Experience

1
Experience Expression in the Fear of
CrimeThe Social and Cultural Meaning of the
Fear of Crime

• Jonathan Jackson, London School of Economics
  Emily Gray, University of Keele
  
• Stephen Farrall University of Keele.
• Funded by UK Economic Social Research Council
  Award No. RES000231108

2
Outline

• Develop our theoretical framework
• Draw on key studies, e.g. Ferraro (1995)
  Girling et al. 2000
• Working towards an integration of quantitative
  and qualitative work
• Present the findings of the test of this
  framework

3
The project

• Fear of crime is not reducible to concrete mental
  events for some people
• But we can measures events, or the experiential
  dimension of fear
• It also involves mental states (diffuse anxiety)
  and condenses a range of social concerns (a more
  expressive dimension)
• Worry about crime means different things to
  different people different measures tap into
  different components of fear

4
The project

• So, how we integrate this distinction between
  different types of fear with existing evidence
  on the drivers and significance of fear?
• The goal of this talk is to draw upon
  quantitative and qualitative data and build upon
  key existing studies
• To take a constructive and integrative position

5
Point of departure

• Ferraro (1995) is the starting point
• Representative sample survey of the US
• Defined fear as an emotional response of
  dread or anxiety to crime or symbols that a
  person associates with crime.
• Asked people how afraid they were about falling
  victim of a number of crimes
• Defined risk perception as subjective
  probabilities
• Asked people how likely they thought it was
  that they would fall victim

6
Ferraro (1995)

• Central to evaluations of risk is how people
  define their situation through the formation of
  judgements and interpretations, which are
  themselves social products
• Physical environment shapes judgements of
  criminal activity and threat, as does socially
  shared information
• People are lay criminologists they employ the
  incivility hypothesis and criminal opportunities
  theory

7
Shift to the UK

• Home Office analysis of BCS data shows
  correlations between perception of disorder and
  judgements of likelihood and worry about crime
• But no test of Ferraros more ambitious model,
  apart from one small-scale study, Jackson (2004)

8
Shift to the UK

• Worrying articulated a set of social political
  attitudes and peoples judgements of social
  cohesion, order and moral consensus
• People judged a range of things in their
  community as hostile to social order
• by linking such symbols of breakdown with the
  threat of victimisation, people used crime as a
  neo-Durkheimian marker of moral structure
• The fear of crime emerged as a lay seismograph of
  social organisation and control, expressing and
  distilling a whole set of evaluative activity.

9
Shift to the UK

• Girling et al. (2000), along with others e.g.
  Taylor Jamieson (1996, 1998)
• One can listening to how people talk about crime,
  disorder and social orderhow they define and
  make connections to the broader cultural
  significance of crime
• One can examine the interpretative and evaluative
  function of stories
• Crime operates as a symbol, expressing or
  condensing a number of other issues, conflicts,
  insecurities and anxieties regarding ones
  neighbourhood, its social make-up and status, its
  place in the world, and the sense that problems
  from outside were creeping in.

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To the current project

• First, we modelled the correlates of our two
  streams of fear experience and expression
• This suggests that the everyday experience of
  worry is more likely to occur for people who
  live at the sharp edge
• More likely to live in high crime areas, know a
  victim, have been a victim, and to see disorder
  around them
• Whereas the more expressive worry is more likely
  to occur amongst the middling sorts, who may
  more rarely encounter threatening situations and
  have slightly more resources to manage risk
• Less likely to live in high crime areas, know a
  victim, have been a victim, and to see disorder
  around them

11
Stage one crime and long-term social change
12
Stage two perception of neighbourhood traits
13
Stage three perceived risk
14
Stage four victimisation experience
15
Stage five worry about crime
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Path analysis full model (mugging)
17
Modelling the processes early results

• Levels of crime and broader social changes
  predict public perceptions of disorder and social
  cohesion/collective efficacy
• Signs of disorder signal to observers a danger to
  social cohesion
• Both disorder and cohesion shapes perceived risk
• Both types of fear of crime are shaped by
  perceived risk and concerns about order/cohesion
• However, the frequency of fear is also correlated
  with victimisation and knowing a victim

18
Modelling the processes early results

• Therefore, both types of fear express how people
  make sense of their local environment
• Both types of fear are lay seismographs of
  social cohesion and moral consensus
• In expressive fear, worry about crime is a way of
  expressing a generalised sense of risk and
  concern about community breakdown
• In experiential fear, concern and risk are also
  major contributory factors
• Same processes at play, except that fear
  manifests as everyday spikes of emotion, partly
  because these people live at the sharp end of
  life