Reducing Fear of Crime for Sustaining Cities; A Case Study from Turkey.

In urban areas, fear of crime constitutes as much a problem as crime itself. Fear of crime is often associated with fear for oneââ¬â¢s personal safety, particularly, safety from violent crimes and physical or sexual harassment in public areas. The fear of crime and feelings of insecurity keeps people off the public places where crime or anti-social behaviour are likely to occur and also limits peopleââ¬â¢s behaviour to access to opportunities and facilities in their public environment. In other words, it creates a barrier to participation in the public life which reduces the liveability and sustainability of the city. It is obvious that, level of the fear of crime is unequally distributed considering the varied user profiles and places of cities. This paper is aimed to analyse how fear of crime is influenced by a variety of factors including actual crime rate, physical and social characteristics of the environment etc. with a specific case study from İzmir, Turkey in order to create safer and livable cities. Note: The alternative choice was to put this abstract under : ZW-SS 'Turkish cases in Contemporary issues/dimensions for regional development'

Different measures of fear of crime and survey measurement error

The measurement of fear of crime is acknowledged as a hot methodological issue. Many studies have focused on the cognitive and behavioural components of fear. The emotional affective component of fear of crime has been studied rather less, however. Traditional measures of fear of crime fail to address the complexity of this concept. Knowledge of prevalence, frequency and intensity of fear are largely absent in a quantitative design. Following an alternative question structure, previous research has shown that ‘old’-style questions overestimate the everyday experience of fear (see Farrall, 2004; Farrall and Gadd, 2004; Gray, Jackson and Farrall, 2008). Furthermore, gender differences in fear of crime seem to be influenced by socially desirable answers by men (Sutton and Farrall, 2005). In this paper, we study differences in outcomes when measuring fear of crime using ‘old’-style questions (’avoidance behaviour’) and an alternative question structure introduced by Stephen Farrall (three-part questions treating prevalence, frequency and intensity of fear). We conducted a survey (2008) in eighteen postal code areas and interviewed 750 key informants. Descriptive analyses by gender were conducted for both the traditional avoidance behaviour scale and the alternative question structure that measures the emotional affective component of fear of crime. Subsequently some correlational analyses were conducted to examine how different these fear of crime measures are from supposed covariates such as perceived sense of community, perceived disorder and previous victimisation. Furthermore, we assessed the effects of social desirability on measures of fear of crime components and on the gender-fear relationship in particular. In short, measuring the emotional affective component of fear with an alternative question structure presents a totally different picture than can be found by measuring the behavioural component of fear of crime with a traditional scale such as avoidance behaviour. Second, different measures of fear of crime are especially differentially related to previous victimisation. Third, we found rather surprising effects of social desirability on gender differences in fear of crime

Comparing the Determinants of Concern about Terrorism and Crime

Both crime and terrorism impose costs onto society through the channels of fear and worry. Identifying and targeting groups which are especially affected by worries might be one way to reduce the total costs of these two types of insecurity. However, compared to the drivers of the fear of crime, the determinants of concerns regarding global terrorism are less well known. Using nationally representative survey data, we analyse and compare the individual determinants of concern about global terrorism and crime, and show that worries about terrorism are driven by similar determinants as those about crime, which could have important policy implications. We furthermore provide an insight into the structure of the determinants of concerns regarding other public and private goods.Terrorism, crime, fear, attitudes, GSOEP

Without camouflage : 'gendered fear of violence' exposed : are women more fearful than men? : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

There have been various theoretical and practical research attempts to explain the most interesting yet puzzling finding in 'fear of crime' literature, known as the 'gendered fear of crime paradox' which refers to the observation that although men are more likely to be the victims of violent assaults, they are the least likely to report feeling 'afraid', whereas women, who are the least likely victims, report higher levels of 'fears' across all types of crimes. Sutton and Farrall (2005) found evidence that men discount their 'fears' in order to provide socially desirable responses. The present study continues this area of research by employing a new paradigm using Point Light Display Video (PLD) in which participants will not be aware of research's topic and therefore allowing for responses that are not influenced by gendered social roles, expectations and socially desirable responding. Participants in this study were 40 University students (20 males and 20 females) who were firstly exposed to the experimental task (PLD video as an implicit measure of 'fear of violence') and once finished, were administered with a traditional 'fear of crime' questionnaire (an explicit measure of 'fear of violent crime'). The results showed that there was no gender difference in 'fear of violence' when participants were implicitly measured (despite both genders being sensitive to the velocity of movement). However when asked to report their 'fears' through a questionnaire, parallel to previous research, there was an observed 'gender paradox'. The present study's findings lend empirical support to previous theoretical speculations that 'gendered fear of crime paradox' might be fictitious after all, due to the unstable methodologies employed to investigate this phenomenon. Implications of these findings are discussed with some recommendations for future research into the fear of crime

The relationship between likelihood and fear of criminal victimisation: evaluating risk sensitivity as a mediating concept

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.</p

How does proximity to crime influence people's perception of safety?

Individuals may put themselves at risk of criminal victimisation through a misguided sense of safety born from the optimistic notion that crime happens “elsewhere”. Despite the analogous nature of fear and perceived safety, the latter has received far less research attention within the criminological literature. As perceptions of safety are guided by cognitive appraisals of the threat a danger poses, the present study aimed to investigate whether crimes that occur in nearby locations affect perceptions of safety more so than those that occur further away, due to the proximity of the danger or threat thereof. Respondents were given a number of fictitious scenarios within which a crime was presented as having occurred at one of four locations, ranging in distance from the respondents’ hometown (i.e. the independent variable). The respondents rated each scenario in terms of its seriousness, how safe they would perceive themselves to be following the news of the crimes and how likely they would be to engage in precautionary measures following the crimes (i.e. the dependent variables). The relationship between crime seriousness, perceived safety and a numberof prominent sociodemographic factors that have emerged from the fear of crime literature were also examined. Proximate crimes were found to produce lower perceptions of safety; higher crime seriousness ratings; and greater likelihood of engaging in reactive behaviours than distant crimes, as hypothesised. It was found that young people, females and those who get most of their crime information from local news sources tended to report lower safety perceptions, although several findings were inconsistent with previous research. Possible explanations and implications of the findings are discussed and an argument is made for the importance of increasing individuals’ knowledge and awareness of victimisation risks, rather than attempting to reduce fear of crime as has been a major research focus to date

Comparing the Determinants of Concern about Terrorism and Crime

Both crime and terrorism impose costs onto society through the channels of fear and worry. Identifying and targeting groups which are especially affected by worries might be one way to reduce the total costs of these two types of insecurity. However, compared to the drivers of the fear of crime, the determinants of concerns regarding global terrorism are less well known. Using nationally representative survey data, we analyse and compare the individual determinants of concern about global terrorism and crime, and show that worries about terrorism are driven by similar determinants as those about crime, which could have important policy implications. We furthermore provide an insight into the structure of the determinants of concerns regarding other public and private goods.Terrorism, crime, fear, attitudes, GSOEP

Northern Territory safe streets audit

This audit examined crime and safety issues in the Northern Territory urban communities of Darwin, Katherine and Alice Springs to help inform effective strategies to reduce the actual and perceived risk of victimisation. Abstract This Special Report is a research driven response to community concerns regarding the level of crime and fear of crime in the Northern Territory. The Northern Institute at Charles Darwin University and the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) were commissioned by the Northern Territory Police Force (NT Police) to undertake the NT Safe Streets Audit. The purpose of the Safe Streets Audit was to examine crime and safety issues in the Northern Territory urban communities of Darwin, Katherine and Alice Springs and to help inform effective strategies to reduce the actual and perceived risk of victimisation. The audit involved a literature review exploring issues impacting on the fear of crime in the Northern Territory, focus groups with a range of stakeholders in Darwin, Alice Springs and Katherine, the analysis of media articles on crime and policing, the analysis of incident data from NT Police on assault offences and public disorder incidents, and a rapid evidence assessment of the effectiveness of strategies targeting NT crime problems. Implications for future crime reduction approaches in the Northern Territory were then identified