Acessibilidade / Reportar erro

Sport and criminal prevention: an analysis of Brazilian municipalities for 2002 and 2010

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to understand the association between sport and crime. The hypothesis presented is that this association is negative, since sports participation can reduce crime through three channels: i) time occupation, ii) increase in moral cost and iii) increase in expected legal income. The research tests this hypothesis by measuring the correlation of crime with public spending and public institutions that formulate policies of sport and leisure in Brazilian municipalities for 2002 and 2010. The fixed effects model is used, adopting as dependent variables homicide rate and homicide rate among youngsters. The results show that there is a negative correlation between the homicide rate in two of the five estimated sport proxy variables. Furthermore, the sport-crime correlation is negative for the juvenile homicide rate, except for the estimation with the variable of spending on sport and leisure.

Keywords:
Sport; Criminal prevention; Economics of crime; Panel data; Fixed effects model

Instituto de Economia da Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Publicações Rua Pitágoras, 353 - CEP 13083-857, Tel.: +55 19 3521-5708 - Campinas - SP - Brazil
E-mail: publicie@unicamp.br