Neighbourhood fear of crime

Despite the multitude of explanations discussed in the previous sections, a great deal of variation in the fear of crime remained unexplained. As a result, academics started to theorise and research the fear of crime beyond individual psychological characteristics (Hale 1996:119), in a context of neighbourhoods (Cops 2012:101, Hale 1996:119). The concept of ‘neighbourhood’ is itself difficult to define as a geographical area and it is very subjective in meaning (Pleysier 2010, Ferraro &

LaGrange 1987, Kaal, Vanderveen & McConnell 2006). As a place, however, a neighbourhood ‘is a fundamental category in the formation of self-identity’ as ‘it acts as a physical context for everyday life, a material situation, but it is also imaginary and subjective (…), emotionalised space or space with feeling’ (Banks 2005:172). The local community therefore ‘is extremely important and should not be ignored in attempting to understand the dimension of this fear’ (O’Mahony &

Quinn 1999:246).

3.3.1 Urbanism

The fear of crime appears to be concentrated in inner-city neighbourhoods (Hale 1996:113, O’Mahony & Quinn 1999:245). The most frequently offered explanation for the urban fear of crime seems quite rational: there is more crime in cities and so, urban citizens run a greater risk of criminal victimisation (Hale 1996). But a broader view needs to be taken, because the ‘(…) fear of crime may be

conceptualised as an expression of the sense of powerlessness and uncertainty that accompanies much of urban life’ (Smith 1989:198 as quoted by Hale 1996:117).

Situational fear

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Smith (1987) stressed that urban fear of crime might well have ‘displaced anxieties’

at its roots: a ‘(…) dissatisfaction with urban life which includes deterioration of community life, poor services, and social isolation’ (Farrall, Jackson & Gray 2009:94). Some authors (e.g. Garofalo & Laub 1978, Girling et al. 2000, Jackson 2004a, 2009, Hirtenlehner & Farrall 2013) go a step further, stating that the context of the neighbourhood functions as a prism that converts more abstract anxieties and sentiments into fear of crime.

Urban contexts also have direct influences on the fear of crime, though. (Hale 1996:113). Citizens of cities experience more isolation and loneliness due to the weakening of social ties as a result of population density and social heterogeneity.

Urban communities have rather unclear community boundaries, which generally make it difficult to know who are neighbours and who are not (Hale 1996:118). In this way, urban citizens tend to be perfect strangers to one another, leading to a heightened social uncertainty (Hale 1996): individuals find themselves surrounded by ‘unknown, reluctant and uninterested people’ (Van der Wurff 1990:84). Urban communities have higher proportions of single-parent families, which are held to be less effective in the supervision and guardianship of children, as well as of the community in general (Hale 1996, Doran & Burgess 2012). Overall, the density and configuration of the urban population seem to disorganise local communities.

3.3.2 Social disorganisation

Although Shaw and McKay (1942) originally developed the theory of social disorganisation to explain neighbourhood crime, the theory also helps to explain the fear of crime in neighbourhoods (Doran & Burgess 2012:33). ‘(S)ocial disorganisation refers to the inability of a community structure to realise the common values of its residents and maintain effective social controls’ (Sampson &

Groves 1989:776 as quoted by Hale 1996:117). The theory focuses on communities with ‘common or dominant values and social norms’ (Doran & Burgess 2012:34), leading to informal social control: the ability of a local community to ‘regulate its members according to desired principles – to realise collective, as opposed to forced goals (…)’ on the basis of ‘mutual trust and solidarity among neighbours’

(Sampson et al. 1997:918-919). Public housing seems to prevent this social integration, because ‘unlike most other neighbourhoods, public housing residents are not there by choice’ and may not be striving to socially integrate at all (DeLone 2008:117).

According to Lewis and Salem (1986), neighbourhoods vary in respect of their level of political power. Neighbourhoods that lack political power are less successful in addressing local problems with the authorities. And so, local problems are left to fester. This is connected to what Taylor et al. (1986) called lack of resources in a more general sense: ‘a judgement that the government and the social structure will not be able to provide the collective good of safety’ (Hale 1996:118).

The fear of crime is particularly rooted within ‘neighbourhoods characterised by social impoverishment and dilapidated infrastructure’ (Ferguson & Mindel

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT ‘THE FEAR OF CRIME’

2007:325, also see Crawford 2006), caused by disinvestment, demolition and reconstruction, demagoguery and deindustrialisation (Skogan 1986). Additionally, many urban communities in decline experience the migration of families who, given the financial opportunity, move away from the community (Hale 1996, also see Elffers & De Jong 2004).

Warr (1990) and Wilox-Roundtree & Land (1996) discovered that the more individuals feel they “fit in with the neighbourhood”, the more they will perceive it as being a safe neighbourhood. So, a neighbourhood’s racial and ethnic

heterogeneity is held to challenge the neighbourhood’s ability to reach consensus and thus it indirectly feeds social disorganisation (Hale 1996). So, underlying the fear of crime in a neighbourhood might well be local ‘concerns about race and a fear of racial change’ (Farrall, Jackson & Gray 2009:102, also see Skogan 1986).

But the idea that the cultural - and especially racial - composition of a

neighbourhood explains the fear of crime there is criticised for being too shallow, since this connection needs to incorporate mediating variables that provide actual explanations (Hale 1996, Doran & Burgess 2012). Research by Chiricos, Hogan and Gertz (1997) showed primarily that ‘the perception that one is the racial minority in one’s neighbourhood elevates fear among whites but not among blacks’ (Chiricos, Hogan & Gertz 1997:107, also see Elffers & De Jong 2004). As such, the fear of crime seems to thrive in neighbourhoods where residents perceive themselves proximate to others with differing racial, ethnical and cultural backgrounds (Doran

& Burgess 2012). The crucial issue within ethnically heterogeneous neighbourhoods is a lack of understanding of each other’s different behaviour, leading to mistrust and the mutual perception of being ‘dangerous others’ (Doran & Burgess 2012:35).

A neighbourhood’s social integration can be threatened by both rapid growth and change of the local community (Hale 1996, O’Mahony & Quinn 1999). Empirical assessments of the effects of rapid community growth by Crank, Giacomazzi and Heck (2003) confirmed this influence. In essence, a rapid turnover in the

community composition can undermine social connections between neighbours (Doran & Burgess 2012, Elffers & De Jong 2004), ‘limiting their ability to agree on common sets of values or to solve commonly experienced problems’ (Bursik 1988, as quoted by Doran & Burgess 2012:33). The experienced decline in social relations prevents neighbours who stayed behind organising themselves against the anti-social behaviour of groups of new immigrants coming into their neighbourhood.

Older residents, especially, become ‘hesitant to reprimand youths participating in deviant activities’ (Doran & Burgess 2012:33, also see Taylor and Covington 1993) as they tend to withdraw from public interventions on behalf of the community, since this “community” is no longer perceived to exist (Sampson 1991:45). This led Skogan (1986) to articulate a more nuanced interpretation of ethnic group conflicts in neighbourhoods as being merely “intergenerational conflicts”, because

newcomers are usually relatively young and behave differently to the older residents who stayed behind (Skogan 1986).

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3.3.3 Social integration, collective efficacy & social capital

An individual’s social integration in their local context theoretically provides citizens with a sense of social support and ‘living in a cohesive and supportive community’ (Hale 1996:113, Ferguson & Mindel 2007). Social integration is mainly held to function as a buffer against a perceived lack of safety, even in the most crowded neighbourhoods of a city (Hale 1996). In fact, however, research has actually observed a reversed relationship: ‘The more integrated the

neighbourhood, the more cautious are residents’ activities’ (Wilcox-Roundtree &

Land 1996:174, also see Elffers & De Jong 2004, Sacco 1993).

Covington and Taylor (1991) explained this observation in terms of one’s social integration partly determining the amount of information one receives about crime. Sparks, Girling and Loader (2001) more specifically add engagement in

‘crime talk’ due to social integration, bringing a wide variety of first-hand and second-hand crime stories to the doorstep, urging caution and a need to prevent victimisation. People’s social relations thus function as a multiplier to crime knowledge, especially in tight social networks (Doran & Burgess 2012:29) and are even able to develop ‘reputations and place-myths’ (Sparks, Girling & Loader 2001:888, also see Perkins & Taylor 1996, Banks 2005).

Gibson et al. (2002) take a positive position: ‘It is likely that social integration is only the starting point for the formulation of positive perceptions of one’s

neighbourhood environment’ (Gibson et al. 2002:539). According to them, social integration is present ‘when citizens know their neighbours, talk to their

neighbours regularly, and feel that their neighbourhood is a “real home”’ (Gibson et al. 2002:539). More crucial is a perception of collective efficacy – the perception of ‘shared expectations and mutual civic engagement by community members in local social control, with an emphasis on residents’ joint capacity to act together to generate solutions to local problems’ (Ferguson & Mindel 2007:327, also see Sampson et al. 1997:918). The origins of collective efficacy remain largely unclear (Gibson et al. 2002), although some consensus emerged in respect of the role of social capital.

‘Social capital’ (Gibson et al. 2002, Ferguson & Mindel 2007, Crawford 2006) ‘(…) consists of a set of components found in social associations and interactions among people that, when activated, empower individuals and facilitate cooperation toward a mutual benefit’ (Ferguson & Mindel 2007:323). This concept integrates the positive features of trust, shared values and reciprocity between social networks, institutions and a community (Ferguson & Mindel 2007). According to Crawford we have to be ‘sensitive to the context specificity of social capital and its multi-dimensional sources’ (Crawford 2006:962). With reference to Lin (2001) and Granovetter (1973), Crawford stresses the importance of the instrumental role of weak social ties, which serve the same goal of achieving social control, but are not based on shared values. These weak ties are ‘are often the most useful form of social organisation for getting things done’ (Crawford 2006:963) in an urban community.

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT ‘THE FEAR OF CRIME’

To conclude, regarding the relationship between social integration and fear of crime: ‘(…) high levels of community efficacy, social cohesion, and a tight social structure (with low levels of anonymity and distrust) might inhibit fear of crime’

(Farrall, Jackson & Gray 2009:93, Jackson 2004a). But the empirical results are still very inconsistent (Gibson et al. 2002:538).

3.3.4 The experience of incivilities in the neighbourhood

A heightened fear of crime in inner cities might also be the result of more frequent confrontations with social and physical incivilities (Lewis & Maxfield 1980:187, Hinkle & Weisburd 2008). But the theory is quite clear, as the ‘feeling that one is surrounded by symbolic or actual threats, feeling that the immediate

neighbourhood is in decline and the community deteriorating, may produce not only generalised anxiety but a specific fear of crime’ (Hale 1996:115). Observing crime and incivilities in an environment gives a strong signal that the local community appears ‘to be suffering from deteriorating standards of behaviour, diminishing power of informal social control, increasing diversification of norms and values, and decreasing levels of trust, reciprocity and respect’ (Farrall, Jackson

& Gray 2009:90, also see Jackson 2008, Austin, Furr & Spine 2002). Ultimately, though, empirical results related to the relationship between the fear of crime and disorder are largely mixed (Farrall, Jackson & Gray 2009).

3.3.5 The physical environment as a social heuristic

As discussed in section 3.2, the built environment is frequently theorised to act ‘as a heuristic device, providing cues about likely levels of neighbourhood crime’

(Wilcox, Quisenberry & Jones 2003:322). For many practitioners, this theory of

‘defensible space’ gave rise to a strategy of ‘fear reduction by modifying certain aspects of the built environment’ in neighbourhoods (Grabosky 1995:5, Henig &

Maxfield 1978, Pain et al. 2006, Wilcox, Quisenberry & Jones 2003, Schweitzer, Kim

& Mackin 1999:70). But the outcomes from this strategy are mixed and limitation of the fear of crime cannot be guaranteed (Atkins, Husain & Storey 1991, Hale 1996, Pleysier 2010, Ditton & Farrall 2000).

Fear-reduction strategies developed on the basis of this paradigm are often dismissed in critical reviews as ‘one-sided architectural determinism’ (Pleysier 2010, Taylor et al. 1984), because the associated ‘technical fixes’ do not affect the social problems that underlie the fear of crime (Pain et al. 2006, Wilcox,

Quisenberg & Jones 2003). Such interventions require, as a minimum, a

complementary social strategy (Hale 1996; Van Noije & Wittebrood 2010, Taylor 2002) that is sensitive to the local situation and history (Hale 1996, Pain 2000, also see Hardyns 2012).

3.3.6 Summative model for neighbourhood fear of crime

Figure 5 on the next page summarises explanations for the fear of crime at the level of the neighbourhood. Fear of crime at neighbourhood level is partly explained by displaced anxieties – abstract sentiments caused by broader social changes. At neighbourhood level, individuals can also perceive environmental cues, as explored

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in the section on situational fear of crime. To a great extent, though, fear of crime at neighbourhood level is explained by the social consequences of urbanisation, which directly influences not only the fear of crime but also a lack of social capital, which in turn leads to a lack of collective efficacy and social disorganisation. The latter is held to result in neighbourhood problems including crime, which feeds the fear of crime within the neighbourhood and extends the presence of formal social control there.

Fig. 5 - Summative model of neighbourhood fear of crime.