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theses

This study describes how the choices made by crime survivors (during victimization events) and potential victims of crimes (in order to remain safe) affect the outcomes of crimes, the daily routines of citizens and their views on their personal safety. Expanding upon the crime script framework (Cornish, 1994), it describes “survivor scripts” (the cognitive assessment and decision making process employed by citizens before, during and after a victimization event) and “safety scripts” (the cognitive assessment and decision making process employed by citizens to maintain safety). The choices made in these scripts are detailed through the integration of concepts related to “citizen insecurity” (fear and risk of crime), opportunity theories and placed within the context of a Latin American culture. These scripts come from the accounts of 100 citizens in Lima, Peru; a metropolis with one of Latin America’s highest victimization rates. The study describes 14 different survivor script that describe the before during and after of the victimization events of robberies, burglaries, thefts, extortions, kidnappings, identity theft, assault, threats and vandalism. Before the victimizations, citizens employ precautions to procure their safety. During the victimizations, citizens are faced with decisions on how to react during their attacks based on their available choices and the constraints of their environments. After the victimizations, citizens make a number of choices concerning the reporting of the crime and how to prevent future victimizations. A safety script for the citizens of Lima was created; it includes the most common precautions employed by residents and divides them into 5 scenes containing 42 steps. All together, the analysis describes 72 home, 20 neighborhood and 215 personal categories of precautions. A combination of fear, risk assessments, cultural knowhow, crime experiences, victimization neutralization, informality and pragmatism inform the implementation of these protections. Residents explain that citizen insecurity is incremented by the high rates of crimes, negative experiences with the police and distrust of citizens, along with their personal victimization accounts. Thus, citizens feel they are forced to adapt lengthy safety scripts in order to decrease their chances of victimization in the absence of institutionalized resources for crime prevention. This leaves many to plan for likely victimizations rather than to plan to prevent them. In order to improve security, citizens would like more police professionalism, an increase in methods of security across the city and cooperation between citizens, law enforcement and local governments.

ETD_6769

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Antony Carlo Leberatto

doi:10.7282/T3V126T6

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.