Functional and dysfunctional fear of crime in inner Sydney: Findings from the quantitative component of a mixed-methods study
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865820911994 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Functional and
dysfunctional fear of crime
in inner Sydney: Findings
from the quantitative
component of a
mixed-methods study
Murray Lee
Sydney Law School, University of Sydney, Australia
Jonathan Jackson
Department of Methodology, London School of Economics, UK;
Sydney Law School, University of Sydney, Australia
Justin R Ellis
University of Newcastle, School of Humanities and Social Science,
Australia
Abstract
This article presents the quantitative findings from a mixed-method study of perceptions of
crime in inner Sydney. A survey was deployed via Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview on
a randomly selected sample of the inner Sydney population (n¼409). We find that less than
half of the participants worry about crime but that a sizable minority (13%) indicated that
they have some worry about a category of crime every week of the year or more. Building on
a recent conceptual advance, we differentiate between functional and dysfunctional fear of
crime. We find that greater direct and indirect experience of victimisation, believing one’s
neighbourhood to be disorderly, and believing that collective efficacy is low, all predict
moving up the scale from no worry, to functional fear, to increasingly frequent dysfunctional
fear. The findings suggest gender and age are largely unrelated to worry about crime, con-
trolling for perceptions of community disorder, perceptions of collective efficacy, direct
victimisation experience and indirect victimisation experience. We conclude with some
Corresponding author:
Murray Lee, Law School Building (F10), Eastern Ave, Camperdown NSW 2006, Australia.
Email: murray.lee@sydney.edu.au
Australian & New Zealand Journal of
Criminology
2020, Vol. 53(3) 311–332
!The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865820911994
journals.sagepub.com/home/anj
thoughts on the role of environmental cues in shifting people’s functional response to per-
ceived risk to dysfunctional patterning of emotions in people’s daily lives.
Keywords
Collective efficacy, fear of crime, mixed-methods, public insecurity, quality of life
Date received: 22 November 2019; accepted: 18 February 2020
Introduction
Since the ‘discovery’ of fear of crime, reducing worry about crime has proven a signif-
icant issue for policy makers, police and academics (Lee & Mythen, 2018). Despite
falling levels of reported crime in many Western nations in recent decades (Farrell
et al., 2014), levels of fear of crime have tended to decrease at slower rates – if indeed
they have reduced at all (Lee, 2007; Simon, 2018). This is concerning because worries
and anxieties associated with the fear of crime can erode quality of life and well-being
(Jackson & Stafford, 2009; Stafford et al., 2007), motivate costly but not always ben-
eficial precautions and restrict movement (Lee, 2007), encourage ‘flight’ from deprived
areas, harm social trust, inter-group relations and the capacity of communities to exer-
cise social control (Hale, 1996; Jackson & Stafford, 2009) and contribute to a range of
‘negative cognitive (pessimism, problem exaggeration) and affective consequences (emo-
tional discomfort, depression)’ (Gray et al., 2011, p. 77). At the same time, fear of crime
can shape the machinations of the justice system, the way we treat crime and those we
criminalise (Lee, 2007). Considerable resources are allocated to crime prevention strat-
egies in an effort to reduce fear of crime (Sakip et al., 2012), and public institutions such
as the police (and all levels of government) develop Key Performance Indicators based
on reducing such fears (Lee, 2007). Efforts to reduce worry about crime have increas-
ingly fallen upon local government in Australia, the United Kingdom and other Western
nation states (e.g. UK Government, 2015). Yet, there has been a good deal of contention
on how fear of crime has been measured and whether poor survey and research methods
have resulted in an overestimation of levels of fear of crime (Farrall et al., 1997; Gray
et al., 2008a, 2011; Jackson & Gray, 2010).
As a methodological response, scholars have recently attempted to more accurately
calibrate measures of fear of crime and better define and separate its key concepts and
components (Gray et al., 2011). This includes a more granular assessment of worry
through measures of frequency of worry and intensity of worry (Gray et al., 2011).
Importantly to the current study, researchers have also sought to establish whether
respondents’ fears are rendered ‘functional’ or ‘dysfunctional’ depending on their behav-
ioural and quality of life outcomes (Jackson & Gray, 2010). Here, we draw on Jackson
and Gray’s (2010) model of functional fear to differentiate between diffuse, affective
representation of personal crime risk and the lived experience of anxiety, worry and fear
about being victimised in one’s daily life. The aim is to better understand the variables
likely to predict higher levels and intensity of worry and, importantly, to draw conclu-
sions about how that worry can be managed functionally.
312 Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 53(3)
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