Fear of crime and the willingness to report crime to police: A case study of model policing in Meta-Mercado, Coatepeque, Guatemala

ABSTRACT

Community-oriented policing has been a mainstay of policing over the past quarter century. In March 2019, the municipality of Coatepeque in Guatemala, with the assistance of Research Triangle Institute (RTI) International, implemented a new community policing plan called Vivir y Prosperar in the Meta Mercado. Vivir y Prosperar was designed to improve security, reduce crime, and promote economic prosperity. This study utilises the pre-test, baseline and 6-months post-test, endline survey data of market vendors in the Meta Mercado to assess whether Vivir y Prosperar reduced fear of crime and increased someone’s willingness to report crime to police as tenets of community policing would anticipate. Results show that Vivir and Prosperar did not directly contribute to a decrease in fear of crime or improve one’s willingness to report crimes to the police. However, improving personal victimisation experiences, bribery payments, and other factors may indirectly promote a reduction in fear of crime and increase the willingness to report a crime among market vendors.

KEYWORDS:

• Community policing
• fear of crime
• crime reporting
• Guatemala
• international

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Mano dura is translated into “firm hand” or “iron fist.” Broadly defined, these are a set of policies employed across Central America to gain control over gang problems. They often involve joint military and police anti-gang units, which work together to crack down on gang-related crime. They are also involved in indiscriminate arrests of individuals suspected of being involved in gang-related activities (Garcia, 2017; Wolf, 2017).

2. For detailed information about Community Policing and Model Police Precincts, please see Community Policing in Central America: The Way Forward (USAID, 2011)

3. While Cronbach’s alpha score is relatively low for fear of crime, these measurements for fear of crime have been repeatedly tested in criminological research and found to be acceptable conceptual measures for fear of crime. Further, while it is argued that Cronbach’s alpha is best to have a score above 0.70, more recent literature has found that a Cronbach’s alpha score ranging from 0.58 to 0.97 falls within a satisfactory range, especially if there are a small number of variables tapping into fear of crime being utilised (cf. Taber, 2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laura Iesue

Dr. Laura Iesue is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Sam Houston State University. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Miami, specializing in criminology and race, ethnicity, and immigration studies. Dr. Iesue conducts comparative research on violence among individuals, assesses how violence impacts individual and community behavior, and considers how criminal justice and developmental programs to curb violence may or may not work long-term. She has researched the impacts between victimization and migration, gender-based violence, and has written about the coping strategies of journalists who experience violence in Mexico and Brazil. She is also the lead PI on a research study on war-related violence and trauma among Ukrainian refugees and internally displaced persons and a co-founder of Stop Global Violence.

Wayne Pitts

Wayne Pitts is a Senior Researcher in the Center for Public Safety and Resilience Program, part of the RTI International Justice Practice Area. He completed his doctoral studies at the University of New Mexico, focusing on international migration with perspectives grounded in comparative and political sociology. He was a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Memphis before joining RTI in 2012, where he continued his work in Latin America with work on projects in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Shortly thereafter, he relocated for several years to Central America, where he led the Guatemala Model Police Precinct (MPP) project, funded by the United States Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL). He continues in this role in Honduras. Dr. Pitts’ research interests include international criminology and community policing, especially in Latin America; transnational migration; program evaluation; human trafficking; and community trust and police legitimacy.

Chris Inkpen

Christopher S. Inkpen is a research sociologist and demographer in the Center for Criminal Legal Systems Research at RTI International. He earned a dual doctorate in sociology and demography from the Pennsylvania State University. His recent research focuses on developing and validating risk assessments used at different points in the criminal legal system, along with developing novel methods to predict the unauthorized immigrant population in the United States. He has led studies exploring the relationship between crime, victimization, and migration in Latin America, along with studies of immigrant assimilation and offending in the United States. Dr. Inkpen’s methodological research applies machine learning techniques to social science problems. His research has been funded by a National Science Foundation traineeship in big data social science, the Institute of International Education’s Fulbright Scholarship program, the Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, and the National Institute of Justice.