João Paulo Moreira de Carvalho Souza

The objective of this paper is to check for a specific profile among the victims of crimes such as theft and/or robbery, attempted theft and/or robbery and assault in Brazil. In addition, it examines possible changes in the Brazilian victimization from 1988 to 2009, based on information from the National Household Sample Survey and the estimation of logit models. The results corroborate the theory and show that factors such as attractiveness of the victim and proximity to offenders, for example, affect the chances of an individual being victimized by crimes. In general, there is a greater homogeneity in the odds of victimization for personal characteristics, but a greater spatial heterogeneity in the country. The results suggest that the most vulnerable people now have greater chances of victimization, such as women and youth, and that the proportion of individuals victimized in the country increased in the three types of crimes studied.