Crime and the Public†
| Author | Paul R. Wilson |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486587100400405 |
| Published date | 01 December 1971 |
| Date | 01 December 1971 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
AUST. &N.Z. JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY (Dec., 1971): 4, 4
Crime
and the Publict
PAUL R. WILSON*
223
Introduction
OVERSEAS surveys,
particularly
those done for
the
President's Commission
on Law
Enforcement
and
Administration of Justice, suggest
strongly
that
the
contemporary
state
of crime is
regarded
by
the
average citizen as a
major,
if
not
principal, social problem. Public
alarm
has
been reflected in
aggressive "law
and
order"
election platforms,
with
emphasis
upon
the
ex-
pansion of law
enforcement
agencies like
the
police, increasing penalties
for a
host
of offences,
and
creating
new types of public order crimes.
In
Australia, law
and
order
has
also become
an
issue of increasing
political
interest
and
controversy.
It
has
been assumed
that
the
average
citizen
in
this
country
is also troubled
about
the
breakdown of behaviour
standards
accompanying
the
"permissive society". Quite clearly,
this
con-
cern
has
tempted
politicians to
put
forward law
and
order election
platforms
which, as
recent
Queensland by-elections show, have yielded political
dividends.
But
how do
the
public view
the
state
of crime in Australia? Are
they
as
worried by
the
problem of crime as
are
their
counterparts
in
other
parts
of
the
Western world,
particularly
in
the
United
States?
And
what
knowledge
do
the
Australian
public have
about
crime in
this
country?
Further,
what
precautions do
they
take
to
protect
themselves
against
crime?
In
order
to
answer
these
and
related
questions, asurvey was
carried
out
among a
representative
sample of citizens in Melbourne,
Bydney
and
Brisbane, as well as in Laidley, a
small
rural
township 60 miles from
Brisbane.
Multi-phase
random
sampling procedures were used to select
1,018 people
within
each
of
the
three
metropolitan
areas,
and
within
the
country
area.'
Public
concern
for
crime
We began
the
survey by asking
our
respondents
to
evaluate
six topical
and
controversial social problems,
indicating
with
each
problem how
much
attention
or concern
they
paid
to it.
The
six social problems chosen were
deliberately
the
same
as those American citizens were asked to
evaluate
in
asurvey
carried
out
by well-known pollster, George Gallup. Clearly, as
can
be seen from Table 1, crime,
at
least
in Australia, was considered to be a
matter
of some
concern
to a large
proportion
of
urban
Australians.
tAn address
presented
to
the
Sixth National Conference of
the
Australian Crime Pre-
vention, Correction
and
After-Care Council, August, 1971.
*Senior
Lecturer
in Sociology, University of Queensland.
.1. These
procedures
are
described in detail in: D. Chappell and P. R. Wilson, Crime in Australia,
In
preparation
for
Penguin
Books.
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