Is it a bird? A plane? No, it’s a corporate crime-buster.
Downtown Johannesburg puts a bounce in your step. Streets bustle with noisy fruit sellers and minibus drivers seeking custom. But South Africa’s commercial capital can also create fear in your stomach. Jozi, as locals call it, is notorious for muggings and armed robbery. Corporate offices bristle with impenetrable security and armies of guards. Yet the area has grown less edgy since Schumpeter first visited nearly two decades ago. For that, give some credit to Business Against Crime. The association pays for hundreds of CCTV cameras and staff to monitor them and alert police to mischief.
South African bosses are far from alone in their concern over crime—against their customers, employees, or property. According to the World Bank, 17% of all firms (from a global survey of 135,000) count crime as a “major constraint”. In Brazil or Ivory Coast, it is nearer to 70%. Four in five firms in El Salvador and Kenya pay for private security. A survey in Mexico found that small businesses spend 6% of their income on such protection, double a decade ago. Companies distributing goods in gang-run neighborhoods of Medellin, in Colombia, lose 8-15% of their revenues to theft, says Sergio Tobón, who heads Proantioquia, which unites 50 of the country’s biggest companies in the city, once home to Pablo Escobar. In the United States, a single killing depresses local property prices by 1.5% on average the following year. In Washington, DC, every homicide is associated with two businesses closing.
