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.     

Slash,Shoot, Kill: Gang Recruitment of Children and the Penalties Gangs Face

Criminal street gang recruitment of minors has proliferated through countless communities in the United States as tensions continue to rise between gangs, communities, and the police. In response, many state legislatures have proposed legislation to combat such influence. However, not only are the proposed penalties too lenient, but some states do not even have laws that prosecute criminal street gang recruitment of minors. This note proposes that all 50 states enact an anti–gang recruitment statute specifically targeting recruiters of criminal street gangs by criminalizing gang recruitment of a minor.     

Using typologies of victimization worry to create strategies for reducing fear of crime

The purpose of this paper is to develop actionable strategies designed for law enforcement agencies seeking to reduce fear of crime among those living within their jurisdictions. A conjunctive analysis of case configurations is conducted on data collected from residents living in southeast Queensland (Australia) (N = 713) in order to identify context-specific typologies of victimization worry. Main effects for each component of the typologies are examined in order to identify the impact each has on reducing negative attitudes towards crime. Current findings suggest that agencies will likely reduce fear of crime among community residents the most by focusing on decreasing concerns related to the consequences of victimization. Results are consistent for both crimes against persons and property offenses.     

Gang joining in Denmark: prevalence and correlates of street gang membership

This paper examines gang joining among juveniles in socially disadvantaged residential neighbourhoods with gang presence. The analysis is based on a school-based survey among students (n = 1,886) in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. The theoretical framework is inspired by the Eurogang Program of Research—that is, their definition of street gangs was utilized in the study. The results indicate that 13% of the youths aged 13–17 are members of street gangs. The street gang members are more likely to be characterized by poor parental monitoring, weak pro-social values, and high-risk lifestyles compared with other crime involvement groups, including serious offenders; and they commit a disproportionately large number of offences. The results also indicate that proximity to criminal gangs on a higher organizational level than street gangs increases willingness to join such criminal gangs, especially for street gang members, as they are more likely to be in contact with older and more powerful gang members already—for example, they have helped them by being a look-out or passing messages.     

Women's fear of violent crime: An exploratory test of a feminist hypothesis

Government-sponsored national victimization surveys in several countries have found consistently that women's fear of violent crime is much greater than their actual chances of being violently victimized. Not suprisingly, most attempts to account for this discrepancy begin with the assumption that women's fear is subjectively based. A few feminist theorists, however, have challenged this view. They argue that women's fear of violent crime is much more objective than the crime surveys indicate. Women's fear results in part, they suggest, from being physically abused by a husband, boyfriend, or other male intimate; an experience largely untouched in the crime surveys. Such abuse creates a generalized fear of male violence, which has shown up in the victimization surveys as fear of violent crime in public places. This study tested, and found some support for, the feminist hypothesis, using data from a telephone survey of a representative sample of 315 Toronto women.     

Posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity and fear of personal crime: exploring their interrelationship as a function of risk estimation

Both trauma psychology and criminology have studied the psychological correlates of crime victimization. While the former discipline has primarily focused on the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among crime victims, the latter has particularly studied the association between history of victimization and fear of crime. A major difference between both concepts is that PTSD is experienced in relation to previous victimization, while fear of crime does not necessarily follow from previous victimization and is primarily experienced in anticipation of possible future victimization. Despite their different orientations, both perspectives share one central tenet: they both argue that feelings of anxiety are accompanied by increased perceptions of risk for future victimization. Given this theoretical overlap, both types of anxiety may correlate with each other. The current study explored this topic in a sample of Dutch university students (N = 375) and found that PTSD symptom severity and fear of crime were significantly associated with each other, both in univariate and multivariate analyses. This association was stronger for participants who scored higher on perceived risk of personal crime victimization than for those who scored lower. Results were discussed in light of study limitations and directions for future research.     

Race and Gang Affiliation: An Examination of Multiple Marginality

Criminological research has historically drawn a connection between race/ethnicity and gang membership. The focus on specific racial/ethnic groups and particular gangs in distinct geographical locations within ethnographic research, along with the lack of a comprehensive explanation, however, has limited this research. Thus, the true nature of the relationship between race/ethnicity and gang membership remains unclear. This research expands the contemporary literature regarding race/ethnicity and gang membership by utilizing multisite survey data to examine Vigil’s (1988 Vigil, J. D. 1988. Barrio gangs: Street life and identity in southern California, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.  [Google Scholar], 2002 Vigil, J. D. 2002. A rainbow of gangs: Street cultures in the mega‐city, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.  [Google Scholar]) multiple marginality framework of gang involvement for Whites, African Americans, and Hispanics. Results suggest that multiple marginality is a viable explanation for current gang membership. When examining the applicability of this theory for members of various racial/ethnic groups, important differences appear when examining current versus ever gang membership. For current gang membership, significant differences between racial/ethnic groups exist, with ecological/economic stress variables being significant for Whites and social control/street socialization elements representing the important predictors for African Americans and Hispanics. This pattern changes when examining those reporting ever being in a gang. For “ever” gang membership, social control/street socialization elements predict membership for all groups. Policy implications of these results are discussed.     

The fear of reprisal and the failure of victims to report a personal crime

Most people who fail to report their victimizations to the police state either that the incident was not serious enough to warrant official attention or that nothing could be done. However, a small proportion of victims states that they did not report because of their fear of reprisal. Based on National Crime Panel victimization data, the offense and personal characteristics of these victims are contrasted with the total victim and nonreporting victim populations. Contrary to the general reasons for not reporting a crime, several personal and offense characteristics are related to reprisal. For instance, reprisal is more often a factor in personal victimizations where victims are female and acquainted with their offenders. The more dangerous the incident, the more often reprisal is the stated reason for not calling the police. The results of the analysis strongly suggest that in certain social environments the fear of reprisal is a major factor in the reporting of crime.     

Perceptually contemporaneous offenses: Gender and fear of crime among African-American university students

There is consensus in the fear of crime literature that women are more afraid of crime than men. Research has explored perceptually contemporaneous offenses to explain the differences in male and female fear, and to explore the possibility that different crimes shape their respective fears. Victimization studies consistently find that African-American citizens are at a higher risk of crime and fear of crime. Using a 2013 sample of a Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) in the south, the present study will 1) report gender differences in fear of crime, 2) test whether gender differences in fear of crime are explained by perceptually contemporaneous offenses, and 3) assess whether or not men and women share the same master offenses.     

The Crime and Threat Image Set (CaTIS): a validated stimulus set to experimentally explore fear of crime

Objectives

Fear of crime may develop in response to crime specifically (the narrow pathway) or may be a projection of broader threats (the broad pathway). New approaches are needed to examine how crime and threat, independently and in combination, influence people’s fear. To address this need, we created, evaluated, and validated an image set that varied across the dimensions of threat and crime.

Method

We used a 2 (Threat: high vs. low) × 2 (Crime: high vs. low) within-subjects factorial design. In three studies, participants (N = 24, 29, and 176, respectively) gave threat, crime, and fear ratings towards images. Participants also completed two traditional fear of crime measures and a measure of anxiety. Two evaluation studies explored the suitability of 178 images to produce a final set of 80 images (20 in each of the four categories). We validated this final set of 80 images in a third study.

Results

The validated Crime and Threat Image Set (CaTIS) contains 78 images across four categories: threat-and-crime (high-crime, high-threat), threat-only (low-crime, high-threat), crime-only (high-crime, low-threat), and neutral (low-crime, low-threat). There were significant main effects of threat and crime, and an interaction between Threat × Crime, on participants’ fear ratings. Participants’ own ratings of threat—but not crime—had a strong relationship with their fear ratings.

Conclusions

Threat had a stronger influence on participants’ fear ratings than crime. Thus, what is typically referred to as fear of crime may reflect broader fear. Further research with the CaTIS could explore the expression of this fear.

     

Streetwork at the crossroads: An evaluation of a street gang outreach intervention and holistic appraisal of the research evidence

Spurred by the success of public health violence interventions, and accelerated by policy pressure to reduce violence without exacerbating overpolicing and mass incarceration, streetwork programs—those that provide anti-violence services by neighborhood-based workers who perform their work beyond the walls of parochial institutions—have positioned themselves as the most important non–law-enforcement violence prevention option available to urban policy makers. Yet despite their importance, the state of the field seems difficult to interpret for academics and practitioners alike. In this article, we make several contributions that bring forth new findings and deliver new perspectives on streetwork as a violence reduction strategy. First, we offer an extended analytic review of the streetwork evaluation literature that connects the study of contemporary public health violence interventions to a preceding tradition of criminologically inspired streetwork studies. Second, we present the results of an impact evaluation of StreetSafe Boston (SSB)—a multiyear streetwork intervention that served 20 Boston gangs. We find that the SSB intervention had no detectable effect on violence among the gangs that it served. We conclude by offering a framework for understanding a field at multiple crossroads: past and present, proclaimed successes and failures, help and harm.     

Intimidation and Street Gangs: Understanding the Response of Victims and Bystanders to Perceived Gang Violence

While research routinely examines the influence of gang membership on the quantity of violent crime involvement, less is known about the influence of gang violence on the situational characteristics of violent victimization. Felson’s discussion of street gangs highlights the possible functional role gang membership plays in the commission of violent crime; what he terms “the street gang strategy.” This study examines the functionality of gang membership during violent crimes by investigating the influence of perceived gang membership on the likelihood of victim resistance, bystander intervention, and police reporting using data from the National Crime Victimization Survey. Findings offer little support for the idea that gang members intimidate victims and bystanders to the extent that their behavior during and after violence differs systematically from responses resulting from non‐gang violence. Results are discussed in terms of their policy relevance and implications for future research.     

The economics of crime and criminal law: An antithesis to sociological theories?

The relationship between sociology and economics of crime has been dominated by mutual prejudice and misunderstanding. This paper tries to contribute to a change of this stale of affairs by showing that, on the one hand, the economics of crime does not as a method imply politically conservative policy recommendations and, on the other hand, that insights of the sociology of crime may enrich the economic approach considerably. This is done via a brief survey of the economics of enforcement, the literature on the relation of income distribution and unemployment on crime, and the literature relating sociological theories of crime to methodological individualism.     

Territorial features,disorder and fear of crime in residential neighbourhoods in Malaysia: testing for multigroup invariance

This research examined the relationships between territoriality, disorder, crime, perceived risk and fear of crime and determined whether these relationships are constant between neighbourhoods. Questionnaire surveys and on-site observations were conducted on a sample of 320 residents from two neighbourhoods in Malaysia. Tests for invariance were conducted to determine whether coefficients differed across neighbourhoods. Confirmatory factor analytic models of the constructs exhibited adequate fit following multiple criteria within each and across samples. Results from these analyses suggested that the relationships between disorder and perceived risk, victimisation, and fear of crime were significant in both samples. Although high territoriality was associated with low-crime experiences in the low-crime area, no significant relationship was observed in the high-crime area. The findings illustrated the importance of examining territoriality and perceptions of disorder within the neighbourhood contexts.     

The relationship between antisocial stereotypes and public CCTV systems: exploring fear of crime in the modern surveillance society

Abstract

Situational crime deterrence measures like CCTV are not always associated with reductions in fear of crime. This study explores this unexpected finding by investigating the interaction between target type and the presence of a CCTV camera, in order to test the effect this has on impressions of the target and corresponding fear of the location the target was shown in. Participants (n=120) were shown either a picture of a male ‘skinhead’, a ‘studious’ female, or no one within an urban setting in which an obvious CCTV camera was either present or absent. Participants then rated the scene using scales estimating crime frequency, worry and target activity. Estimates of location safety fell for the male ‘skinhead’ target and activity impressions were more negative, but only when a CCTV camera was also present. Ironically, in some circumstances, public crime deterrence measures may prime pre-existing negative stereotypes about others and so foster suspicion, undermine trust in others, and increase fear of crime.     

Revisiting the Use of Propensity Score Matching to Understand the Relationship between Gang Membership and Violent Victimization: A Cautionary Note

Previous research has consistently reported that gang members are more likely to experience violent victimization compared to non‐gang members. Recently, however, a study challenged this conventional wisdom using the Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) data. Employing propensity score matching (PSM), this study reported no significant differences in violent victimization between gang and non‐gang members. Upon closer examination of the GREAT data and the PSM process used in this study, we note several theoretical, methodological, and statistical concerns. We reanalyze the GREAT data using both negative binomial regression and PSM. We find that self‐reported gang members were significantly more likely to report subsequent violent victimization compared to non‐gang members. Although contrary to this previous study, our findings are consistent with the bulk of previous empirical research and widely held beliefs about the relationship between gang membership and violent victimization.