Jason Ditton

Bio: Jason Ditton is an academic researcher from University of Sheffield. The author has contributed to research in topics: Fear of crime & Poison control. The author has an hindex of 15, co-authored 28 publications receiving 937 citations.

Afraid or Angry? Recalibrating the ‘fear’ of Crime

Abstract: Studying the fear of crime is a research field that has grown enormously in the past two decades. Yet our empirical knowledge has grown at the expense of conceptual development. It is beginning to be suspected that ‘fear’ is a term encompassing a confusing variety of feelings, perspectives, risk-estimations, and which thus means different things to different people. It is additionally suggested that what we know empirically may well be largely an artefact of the fact that the questions that are put repeatedly to respondents seldom vary, and the ways that those questions are put, and the settings in which they are put seldom change. The research project which is in part reported here initially used one set of respondents to develop new questions relating to their general and specific feelings about criminal victimisation, before testing them on another, much larger sample. This latter exercise confirmed that being ‘angry’ about the threat of criminal victimisation is more frequently reported than being ‘af...

From Imitation to Intimidation: a Note on the Curious and Changing Relationship Between the Media, Crime and Fear of Crime

Abstract: Although a connection between media reports and dramatizations of crime and peoples' fear of crime is intuitively attractive, an actual relationship has been discovered surprisingly infrequently. This study (which analyses the quantitative responses of 167 respondents, and the qualitative responses of a sub-sample of 64 of them) is no exception. The qualitative material indicates that respondents' perceptions and interpretations are more important than the frequency of media consumption and/or any objective characteristics of media material.

The Relationship Between Likelihood and Fear of Criminal Victimization Evaluating Risk Sensitivity as a Mediating Concept

Abstract: Crime surveys typically ask respondents how ‘likely’ they think it is that they will become a crime victim in the future. The responses are interpreted here as ‘risk’ statements. An investigation of the risk literature shows the concept to be considerably more complex than at first imagined, but shows that individual risk predictions are largely based on interpretations far removed from rational considerations of likelihood based on recorded crime rates. Responses from three waves of a longitudinal crime survey conducted in Trinidad are examined in this light. It is concluded that fear of criminal victimization might best be considered as differential sensitivity to predicted risk.

Are Older People Most Afraid of Crime? Revisiting Ferraro and LaGrange in Trinidad

Abstract: This research paper revisits Ferraro and LaGrange's (1992) fear of crime and age study, here using survey data from the Caribbean island of Trinidad but adopting similar methods and statistical analyses. A multi-stage cluster design was used with 728 randomly selected adults. The overall simple correlations for fear of crime and age are low and negative for both males (-.16) and for females (-.04). The same is true for 17 of the 20 separate gender-victimization categories (the other 3 being statistically insignificant low positives). Self-rating of risk follows much the same pattern. The overall simple correlations for risk of victimization and age are low and negative for both males (-.16) and for females (-.03). The same is also true for 15 of the 20 separate gender-victimization categories (the other 5 being statistically insignificant low positives). Contrary to much of the literature, which suggests that the very aged are supposed to feel prisoners' in their own homes, here they are found to be the least afraid of all. This study offers no evidence for the proposition that the fear of crime increases, in a simple linear way, with age.

Crime and the City

Abstract: Britain has seen very substantial public and private investment in open-street closed circuit television surveillance in the 1990s. Part of the justification for this has been the assumed ability of CCTV to reduce both crime and the fear of crime. Recorded crime increased in Glasgow after CCTV was installed there. This paper reports the result of a major survey of crime fear levels experienced by locally resident visitors to a city centre both before and after that installation, and compares their responses to those given by locally resident visitors to two control locations. There is majority support for the installation of open-street CCTV, and a majority thought CCTV would make them feel safer. However, when actual, as opposed to prospective, feelings of safety are compared over time, there is no improvement after installation of CCTV cameras. Further, respondents believe that CCTV is better than the police at detecting crime, but that police patrolling are more effective than CCTV in making people feel safer. One way of interpreting this is to suggest that Glaswegians, along with many sociologists, prefer'natural' to'electronic' surveillance.

Surveillance Studies: An Overview

Abstract: * Contents * Preface and Acknowledgments * Introduction * Part I Viewpoints *1. The Watched World Today *2. Spreading Surveillance Sites *3. Explaining Surveillance * Part II Vision *4. Information, Identification, Inventory *5. Security, Suspicion, Social Sorting *6. Bodies, Borders, Biometrics * Part III Visibility *7. Surveillance, Visibility and Popular Culture *8. Struggles over Surveillance *9. Data, Discrimination, Dignity * Glossary * Further Reading * Bibliography * Index

Fear of crime : interpreting victimization risk

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The Edge and the Center: Gated Communities and the Discourse of Urban Fear

Abstract: Across America, middle-class and upper-middle-class gated communities are creating new forms of exclusion and residential segregation, exacerbating social cleavages that already exist (Blakely and Snyder 1997; Higley 1995; Lang and Danielson 1997; Marcuse 1997) While historically secured and gated communities were built in the United States to protect estates and to contain the leisure world of retirees, these urban and suburban developments now target a much broader market, including families with children (Guterson 1992; Lofland 1998) This retreat to secured enclaves with walls, gates, and guards materially and symbolically contradicts American ethos and values, threatens public access to open space, and creates yet another barrier to social interaction, building of social networks, as well as increased tolerance of diverse cultural/ racial/social groups (Davis 1992;Devine 1996;Etzoni 1995; Judd 1995; McKenzie 1994) In this paper, I explore how the discourse of fear of violence and crime and the search for a secure community by those who live in gated communities in the United States legitimates and rationalizes class-based exclusion strategies and residential segregation I examine whether residents of cities experiencing increasing cultural diversity are fleeing neighborhoods because they have experienced a "loss of place" and therefore feel unsafe and insecure (Altaian and Low 1992) Some people are responding to this loss by choosing to buy into a defensive space, a walled and guarded community that they can call home, [gated communities, United States, urban fear]