Some relevant risk factors and causal mechanisms to understand crime in Romania

The objective of this paper is to provide some empirical evidence of relevant risk factors and causal mechanisms to understand criminal behavior in Romania. In order to achieve this goal, some socio-economic variables are considered: long-term unemployment rate and people at risk of poverty or social exclusion and, as crime variables we use four different types of crimes: domestic burglary, homicide, motor vehicle theft and robbery. At the regional level, the results of our panel data analysis, using data regarding the development regions of Romania for a time span between 2008 and 2010, supports the thesis of a direct and significant correlation between poverty and crime. Our results thus indicate that for Romania poverty is a significant risk factor in predicting crime and unemployment is not a significant risk factor even if we considered the long-term unemployment.