Risk Perceptions and Attitudes about Crime and Gender-Based Violence: How People Delegate Responsibility of Prevention to the State vs. the Victim in Brazil and Mexico

• In this book project, I examine how people think about general crime (e.g., robbery, assault) versus intimate partner violence (IPV) and hold the government responsible for each. This is an important but understudied question.  IPV only recently became a criminal offense in many countries, but impunity for violating gender-based crimes tends to be high. While some forms of general crime also enjoy impunity in many countries, combating crime has always been a responsibility of governments. In addition, IPV and general crimes have very dissimilar characteristics. I argue that these differing characteristics matter for how citizens think about them and connect them to the state. Although my prior research sheds new light on how IPV victimization influences victims’ opinions, the more basic question of how the public understands general crime differently from IPV remains unanswered.