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.     

A FIELD EXPERIMENT ON INSURANCE FRAUD IN AUTO BODY REPAIR*

This article focuses on a particular form of white-collar crime–insurance fraud in auto body repair. Through the use of an experimental design, whether repair estimates were related to insurance coverage was investigated for a statewide representative sample of auto body repair shops in Massachusetts. The auto body repair estimates were significantly higher with insurance coverage than without, regardless of type of car, extent of damage, sex of driver, and location of shop. The implication of the findings is that the automobile insurance industry is very susceptible to fraudulent or illegal practices that take unfair advantage of consumers and insurance companies.