Insecurities about crime in Germany, Austria and Switzerland: A review of research findings
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370809356871 |
| Author | Monica M. Gerber,Jonathan Jackson,Helmut Hirtenlehner |
| Date | 01 March 2010 |
| Published date | 01 March 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Corresponding author:
Monica M. Gerber, Methodology Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science,
Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK.
Email: m.m.gerber@lse.ac.uk
Insecurities about crime
in Germany, Austria and
Switzerland: A review of
research findings
Monica M. Gerber
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Helmut Hirtenlehner
University of Linz, Austria
Jonathan Jackson
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Abstract
This paper reviews the research literature on insecurities about crime in Germany, Austria and
Switzerland. Making criminological studies written in German accessible to the wider European
community, we first document how insecurities about crime have been conceptualized and
measured in these three countries, and second review the various theoretical positions that have
been empirically assessed. We highlight commonalities and differences in the German- and English-
language literatures on the topic, making the review relevant to criminologists from all European
countries. Our overall goal is to help stimulate a comparative research agenda on insecurities
about crime across the European continent.
Keywords
Austria, fear of crime, Germany, social transformation, Switzerland
This paper reviews the research literature on insecurities about crime in Germany,
Austria and Switzerland. The exchange of ideas is central to the criminological enter-
prise but language barriers are often an impediment. If European criminologists are to
develop a cohesive and comparative literature, theory and research must be accessible
to all. With this goal in mind, our review enables scholars from across Europe to com-
pare their own literatures with that emerging from the German-speaking world.
European Journal of Criminology
7(2) 141–157
© The Author(s) 2010
Reprints and permission: http://www.
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermission.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1477370809356871
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142 European Journal of Criminology 7(2)
Overview
Our review falls into two sections. We first document how insecurities about crime (or
fear of crime – we use the phrases interchangeably) have been conceptualized and
measured in these three countries, before reviewing the theoretical positions that have
been empirically assessed. Along the way we address the various historical and
political backdrops to the work, in particular the reunification of East and West
Germany. We also highlight parallels and departures in the German- and English-
language literatures (since German-speaking research has been heavily influenced by
Anglo-Saxon criminology). In contrast to US and UK research, the work we review
here places special emphasis on the idea that insecurities about crime are just one ele-
ment of a broader array of social insecurities. Future research into other European
countries might therefore explore the extent to which insecurities about crime are
rooted in public perceptions of neighbourhood breakdown (as in the UK)
or in more abstract insecurities about society and social change (as in Germany and
Austria).
Origins of research into fear of crime
It was the 1970s before German academics began to express an interest in the topic of
fear of crime. First came the argument that people’s feelings of insecurity about crime
affect their quality of life, and that the state should protect people from both real and
supposed threats (Schwind et al., 1978). But it was only after the political upheavals in
1989 (Boers, 2003b)1 that sustained attention was paid to fear of crime, with scholars
spotting an opportunity to study a society undergoing rapid social change. In the years
following reunification and the fall of the ‘Iron Curtain’, the new federal states (from the
former German Democratic Republic, GDR) experienced an increase in perceptions of
insecurity (Boers and Kurz, 1997; Bundesministerium des Innern und Bundesministerium
für Justiz, 2006). Since then, fear levels have been higher in the East than in the West
(Bilsky, 1996; Bilsky et al., 1995; Boers, 2003a; Bundesministerium des Innern und
Bundesministerium für Justiz, 2006; Dittmann, 2005; Ewald, 2000; Forschungsgruppe
‘Kommunale Kriminalprävention in Baden-Württemberg’, 1998; Kury et al., 1992;
Reuband, 1996), although the mid-1990s witnessed decreasing public anxieties in both
the East and the West, producing what has been a gradual alignment of the old and the
new federal states in levels of fear of crime (Bundesministerium des Innern und
Bundesministerium für Justiz, 2006; Dittmann, 2005; Dörrmann and Remmers, 2000).
In Switzerland, the first two surveys on fear and crime were conducted during the 1980s
(Killias et al., 2007; Schwarzenegger, 1992). Austria followed a few years later, however,
neither Switzerland nor Austria had a strong criminological infrastructure and neither
experienced rapid social change, so they lacked such a stimulus to research the topic.
Levels of fear of crime in Austria have remained relatively low over the past 15 years
according to the security barometer of the Ministry of the Interior (Giller, 2007), while the
Swiss Crime Survey shows a trajectory of decreasing levels of fear between the mid-1980s
and mid-1990s and a steady increase in levels of fear since then (Killias et al., 2007).
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