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Trends in Crime and Fear

Wesley G. Skogan

in Police and Community in Chicago: A Tale of Three Cities

In describing Chicago's new community-policing program, the police department's 1993 strategic plan Together We Can reassured readers that CAPS (Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy) was not soft on ... More

In describing Chicago's new community-policing program, the police department's 1993 strategic plan Together We Can reassured readers that CAPS (Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy) was not soft on crime. It stressed the importance of good traditional police work and effective crime fighting, and also argued for a preventive approach to crime control. Police could hope that neighborhood mobilization around CAPS might contribute to greater watchfulness and wariness among the public. It might also lead to a greater willingness of residents to report crimes and (especially) step forward as witnesses, rather than just lying low and hoping to not be victimized. This chapter describes trends in crime and fear of crime in Chicago, considering a measure of crime: assessments of its seriousness gathered through surveys. Moreover, it examines the link between race and trends in crime, focusing on whites, African Americans, and Latinos.Less

The Anxieties of Affluence

Stephen Farrall, Jonathan Jackson, and Emily Gray

in Social Order and the Fear of Crime in Contemporary Times

This chapter recaps what has been learnt from the investigations into the fear of crime. The discussion touches on a number of issues, including economic change, rising affluence, and the notion of ... More

This chapter recaps what has been learnt from the investigations into the fear of crime. The discussion touches on a number of issues, including economic change, rising affluence, and the notion of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ during periods of socio-economic change, and — of course — the role of these factors in the (re)production of anxiety. It also explore a number of pressing issues, including the frequency with which the fear of crime is encountered within the lives of citizens in industrialized nations such as the US, Canada, Australia, and those in the EU, and what governments can ‘do’ to address popular anxieties about crime.Less

Conversations about Crime, Place, and Community

Stephen Farrall, Jonathan Jackson, and Emily Gray

in Social Order and the Fear of Crime in Contemporary Times

This chapter explores the emotional reactions, cognitions, and connections people make when talking about crime, their environment, and community. It reveals human emotions to be complex, episodic, ... More

This chapter explores the emotional reactions, cognitions, and connections people make when talking about crime, their environment, and community. It reveals human emotions to be complex, episodic, and dynamic. Thoughts, perceptions, and experiences come and go over time and form an integral part of the evolving order of stimuli, which make up the life-world of the individual. This chapter details the place that the fear of crime takes in the context of people's everyday lives, communities, and important locales. Exploring and presenting participants' in-depth discussion provides a ‘thick’ layer of analysis and uncovers further avenues for consideration. Through the use of qualitative data this chapter not only attends to the kind of interpretative analysis of how people respond and relate to crime, but also contributes to a wider intellectual terrain by refining the broader conceptual framework, developed thus far. This chapter analyses qualitative data arising from two previous ESRC-funded studies that explored public perceptions of crime, community, and fear of crime in two major UK cities — London and Glasgow.Less

Experience and Expression in the Fear of Crime

Stephen Farrall, Jonathan Jackson, and Emily Gray

in Social Order and the Fear of Crime in Contemporary Times

This chapter provides a quantitative investigation of the approach to the fear of crime. This chapter shows that perceived risk and worry about crime may be embedded in concerns that certain members ... More

This chapter provides a quantitative investigation of the approach to the fear of crime. This chapter shows that perceived risk and worry about crime may be embedded in concerns that certain members of the local neighbourhood are refusing to submit to the rules or rights of others, that social conditions are failing to encourage citizens to treat others with respect — that the physical and social environment is somehow lacking. This chapter develops an account of both the experience of the fear of crime (the everyday reality of people concerns) and the expressive aspect of public concerns, which articulate judgements about persons, groups, behaviours, and social conditions. This chapter discusses the structural equation modelling of the quantitative data from the 2003/2004 BCS and further revisits the data from a study of public attitudes towards crime and policing in a rural part of Northern England.Less

Fear, crime and the home

Rowland Atkinson and Sarah Blandy

in Domestic Fortress: Fear and the New Home Front

This chapter focuses on fear of crime, and particularly on the fear of home invasion (burglary). It links back to the ways in which we are taught to fear in our childhood homes, and the contemporary ... More

This chapter focuses on fear of crime, and particularly on the fear of home invasion (burglary). It links back to the ways in which we are taught to fear in our childhood homes, and the contemporary forces which continue to boost the perceived need for home defence. Data on burglary rates and fear of crime are deconstructed, and the interconnected roles of the media and of government in feeding fear are analysed. We suggest that the news media's singular focus on rare and horrific events have a cumulative and traumatic effect on our perceptions of the relative safety of the home. The chapter also looks at the treatment of the home, crime and fear in popular culture, through fiction, films and videogames which highlight terrorised occupants and invaded homes.Less

A Signal Crimes Perspective

Martin Innes

in Signal Crimes: Social Reactions to Crime, Disorder, and Control

This chapter explains how and why some crime events acquire a high degree of influence over public perceptions of safety and security. It sets out the key ideas and concepts associated with the ... More

This chapter explains how and why some crime events acquire a high degree of influence over public perceptions of safety and security. It sets out the key ideas and concepts associated with the signal crimes perspective and its approach to study issues of crime, disorder, and control. It shows how it has been framed and informed by a blend of ideas drawn from the sociology of Erving Goffman, studies of social reaction and social psychology, and social semiotics. Three principal types of signal event are mapped out — signal crimes, signal disorders, and control signals — and a methodological apparatus for detecting these in people’s crime talk described. Applying these ideas, the subsequent discussion considers their implications.Less

Failure to Reassure as Threat

Peter Ramsay

in The Insecurity State: Vulnerable Autonomy and the Right to Security in the Criminal Law

This chapter provides a detailed analysis of the case law governing the imposition of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO). It demonstrates first that the grounds for imposing an order are defined ... More

This chapter provides a detailed analysis of the case law governing the imposition of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO). It demonstrates first that the grounds for imposing an order are defined as any conduct that manifests a disposition that fails to reassure others about their security; and second that a finding of liability to an order is best understood as the exercise of a power in administrative law to make a risk assessment and preventive order rather than to impose a punishment. This analysis is deployed to critique the theory that the ASBO is a punishment for morally offensive behaviour.Less

The Anxieties of the Marketplace

Stephen Farrall and Susanne Karstedt

in Respectable Citizens - Shady Practices: The Economic Morality of the Middle Classes

The fear of crime is a core topic of criminology. This chapter explores the characteristics of fear of crimes in the marketplace. It is the wealthier members of society who are worried about crime in ... More

The fear of crime is a core topic of criminology. This chapter explores the characteristics of fear of crimes in the marketplace. It is the wealthier members of society who are worried about crime in the marketplace, unlike other crime fears (such as burglary), which are held by poorer people. The chapter then models fear of crime in the marketplace using structural equation modelling. It then analyses the fear of crime as a driver of attitudes and behaviour, thus modelling the consequences of fear rather than fear as an outcome. The findings suggest that people with higher levels of fear become more cynical about rules (legal cynicism) and intend offend again.Less

Introduction

Angela Stroud

in Good Guys with Guns: The Appeal and Consequences of Concealed Carry

This chapter lays out the basic arguments offered by those who support concealed handgun policies, including the threat of mass shootings and other violent crimes, and it details the background ... More

This chapter lays out the basic arguments offered by those who support concealed handgun policies, including the threat of mass shootings and other violent crimes, and it details the background debates that emerged in Texas when CHLs were first introduced. Licensing rates over time are analysed, and data on gun ownership and attitudes toward gun policies are discussed. The NRA’s impact on gun culture is examined through an analysis of how the organization constructs threats from above in the form of government overreach and threats from below via crime. It also includes a description of theoretical frameworks related to race, class, gender, and fear of crime that are used in the analysis and of the research methods employed.Less

Crime City

Robert Samet

in Deadline: Populism and the Press in Venezuela

Chapter three looks at the news stories created from the previous chapter. It uses these stories to show the implicit maps or cartographies that are written into crime news.

Introduction

Rowland Atkinson and Sarah Blandy

in Domestic Fortress: Fear and the New Home Front

Introduces the argument that in the early twenty first century the private home has become a key battleground in a social politics focused on fear, pre-emptive action and architectural fortification. ... More

Introduces the argument that in the early twenty first century the private home has become a key battleground in a social politics focused on fear, pre-emptive action and architectural fortification. Films, books, fairytales and myths are explored to underline the central importance of the home. Layers of complex and contested meanings have accreted over the basic need for shelter. The role of the home in providing haven, status and privacy, boosted today by celebrity culture, has longstanding philosophical and legal justifications. These have become embedded in everyday life, and their importance is shown through the use of metaphors emphasising the home as a kind of fortress space. We outline the idea that growing rates of homeownership in the UK, the US and Australia, encouraged by neoliberal governments, have led to a perception of housing as wealth rather than as ‘home’. At the same time the concept of a risk society has led to a widespread culture of fear, provoking a withdrawal into the home and an emphasis on control as the primary attribute of legal ownership.Less

The Story of Reassurance Policing and How it Became Neighbourhood Policing

Martin Innes, Colin Roberts, Trudy Lowe, and Helen Innes

in Neighbourhood Policing: The Rise and Fall of a Policing Model

What became established as Neighbourhood Policing in the United Kingdom was, to a significant extent, informed by its quasi-experimental predecessor the National Reassurance Policing Programme. In ... More

What became established as Neighbourhood Policing in the United Kingdom was, to a significant extent, informed by its quasi-experimental predecessor the National Reassurance Policing Programme. In this chapter the key conceptual and practical contributions that the National Reassurance Policing Programme made to the formulation of Neighbourhood Policing are laid out. It is asserted that what the trialling of Reassurance Policing did was to establish a more structured and systematic delivery model, when compared with previous iterations of community policing. In engaging with these themes, the chapter also explores how and why the initial moves to revive this style of community policing engendered resistance in some sectors and how this was overcome.Less

Policing and community safety in residential areas: the mixed economy of visible patrols

Crawford Adam

in Housing, urban governance and anti-social behaviour: Perspectives, policy and practice

This chapter tries to connect housing to an increasingly mixed economy of policing where the demand for security patrols in residential areas is delivered through different forms of neighbourhood ... More

This chapter tries to connect housing to an increasingly mixed economy of policing where the demand for security patrols in residential areas is delivered through different forms of neighbourhood wardens, police officers, and private security firms. It critiques the effectiveness of this mixed economy in improving the communities' fears of ASB and crime. It is argued that these developments actually symbolise an emerging form of community-based — but parochial — governance. The chapter also identifies the need to consider the coordination between ‘plural policing personnel’ and to make sure that there is enough accountability and regulation in this mixed economy.Less

Criminal Insecurities

Jennifer Carlson

in Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline

This chapter examines how crime becomes a lens for understanding and articulating socioeconomic decline. The chapter starts by contextualizing the contemporary politics of gun carry within broader ... More

This chapter examines how crime becomes a lens for understanding and articulating socioeconomic decline. The chapter starts by contextualizing the contemporary politics of gun carry within broader historical processes of socioeconomic decline and racial inequality in Michigan, particularly Metro Detroit. Situating in-depth interview data alongside the rise and fall of Michigan’s automotive industry and the social and economic marginalization of African Americans over the twentieth century, it examines how gun carriers experience decline as a breakdown in social controls, which is in turn articulated as a crisis of crime. In this context, gun carriers make sense of crime using narratives of race and class that resonate with broader insecurities associated with postindustrialization and neoliberalism.Less

Technologies of the defended home

Rowland Atkinson and Sarah Blandy

in Domestic Fortress: Fear and the New Home Front

Defence has always been a primary element in home design; this chapter traces the ebbs and flows of fortification over time, tracing back the contemporary alternative features of withdrawal and ... More

Defence has always been a primary element in home design; this chapter traces the ebbs and flows of fortification over time, tracing back the contemporary alternative features of withdrawal and aggressive defence to their origins. These responses, mirroring the well-known 'flight or fight' reactions, are illustrated through reference to celebrity homes and incidents of crimes against them. Here we address the technologies and architectural features which are designed to counter the risks that assail the home as haven and the fears passed on from parents which inform our internalised expectations as adults. Diverse forms of home protection and insurance have become the central and non-negotiable demands of increasingly affluent western societies, and meeting these demands has boosted the profits of security companies. We argue that the recent increase in defensive technologies has turned homes into the architectural representation of our fears, from which we can never be truly free. We now fear to stop fearing, with the contemporary homeowner forever in a state of heightened anxiety.Less

Withdraw, defend or destroy

Rowland Atkinson and Sarah Blandy

in Domestic Fortress: Fear and the New Home Front

Here we discuss the balance of responsibility between the state and the individual homeowner to protect the home, against the background of a lack of confidence in governments' ability to prevent ... More

Here we discuss the balance of responsibility between the state and the individual homeowner to protect the home, against the background of a lack of confidence in governments' ability to prevent crime and the rising sense of victimhood in popular culture and criminal justice systems. The focus of this chapter is on the legal position of the homeowner who uses lethal force in defence of their home. Illustrated by high-profile cases, developments in the law on defence and revenge are analysed and comparisons are made between the US, the UK and Australia.Less

Complexes of the domestic fortress

Rowland Atkinson and Sarah Blandy

in Domestic Fortress: Fear and the New Home Front

Finding a way out from these forces is difficult to imagine precisely because a range of political and corporate entrepreneurs draw profits from fear – developers selling gated communities, ... More

Finding a way out from these forces is difficult to imagine precisely because a range of political and corporate entrepreneurs draw profits from fear – developers selling gated communities, politicians arguing for tough law enforcement and private security companies with an increasingly sophisticated array of technologies designed to help seal the home. We conclude that while these designs have indeed helped to secure the home there has not been any significant reduction in social fear as a dividend to these activities, indeed the evolution of this position of the home suggests its presence as an increasingly anti-social and counter-civic moment in advanced capitalist society, one that will be highly difficult to unravel.Less

A shell for the body and mind

Rowland Atkinson and Sarah Blandy

in Domestic Fortress: Fear and the New Home Front

This chapter considers the meaning and importance of more psychological aspects of the private home. Homeownership has been argued to provide us with a deep sense of security of being in troubled ... More

This chapter considers the meaning and importance of more psychological aspects of the private home. Homeownership has been argued to provide us with a deep sense of security of being in troubled times, when trust in community has been lost. Psychoanalytic and sociological theories of consumption practices are used here to examine the role of psychic development as it occurs within the home. Two functions of the home in particular are examined here, illustrated through fairy stories, fiction and films. First, the home's role as a bridge or mediator to the public world outside the home, meaning that a child's preparation for the outside world is largely dependent on parental perceptions of risk and insecurity. Second, the private (fearful) world inside what Freud termed the unheimlich home, hiding dreadful secrets. The current emphasis on control of outsiders' access to the home, and the developing culture of respecting others' homes as entirely private places, may make the home a domestic prison for its less powerful residents: women and children. Feminist analyses of the development of gender roles in the home and data on domestic violence show the dark underbelly of the sanctified private home. Although some homes are havens, others can be the site of domestic slavery and even more disturbing examples of power and abuse, such as Fred West, and the imprisonment of Fritzl's daughter in Austria and Jaycee Dugard in the US.Less

The Contours of European Moral Economies

Stephen Farrall and Susanne Karstedt

in Respectable Citizens - Shady Practices: The Economic Morality of the Middle Classes

This chapter draws on data from the European Social Survey, which was based on the original survey and explored the economic morality and middle-class crime for twenty-five countries in Europe. ... More

This chapter draws on data from the European Social Survey, which was based on the original survey and explored the economic morality and middle-class crime for twenty-five countries in Europe. Levels of victimization and offending differ widely across Europe and its regions. Importantly, we find that more affluent and equal countries with larger middle classes also have higher levels of offending and victimization, as well as overlap between both. Opportunities combined with greed might be the factors that shape the moral economies at the centre of European societies. Perceptions of unfairness and abuse of power by business are decisive determinants of allegiance to norms and rules, distrust in many institutions which operate in the marketplace and fear of being victimized in European countries. Regulation and oversight of business and empowerment of consumers therefore are identified as reasonable routes to reduce losses from widespread fraud and shady practices by citizens and consumers.Less