably poorer than some Latin American countries I have traveled to, but I haven't heard of anyone getting mugged, robbed, broken into, etc. here. Oh, I'm sure it happens, as it does anywhere, but it's not a regular occurrence on an anecdotal level. Indeed, I haven't been accosted by anyone since I got here, even walking through some of the shadier parts of the city. Such an irregular occurrence is it that my own grandmother--by all accounts quite paranoid for my safety--is not in the least bit worried about me walking around Yerevan at night alone.

Argentina (per-capita GDP PPP of US$17,400) is a much wealthier country than Armenia (per-capita GDP PPP of US$5,400), but being beaten senseless for your wallet or mobile in Buenos Aires is a very real concern shared by virtually everyone I know there, not just the alarmists on this forum.

I agree.
But when you quoted the GDPs my immediate thought was the relative price of necessities like bread and milk in Armenia is [probably] more affordable than it is here.

Also, I'm going on a tangent here, the historical demographic in an older, more established country like Armenia is very different from Argentina. In Armenia I assume a larger % of the population live in the countryside or in small market towns while in Argentina the majority of the population arrived as immigrants into the same port and hence mostly live in one metropolitan area.
A big wedge of the populations of Armenians living in the city will be studying or working for their families back home in the smaller rural towns where crime is lower and mutual respect more prevalent, qualities which the transient workers and students bring to the city.
Buenos Aires´s population is larger and mostly static, which, like a stagnant lake, breeds insecurity and social problems.

In the countryside in Armenia I assume there is a lot of subsistence farming, so a lot of the population can exist even if there is little income, and those in the city in bad times can fall back to their ancestral villages. In Argentina there is very little subsistence farming, it is pretty much exclusively commercial. Meaning that the poor in Argentina are completely at the whim of changing differences in how much money they earn and how much that can actually get them. At the end of the month they don't have a field of wheat, chickens or goats to fall back in hard times, with no social care they have the streets and a greatly in-equal society with loaded wallets.

My point is that the countries are very different, and in starting to try and explain why you cant pin different levels of street crime on cultural differences rather than socio-economic ones, I think I instead pointed it towards historical settlement. I have no idea what I am speaking about.

 

[trennod]

In my opinion, this is a pointless discussion without statistics. The crime rate in Buenos Aires and Corrientes where we live, feels like its on the rise to me. But my feelings are strongly influenced by my family's experiences and what I see & read in the news and this forum. My wife's purse was snatched last year, our 7000 watt backup generator was stolen from our locked garage a month ago, one of my in-laws has been mugged 3 times in the past 12 months in Bs. As., and people post a lot of negative experiences and observations here. But that doesn't mean Argentina has a worse crime rate than LA, NYC, or London. Its frustrating that government agencies down here publish few reliable stats about much of anything so its difficult to make an unemotional comparison between Argentinian cities and similarly-sized cities in the US or Europe. I agree with you guys that it feels a lot less safe now than it did 5 or 10 years ago down here, but I would greatly appreciate it if someone could point to solid research with sound statistics.

Personally, I think statistics can be misleading. The majority of petty crime here goes unreported so it makes any statistical analysis basically impossible. I think you hit the nail on the head with the bolded part. It seems this general feeling is across the board in the country, I know my colleagues, friends and gf and her family feel the same.

I dont think this city is quite in the same boat as La Paz, Mexico City (yet), but having said that its not comparable to New York or London. I could probably give examples of 10-15 people I know that have spent an average of 2 years in London over the last 5. I dont think any have been the victim of petty crime. Of my closest 10 here, I have heard atleast half have been the victims of petty crime with a couple multiple times (including my girlfriend both here and in Tucuman).