Entre muros: descrição espacial dos cenários urbanos com grande incidência criminal no bairro do Tabuleiro do Martins, Maceió-AL

Abstract

Discussion on the urban problems raises the lack of security as a recurring issue. Contemporary society individuals, in an attempt to avoid violence, get more and more isolated, keeping themselves away from urban public areas. This triggers the insecurity of those areas, resulting in hostile and lifeless areas. Several studies deal with violence focusing on one of the three components of this phenomenon: victim, criminal and area. The present study focuses on the latter, seeking to understand the transgressions as of the areas in which they occur. It is based on the assumption that areas are influenced by human activities – including the criminal ones - and vice-versa. Corroborating this view, several studies and theories, by means of the areas, seek to prevent urban violence, such as a Theory of Urban Vitality, a Defensible Space, a Crime Prevention Crime through Environmental Design (CPTED) and Situational Crime Prevention, referred in this study. Such theories provide clues of the physical elements constituents of the areas that can be observed in urban regions with high criminal incidence. Thus, the objective of this study is to describe the physical characteristics of public areas with high incidence of crimes, having as object of study the neighborhood of Tabuleiro do Martins, in Maceió, Alagoas. Official robbery data from Maceió were used in the methodology to identify the most violent neighborhood to be set as object of study, and later, criminal data were georeferenced to define the areas of observation. It is possible to conclude that some spatial aspects are inherent to areas with a high crime rate, indicating that it can favor the occurrence of transgressions: inefficiency of public lighting, little visual permeability, lack of adequate infrastructure for pedestrian mobility, and lack of area appropriation by the inhabitants, which together with unremarkable landscapes, shape hostile and insecure areas.