Fear of crime — Rational or not?
| Author | Stephen Mugford |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486588401700406 |
| Published date | 01 December 1984 |
| Date | 01 December 1984 |
| Subject Matter | Original Article |
AUST &
NZ
JOURNAL
OF
CRIMINOLOGY (December
1984)
17
(267-275)
FEAR OF CRIME -RATIONAL OR NOT?
ADiscussion and some Australian Data
Stephen Mugford*
267
Abstract
Fear
of crime
is
discussed in relation
to
various concomitants. This article
suggests that fear
of
crime has two components. One
is
related to group
membership and social support. These affect general levels of anxiety and hence
fear (ofcrime and
of
other
things). The second relates to likelihood ofvictimization.
Thus the fear
of
crime of, for example, elderly persons may
be
greater than that of
younger persons, despite lower victimization.
At
the same time two elderly samples
may report alevel
of
fear directly related to different victimization experience.
This model
is
discussed with the use of some Australian data
on
fear of crime in
relation to victimization and general psychological distress of Australian women.
It
is
suggested that small differences in fear
of
crime between married and never
married women despite higher victimization rates of the former, are aresult of
higher levels
of
distress among the latter, which largely "cancel
out"
the effect of
victimization.
Is the fear
of
crime arational response to objective chances
of
victimization, or
an irrational response fed perhaps by media exaggeration and personal
disturbance? What are the effects, if any, of social support systems in protecting
individuals from this fear? Such questions emerged during the latter 1970s when
large scale data became available upon fear of crime and victimization. Results of
analysis (see eg reviews by Garofalo and Laub, 1978; Garofalo, 1981; Baumer,
1978; Yin, 1980) show that fear of crime
is
almost always related
to
sex (women
more fearful than men);
is
usually negatively associated with socioeconomic status,
but positively related to age; and
is
sometimes associated with race (blacks, for
example, in the
USA
may be more fearful than whites). Furthermore, avariety of
associations are shown between levels
of
fear ofcrime and social factors such as the
size and nature
of
social support systems, the degree of social isolation of the
respondent, and the nature of the environment (see eg Hunter and Baumer, 1982;
Lavrakas, 1982; Liska et
ai,
1982; Mirande, 1980; Newman and Franck, 1982;
Ollenburger, 1981).
The pattern
of
victimization, however, does not parallel that
of
fears. With the
exception ofrape, women are less likely than men to be victimized and similarly the
older groups are
less
victimized than the less fearful younger groups. Some
interpretations of such data suggested that fear of crime was an irrational response
to the objective problem (see eg Lawton et
ai,
1975). Others such aGarofalo and
Laub (1978) suggested that if fear of crime was irrational then official agencies
should perhaps centre rather less upon the reduction of actual crime (and thus upon
*S K Mugford Ph
D,
Visiting Fellow, Ageing and the Family Project, RSSS, ANU, PO Box
4,
Canberra City, ACT, 2601.
tThe author gratefully acknowleges the support of the Australian Institute of Criminology
in
facilitating this research; the Australian Bureau of Statistics for releasing data for analysis and
Robert Lipp for obtaining extra analysis thereof; and of David Biles in providing helpful discussion
of the project and criticizing an earlier draft of the article.
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