Fear of Crime

Fear of crime is a complex phenomenon influenced by a range of interconnected social and demographic variables, including perceptions of risk and vulnerability, age, social class, geographical location, ethnicity, personal experience of criminal victimisation, media reporting and popular wisdom (Hale, 1996). It can have a variety of effects on individuals’ ‘quality of life’, ranging from not walking home alone at night to withdrawing from society altogether and living in isolation. Felt or expressed fear of crime bears no necessary relationship to the objective risk of victimisation and, paradoxically, those who tend to demonstrate the greatest fear - older people and women – are often those who are least at risk (Ferraro, 1995). For this reason, some have questioned just how ‘rational’ fear of crime really is.