School crime policy changes: The impact of recent highly-publicized school crimes

Highly-publicized school shootings have heightened concern over school safety. This study examines the impact of school crimes on campus policy. The administrators of 336 Texas middle and high schools were surveyed. Policy changes were related to parental complaints about school crime policies and administrator perceptions that students felt less safe. School administrators should base safety policies on strategies that have been evaluated for their effectiveness in reducing school crime and fear. The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.     

Fear of Criminal Victimization on a College Campus: A Visual and Survey Analysis of Location and Demographic Factors

On a college campus, fear of crime may be driven by the physical characteristics of a specific location, as well as the demographics and the past experiences of respondents. Demographic and personal factors such as gender, residency, race, age, and class status can play a role in expressed fear as respondents intuitively assess the spaces for prospect, refuge, and escape. Photographs of various campus locations were used to present sample of students from a public university with various physical locations on campus. A survey was utilized as students assessed their reaction to each location in relation to fear of crime. Results were mixed in terms of personal characteristics. For example, males living on campus and full-time students were found to be less fearful than males living off campus and part-time students. Involvements in campus activities reduced fear for women, but increased it for men. The most fear producing location on campus was an enclosed walkway with almost no chance for escape, confirming that prospect, refuge, and escape are strong influences on fear (Nasar and Fisher, Sociology and Social Research, 76, 48–58, 1992).     

Reaffirming the significance of context: The Charlotte School Safety Program

This study reexamined the Charlotte School Safety Program, a school resource officer-delivered fear of crime reduction initiative. Initial evaluation of the program (Kenney & Watson, 1998) found increased perceptions of safety and reduced fear of crime for school youth, although structural properties of the study setting were not considered. Reanalysis of the data with a multivariate model generated qualifying findings that suggested the program may be less effective than previously determined. Minimal attention to environmental factors and the social setting reaffirmed the importance of addressing context in the criminological enterprise and the related issue of delivering empirically sound policy recommendations.     

Legitimacy invariance and campus crime: the impact of campus police legitimacy in different reporting contexts

ABSTRACT

This paper examines whether campus police legitimacy relevance varies across different crime contexts. 519 respondents from 31 undergraduate sections at a public university rated campus police legitimacy as well as their willingness to report a campus crime to the public safety department. Students were assigned to different crime vignettes, involving experimental manipulation of crime type: petty theft, indecent exposure, aggravated assault, and gun possession on a college campus. Results indicate general support for the procedural justice model, specifically the invariance of the influence of legitimacy on reporting. This paper argues for increased specificity in measurement of cooperation beyond general willingness to assist, or a single crime context.     

Packing Heat: Attitudes Regarding Concealed Weapons on College Campuses

Gun violence at American colleges and universities has rekindled the debate surrounding concealed weapons on campus. This study examined college student and faculty opinions on two college campuses, focusing on their attitudes towards private citizens carrying concealed guns on campus. Data were collected during the fall 2008 and spring 2009, and over 2,100 students, staff, faculty, and administrators on the two campuses participated in the research. The results indicate over 70 % of respondents oppose the option of carrying concealed guns on campus. In addition, the idea of more guns on campus makes the majority of students and faculty feel less safe, and allowing concealed weapons serves to decrease the sense of campus safety. This study continues to empirically advance the argument that those who live, work, and study do not want more guns on campus. Further research in this area, including an expanded range of the nation’s college campuses, should be explored.     

Explaining fear of crime in Queensland

A model to explain fear of crime in Queensland is developed and fitted to data from the 1991 Queensland Crime Victims Survey. Fear of crime is measured from the answers to the question about respondents' feelings of safety when walking alone in their area after dark. The results suggest that factors such as gender, age, poverty, educational level, labor force status, level of incivility in the area, perceived amount of crime in the area, and neighborhood cohesion all make an impact on fear of crime in a way that is consistent with the theory. The results also show that fear of crimein Queensland is explained by very concrete factors that can be subject to intervention and policy formulation by relevant bodies.The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Government Statistician's Office or the Queensland Government.     

BEYOND COMMUNITY: REACTIONS TO CRIME AND DISORDER AMONG INNER-CITY RESIDENTS

Research on fear of crime has been primarily quantitative, focused mostly on "fear,""crime," and "disorder." Little work has investigated alternative reactions, including "safety," when crime/disorder are prevalent. With the purpose of exploring reactions to crime and underlying processes, this study applies a grounded theory approach to in-depth interviews and field observations with a group of 69 disadvantaged urban residents, randomly selected from a sample of Chicago welfare recipients. Results suggest that fear, absent in neighborhoods with incivilities and in many violent areas, is not the prevalent response to local crime/disorder; "cues" other than crime/disorder trigger fears; fear may not be of crime/disorder; and neighborhood problems elicit precautions, which neither influence fear nor "paralyze" respondents. The processes underlying these reactions are discussed.     

Coping With Crime in a Developing Country: The Fear of Crime in Port Moresby,Papau New Guinea

The purpose of this article is to describe the various responses to the crime problem in Port Moresby and to compare the fear of crime among three groups living in Port Moresby (college staff, college students, and senior level managers).

Urban crime has become a major problem and a public issue in Port Moresby and the various responses to it are similar to those found in the U.S.: individual strategies for maintaining security, ad hoc collective measures among neighbors, pressure group demands, and political proposals.

Three groups were compared on their levels of fear of four types of crime and the security precautions they took in order to protect themselves. It was found that the group with the most economic resources and greatest community cohesiveness had the lowest level of fear of crime. The group with the most fear tended to rely more on neighbors for assistance and took greater security precautions than the “low-fear” group. Also, the findings suggest that expatriates may have a lower level of fear than nationals. Proposed policy responses include neighborhood organization and youth development.     

Testing for Individual Factors for the Fear of Crime Using a Multiple Indicator-Multiple Cause Model

In the extant literature, very few studies have simultaneously examined the impact of individual attributes, neighbourhood disorder and social cohesion on an individual’s fear of crime. This article addresses the use of multiple-indicator, multiple-cause (MIMIC) analysis for testing different variables related to the fear of crime based on a number of theories. Face-to-face interviews with residents of a high-crime council estate were conducted to examine the crime rate, disorder, cohesion and the fear of crime in the participants’ residential area. The results support the incivilities thesis and the vulnerability hypothesis, while the social disorganisation theory was partially supported. It was concluded that women and the elderly demonstrate higher levels of fear than men and the nonelderly and that crime, disorder and social cohesion have a direct effect on one’s level of fear, as the decreases in neighbourhood cohesion increase the individuals’ levels of fear. In addition, people who have been victimised and those who perceive higher levels of incivility were found to be more fearful of crime. By incorporating the three theories, the final model is able to account for 50 % of the variance in the fear of crime.     

Explaining Korean women's fear of crime

This study is intended to explain the fear of crime among Korean women. Due to the complexity of concept and measurement of fear, this study was designed to measure specific or concrete fear and general or formless fear. Data were obtained from a self‐administered survey to 528 Korean women living in the city of Seoul, Korea. The results revealed that the fear of crime seems to be experienced differently. That is, specific fear appears to be most influenced by their knowledge of the occurrence of crime, followed by community environment and their perceptions about the incidence of crime, while the general fear of crime seems to be explained only by their perceptions about the incidence of crime at the significance level of p<.05.     

Assessing the relationship between individual characteristics, neighborhood context, and fear of crime

The purpose of this study is to examine citizens’ fear of crime based on the neighborhood in which they live. Integrating individual characteristics, citizens’ perceptions, and neighborhood structure provides a more complete perspective on understanding fear. Individuals were asked to report on proximate level of fear, social cohesion, neighborhood disorder and level of police/citizen satisfaction. Neighborhood structure emerged as a predictor of citizen's fear even after controlling for race, age, gender and education. Results indicated that perceived disorder neighborhood structure was strongly associated with citizens’ fear of crime. Considering individual characteristics, perceptions of disorder, and neighborhood context simultaneously provides an opportunity to develop a more comprehensive understanding of fear and policies to reduce fear.     

From Safety to Danger: Constructions of Crime in a Women’s Magazine

This study examines how the print media constructs signifiers of safety and danger for women. We analyze 155 news articles regarding crime and criminal justice from 1970 to 1990 in Chatelaine magazine, a Canadian women’s periodical. Both content and textual analyses are deployed to evaluate the media representations of crime and their role in facilitating images of fear and safety. We show that the meanings associated with women’s danger and safety in news narratives are socially constructed through claims, sources, content and culture. We find that news reporting did not initially incorporate signifiers of fear. However, crime messages increasingly included images of fear in the later reporting period. We argue that the transformations surrounding these images and texts are influenced by the rise in neoliberal thought in the 1980s. Our results indicate that ideological struggles external to the media are crucial to the representation of crime, which ultimately influence signifiers of danger and safety for women.     

The irony of broken windows policing: A micro-place study of the relationship between disorder, focused police crackdowns and fear of crime

In their seminal “Broken Windows” article in Atlantic Monthly, J. Q. Wilson and G. L. Kelling (1982) suggested that police could more effectively fight crime by targeting minor offenses. They hypothesized that untended disorder increases fear of crime in a community, starting a chain of events that eventually leads to heightened levels of crime. By targeting disorder, police can thus circumvent this cycle of neighborhood decline (Skogan, 1990). This study aimed to improve knowledge of the relationship between disorder and fear of crime in the context of the broken windows hypothesis by using a micro-place level research design involving a police crackdown on disorder and minor crime at hot spots. The results of the current study suggest that perceived social disorder and observed levels of physical disorder have a strong impact on fear of crime. This confirms the relationship between disorder and fear hypothesized by the broken windows literature, and implies that police may be able to reduce fear of crime by reducing disorder. It was also found, however, that the police intervention itself significantly increased the probability of feeling unsafe. Accordingly, any fear reduction benefits gained by reducing disorder may be offset by the fact that the policing strategies employed simultaneously increase fear of crime. These findings suggest the importance of a careful focus on “how” broken windows policing programs are implemented. Such programs must be geared not only to reduce disorder, but also to prevent increases in citizen fear that accompany crackdowns and other intensive enforcement efforts associated with broken windows policing.     

Differential perceptions of fear of crime among college students: The race factor

Despite the rising crime rates on U.S. university campuses, few empirical studies—either quantitative or qualitative—have examined the rate of fearfulness among college students. The present analysis supplements previous efforts by exploring racial effects on college students' feelings of fearfulness and determines the influence of individual characteristics on white and nonwhite students' fear of crime. Using cross-sectional data from a large public university in the United States, results show that nonwhite students have greater levels of fear of crime on campus than their white counterparts. Moreover, gender and perceived police effectiveness also influenced students' levels of fear of crime. The effects were true for both white and nonwhite students.     

The Case of Fearful Women:

Women's reported level of fear of crime is three times higher than reported by men. Crime surveys though show that it is young men who are at greatest risk to violent victimisation. This paper explores this criminological conundrum of women's fear of crime. It proposes that the analysis and the construction of the concept 'fear of crime' fail to capture women's lived experiences of sexual and physical violence. It further examines the crime prevention advice to women and concludes that this advice is founded upon faulty assumptions about what types of situations pose the greatest danger to women's sexual and physical safety. Conventional criminology and its adherence to the view of violent crime as 'street crime,' the paper concludes, distorts and sensationalizes violence against women.     

Factors associated with college crimes: Implications for campus police

A considerable amount of attention is now being paid to the serious nature of campus crime. However, little information is available with regard to those factors that might be closely associated with such incidents. This paper discusses security features and demographic characteristics of a select number of colleges throughout the country. It also describes the extent to which these factors are related to campus crimes. Conclusions and recommendations for campus police officials are discussed.     

A randomized experimental study of sharing crime data with citizens: Do maps produce more fear?

The larger roles of the community in crime prevention and improvements in technology have increased police–citizen communication and the distribution of information from police departments to private citizens. Combined, these changes have led to the current movement among law enforcement agencies toward sharing both summary reports and maps of crime with community groups. Although the dissemination of crime information is intended to benefit community members, there is a lack of empirical evidence demonstrating the effects of crime mapping on citizen perceptions and fear of crime. This experiment compared three formats for disseminating crime data; two popular types of crime maps (i.e., graduated symbol and density) and the traditional tabular format of crime statistics. A randomized experimental design was used to measure residents fear of crime and their perception of the safety of different areas of Redlands, CA. Overall, residents who viewed either type of map reported less fear than those who viewed tabular statistics. Respondents who viewed graduated symbol maps consistently reported less fear than either density maps or tabular statistics. However, there were differences depending on the type of map. While graduated symbol maps were associated with the lowest levels of fear of robbery, theft or assault; density maps produced different reactions depending on the area of the city. Finally, the maps did not stigmatize high crime areas of Redlands. Where statistically significant differences existed, respondents who were given maps were more likely to recommend someone move into an area than those who were given tabular statistics.     

Fear of crime among Chinese immigrants in Metro-Detroit

Although a great deal of research has been conducted on fear of crime among the general public, much less is known about such fear among immigrants. Intensified fear may have detrimental consequences on immigrants’ lifestyles, acculturation process, and responses to law enforcement. Based on survey data collected from 148 Chinese immigrants in Metro-Detroit, this study assesses the effects of a variety of general and immigrant-specific explanatory factors on Chinese immigrants’ fear of crime. Results show that Chinese immigrants who had greater perceived risks of victimization, stronger perceptions of crime problems in home city, and lower English proficiency tended to have higher levels of fear of crime. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.     

Fear of Crime among Gang and Non-Gang Offenders: Comparing the Effects of Perpetration,Victimization, and Neighborhood Factors

This is the first study to examine adult offenders’ fear of property, personal, and gang crime. We examine five research questions among 2,414 jail inmates, focusing on how afraid offenders are of crime. We compare current, ex-gang, and non-gang members. We ask if more experience with crime perpetration and victimization and more perceptions of social disorganization increase offenders’ fear of crime. Finally, we ask if the importance of these factors in predicting fear varies by gang status. Results show that offenders, generally, were not very afraid of crime. Although ex-gang and current gang members believed they were more likely to experience property, personal, and gang crime, they reported less fear than non-gang members. Crime perpetration did not influence offenders’ fear, but less experience with personal crime victimization predicted fear of personal and gang crime among non-gang members. The results also indicate that perceptions of social disorganization better explain fear among non-gang members than ex-gang and current gang members.