Violent crime and socioeconomic development: a study of the West of Paraná mesoregion

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the correlation between the economic development of municipalities in the West of Paraná mesoregion and the incidence of violent crime (using homicide rates as a proxy for violent crime). The proposal was to build an Index of Socioeconomic Development (IDS) for each municipality in this mesoregion, and thereby to make the analysis of correlation with the proxy. As a result, the violent crimes tend to fall when the IDS increases to the municipalities of West Paraná mesoregion, although this correlation is considered very weak negative type, given the low Spearman coefficient found (-0.23). However, considering all the municipalities in the Paraná State, this ratio was almost zero (-0.07). Therefore, a comparison with the totality of Paraná State, West of Paraná mesoregion is placed in a relatively better position, even with its low Spearman coefficient.