Violent crime: Does social capital matter?

Since the 1960s, the economics literature on crime has grown rapidly both on theoretical and empirical grounds. It has expanded, however, mostly following the direction outlined in Gary Becker's original paradigm, by which crime is the result of an individual's decision based on a cost-benefit analysis. Thus, the theoretical and empirical work has concentrated on the comparison of legal and criminal returns and the role of deterrence by the police and justice systems. Only recently has the effect of social interactions on criminal behavior been the focus of some economics studies, most of them theoretical. John Dilulio argues that one of the areas that has received little attention from economists so far is the potential link between "social capital" and violent crime.⁴ In an attempt to fill this gap, we explore empirically the effect of different indicators of social capital, such as the prevalence of trust on members of the community and the membership and participation in voluntary secular and religious organizations, on the incidence of violent crimes across countries.