The literature on fear of crime has grown rapidly in the last three decades. This paper examines the reasons for this growth and attempts to put some structure on the work to date. The inadequacies of measures of fear of crime are discussed and alternative approaches suggested. Alternative explanatory theories are compared and strategies for reducing fear reviewed.

Fear of crime: A review of the literature.

The volume of research on fear of crime in the United States is substantial and continues to regularly appear in sociology and criminology journals. Despite the amount of research on the subject, the measurement procedures most frequently used are suspect because of theoretical and methodological shortcomings. We present a conceptual definition of fear of crime and then systematically review the way it has been measured in research over the last fifteen years. The review indicates that whik omnibus fear of crime and risk of crime measures are only moderately correlated, a substantial number of studies have used risk measures and generalized to fear. Suggestions for future research are offered.

The Measurement of Fear of Crime

The authors construct a model for explaining "fear" of crime by using the relevant literature to identify possible factors and making out a prima facie case for each by examining data from the second British Crime Survey. Using logit analysis this model is tested on data derived from the same survey. The authors show that such factors as gender, age, race, neighbourhood cohesion, confidence in the police, levels of local incivility, experience of victimisation, perception of risk and assessment of offence seriousness all combine toform a theoretical account of "fear" which has strong empirical support. On the basis of these findings, they conclude by making some suggestions for policies to reduce this "fear".

Explaining fear of crime

Much of the research on fear of crime indicates that women and older persons are highly afraid of crime. These findings, especially older persons' fear of crime, are widely communicated in the scientific and popular media. This study examines age and gender differences in perceived risk and fear of crime. The data are from telephone interviews of 320 randomly selected residents in a southeastern metropolitan area of the United States. The relationships of age and gender to fear of crime are compared using a National Crime Survey (NCS) measure of fear of crime and 11 alternative indicators of fear of specific offenses. Women reported signifcantly greater perceived risk and fear of crime than men regardless of how fear of crime was measured and older adults reported the greatest fear of crime when the NCS measure was used. but not when the alternative individual measures of fear of crime were used. A LISREL model with latent constructs for fear of personal crime and fear of property crime also indicates that older adults do not have higher levels of fear of crime. In short, the extent of fear in the everyday lives of most older persons has been overestimated in many previous studies because of measurement problems.

Assessing age and gender differences in perceived risk and fear of crime

The fear of crime and area differences in health.

It is commonly accepted that there is a positive relationship between age and the fear of crime, although there is some indication that this may not hold under all conditions. Most studies concerning fear of crime have been based upon questions involving fear of walking alone within one's neighborhood. This study examined fear of crime both in the relative danger of walking in the neighborhood and in the safety of one's home. Age was found to be positively associated with fear of crime in the former situation, but slightly negatively associated in the latter. It was suggested that the aged may only be more fearful of crime in particularly dangerous situations, and that there is a need for fear of crime measures with greater content validity.

Charles R. Jeffords

Papers

The situational relationship between age and the fear of crime