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.

In 2000, almost 700 million international tourist arrivals were counted worldwide. Even though a global activity of this scale can be assumed to have a substantial impact on the environment, its consequences have never been assessed and quantified. In this contribution, five major aspects of the leisure-related alteration of the environment are investigated: (1) the change of land cover and land use, (2) the use of energy and its associated impacts, (3) the exchange of biota over geographical barriers and the extinction of wild species, (4) the exchange and dispersion of diseases, and (5), a psychological consequence of travel, the changes in the perception and the understanding of the environment initiated by travel.

http://ssu.ac.ir/cms/fileadmin/user_upload/Moavenatha/MBehdashti/Pishgiri_Bimariha/00malt2/27.pdf

Global environmental consequences of tourism

Doing qualitative research differently

Researchers suggest that fear of crime arises from community disorder, cues in the social and physical environment that are distinct from crime itself. Three ecological methods of measuring community disorder are presented: resident perceptions reported in surveys and on-site observations by trained raters, both aggregated to the street block level, and content analysis of crime- and disorder-related newspaper articles aggregated to the neighborhood level. Each method demonstrated adequate reliability and roughly equal ability to predict subsequent fear of crime among 412 residents of 50 blocks in 50 neighborhoods in Baltimore, MD. Pearson and partial correlations (controlling for sex, race, age, and victimization) were calculated at multiple levels of analysis: individual, individual deviation from block, and community (block/neighborhood). Hierarchical linear models provided comparable results under more stringent conditions. Results linking different measure of disorder with fear, and individual and aggregated demographics with fear inform theories about fear of crime and extend research on the impact of community social and physical disorder. Implications for ecological assessment of community social and physical environments are discussed.

/pdf/ecological-assessments-of-community-disorder-their-3d2psr7er6.pdf

Ecological Assessments of Community Disorder: Their Relationship to Fear of Crime and Theoretical Implications

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00420980120046590

Gender, Race, Age and Fear in the City

Research upon the fear of crime has grown substantially in recent years. From its very inception, this field has relied almost exclusively upon quantitative surveys, which have suggested that the fear of crime is a prevalent social problem. However, doubts about the nature of the instruments used to investigate this phenomenon have cumulatively raised the possibility that the fear of crime has been significantly misrepresented. Dealing with the epistemological, conceptual, operational and technical critiques of quantitative surveys in general and of fear of crime surveys in particular, this article suggests that our understanding of the fear of crime is a product of the way it has been researched rather than the way it is. As the aim of the research project under which this data was collected was to develop and design new quantitative questions, the article ends with some possible solutions to the epistemological, conceptual, operational and technical problems discussed which may improve future quantitative research in this field.

QUESTIONING THE MEASUREMENT OF THE ‘FEAR OF CRIME’: Findings from a Major Methodological Study

Professional empirically generated survey data about the fear of crime persistently indicate relatively small but statistically significant differences between fear rates expressed by men and women. Such differences are contrasted with objective crime victimization risk ratios; regularly magnified by amateur surveys; and have been ossified as stereotypes by the media. Subsequently, all women are believed to be fearful of crime; and all men fearless. The research reported herein encountered, paradoxically, fearful men and fearless women. A dissection of their qualitatively garnered feelings indicates, in a very provisional way, the general conditions under which crime-related fears are reduced and enhanced.

/pdf/women-and-the-fear-of-crime-challenging-the-accepted-4t66asdrwf.pdf

WOMEN AND THE ‘FEAR OF CRIME’Challenging the Accepted Stereotype

Members of the general public pay for crime in two different ways. As victims they suffer the direct consequences, and as tax-payers and rate payers they finance the police, courts and prisons to control it. For both these reasons it seems that the general public has a right to know on what, and how successfully, their money is spent. However, the responsibility for informing them rests almost exclusively with a competitive and commercial press. Indeed, it has been noted by Hauge (1965) that " the near monopoly of the daily press as a source of crime news therefore presumably makes it an important influence on public opinion on the subject of crime " (p. 148). Accordingly, it is important to monitor regularly the newspaper coverage of crime to assess whether or not the overall picture of crime which news papers collectively produce is informative and balanced. Previous research in this field has frequently discovered that the news paper coverage of crime news is, in some way, biased. Hauge (1965), Roshier (1973), Croll (1974) and Beardsworth (1975) have discovered an over-emphasis on crimes of violence, and Sherizen (1978) discovered an additional over-emphasis on crimes involving indecency. Yet whilst there has been an upsurge in analytic interest in the media in the last decade (Glasgow University Media Group, 1976 and 1980; Murphy, 1976; Chibnall, 1977; Brunsdon and Morely, 1978; Hall et al., 1978; Hurd, 1979; Jones, 1980), systematic analysis of the newspaper coverage of crime has been relatively neglected. Indeed, no previous research of this sort has ever been carried out in Scotland.

Bias in the newspaper reporting of grime news

Contents: Part 1 An Overview of the Field: Public reaction to crime in the streets, Frank F. Furstenberg A cross-national comparison of victims of crime: victim surveys of 12 countries, Richard Block. Part 2 The Causes of Vulnerability: Safe conduct: women, crime and self in public places, Carol Brooks Gardner Boys don't cry: masculinities, fear of crime and fearlessness, Jo Goodey The elderly's fear of crime: a critical examination of the research, Randy L. LaGrange and Kenneth F. Ferraro Fear of criminal victimisation: the effect of neighborhood racial composition, Gertrude L. Moeller The effects of building size on personal crime and fear of crime, Oscar Newman and Karen A. Franck The impact of victimisation on fear, Wesley G. Skogan. Part 3 The Sources of Information on Victimisation: The impact of a crime wave: perceptions, fear and confidence in the police, Mary Holland Baker, Barbara C. Neinstedt, Ronald S. Everett and Richard McCleary Living with television: the violence profile, George Gerbner and Larry Gross Television viewing and fear of victimisation: is the relationship causal?, Anthony N. Doob and Glenn E. Macdonald Television viewing and the fear of crime: where is the mean world?, Linda Heath and John Petraitis Feeling safe by comparison: crime in the newspapers, Allen E. Liska and Paul Baccaglini Fear of crime: read all about it? The relationship between newspaper crime reporting and fear of crime, Paul Williams and Julie Dickinson. Part 4 The Methods of Surveying: The measurement of the fear of crime, Kenneth F. Ferraro and Randy LaGrange Methodological problems in the study of fears, James W. Croake and Dennis E. Hinkle New methodological perspectives for victimisation surveys: the potentials of computer-assisted telephone surveys and some related innovations, Martin Killias Methodological problems in victim surveys and their implications for research in victimology, Anne L. Schneider. Part 5 Theoretical Models of Explanation: Criminology: testing alternative models of fear of crime, Ralph B. Taylor and Margaret Hale Fear of crime in residential environments: testing a social psychological model, Adri van der Wurff, Leendert van Staalduinen and Peter Stringer Vulnerability, locus of control and worry about crime, Vincent F. Sacco and William Glackman Block crime and fear: defensible space, local social ties and territorial functioning, Ralph B. Taylor, Stephen D. Gottfredson and Sidney Brower. Part 6 Policies to Reduce Fear: Fear of crime: the effect of improved residential security on a difficult to let estate, Patricia Allatt The effectiveness of a police-initiated fear reducing strategy, Trevor Bennett Reducing fear of crime: strategies for intervention, Jeffrey Hennig and Michael G. Maxfield Community crime prevention: an analysis of a developing strategy, Dan A. Lewis and Greta Salem Environmental improvements and the fear of crime: the sad case of the 'Pond' area in Glasgow, Gwyneth Nair, Jason Ditton and Samuel Phillips Afraid or angry? Recalibrating the 'fear' of crime, Jason Ditton, Jon Bannister, Elizabeth Gilchrist and Steven Farrell Name index.

The fear of crime

To establish patterns of MDMA (ecstasy) use and relate these to other substance use, health and social problems related to ecstasy use, a multi-site chain-referral sample was recruited via the ‘dance scene’ in Glasgow. Two hundred and twenty-nine participants were interviewed, including 20 controls and 209 people who had used ecstasy at least once. All users used ecstasy in the context of polydrug use, in particular stimulant and hallucinogen use were significantly related to ecstasy use. Extent of ecstasy use was not related to sociodemographic data, but the group were substantially involved in illegal activities including other drug use, drug selling, buying stolen goods and a range of fiddles and criminal activities. Respondents were classified in terms of their frequency and quantity of ecstasy use (into light, medium and heavy groups) and in terms of whether or not their use pattern over the year before interview was stable or erratic. At most, users took ecstasy about once a week. Extent of drug use in general, rather than ecstasy use in particular, was predictive of more days’ illness, self-attributed depression and experiences of paranoia and memory loss. Some people binged on ecstasy, mostly by taking multiple doses over a period of hours or days. Some people who had felt unwell at a dance event had taken multiple tablets and tended to binge, but others had mixed alcohol and other drugs. These data do not suggest that problems after ecstasy use are either common, or related to extent of use in a straightforward way. Pattern of ecstasy use may be important, but must be considered in context of overall substance use. An estimated half a million Britons use ecstasy (MDMA; 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine) each weekend (Abbott and Concar 1992: 30) but the consequences of this are not clear. The media have focused on deaths associated with ecstasy use, often under headline variants of the ‘The agony and the ecstasy’. In fact, if this many people are using the drug, then major acute adverse effects must be comparatively rare: The number of users presenting with ecstasy-related problems appears to be small when compared to the number of people who present with heroin or alcohol-related problems. However, the national number of ecstasy-related presentations has not been documented yet. Furthermore, the variety of noted adverse effects is large and includes

Jason Ditton

Papers

QUESTIONING THE MEASUREMENT OF THE ‘FEAR OF CRIME’: Findings from a Major Methodological Study

WOMEN AND THE ‘FEAR OF CRIME’Challenging the Accepted Stereotype

Bias in the newspaper reporting of grime news

The fear of crime

Patterns of ecstasy use by drug users