Societal fear of crime

Previous sections touched on ways in which more abstract, societal anxieties are held to influence the local community of the neighbourhood (Hirtenlehner & Farrall 2013:5). In fact, the personal evaluation of neighbourhood conditions is actually psychologically embedded in a broader context of society (Cops 2012:106, also see Jackson 2004a and Dowds & Ahrendt 1995). Since the start of research into the fear of crime, it has been accepted that this broader society forms an important background to people’s fear of crime (Fürstenberg 1971).

3.4.1 Societal change as a background to the fear of crime

Fear of crime is theorised to be influenced by several social changes. The first change connected to the fear of crime is individualisation. As relations between individuals have changed fundamentally, so has the relationship of an individual with society as a whole, due to the growth of individual autonomy in relation to collectives (Oppelaar & Wittebrood 2006:40). Other changes that are held to influence the fear of crime are internationalisation, economic backlash and political pessimism. Due to internationalisation boundaries, distances and time differences

Neighborhood

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT ‘THE FEAR OF CRIME’

have lost much of the meaning they previously held to society. Internationalisation also led to the establishment of non-Western immigration and the rise of the European Union. For sections of the public, these changes lead to uncertainty and a feeling of threat (Van Noije & Wittebrood 2010). The status of a society’s economy can also influence the fear of crime, since the economy is held to have an influence on the public’s perception of many social matters (Van Noije & Wittebrood 2010, also see Van den Herrewegen 2011:42). The same appears true of the political climate in a society (Van Nooije & Wittebrood 2010).

3.4.2 Broader influences of societal fear of crime?

The influence of broader society on the fear of crime has not received much research attention. A few critical pioneers have emphasised the need for such a broad, social-psychological perspective (Fürstenberg 1971, Garofalo & Laub 1978 and Smith 1986). When Ditton and Farrall edited a cutting-edge collection of articles on the fear of crime in 2000, they repeated Hale’s (1996) earlier assertion that this part of the explanation of the fear of crime is in strong need of empirical attention (Ditton & Farrall 2000), because ‘(…) researchers have largely ignored social psychological and psychological factors that may be important in explaining the fear of crime’ (Farrall et al. 2000:400).

After 2000, critical research into the fear of crime changed its orientation, which led to what some call a “revival” of the research tradition (Cops 2012:5, Jackson 2005:311, Farrall, Jackson & Gray 2009:44). The scope now does more justice to the multi-dimensional nature and versatility of the concept (Cops 2012:5, Jackson 2005:311, Farrall, Jackson & Gray 2009:44). Besides being a clear paradigm shift, this new path in the research tradition was also enabled by the incremental evolution of methodological possibilities (Pleysier 2010:145). Many interesting insights arose from this perspective, excavating the deeper societal dynamics of the fear of crime. We will now explore these insights in brief.

Through their qualitative research, Hollway and Jefferson found that people translate ambiguous sources of contemporary insecurity by making use of the

‘crime discourse’. This is a satisfying discourse for expressing more widely generated anxieties as it makes risks ‘knowable, decisional and controllable’

(Hollway & Jefferson 1997:265).

Additionally, Jackson (2004a) was able to distinguish ‘experienced fear of crime’

from ‘expressed fear of crime’ in another qualitative study. ‘Experienced fear of crime’ is about ‘everyday worries about personal risk (Farrall, Jackson & Gray 2009:120)’, whereas ‘expressed fear of crime’ is a set of general opinions and attitudes that people bring forth when they discuss feelings about crime, which are primarily rooted in broader social changes and the cultural meaning of crime (Farrall, Jackson & Gray 2009:149-157). By applying a structural equation model to earlier quantitative data, Farrall, Jackson and Gray discovered that expressive fear of crime is indeed merely a discursive attitude that articulates one’s ‘(…) wider concerns about the state of society today’ (ibid:232). This type

KEEPING TROUBLE AT A SAFE DISTANCE

of fear of crime is influenced by long-term socio-cultural change, economic change and also an increased focus on crime in politics, policy and research.

Pleysier (2010) posited that both the perception of neighbourhood problems and anomie, as a reflection of a broader ontological insecurity, have a prominent influence on people’s personal fear of crime (Pleysier 2010:288).

Even when taking a more specific and contextualised operational definition of the fear of crime, ‘anomie’ – as a function of an ambiguous and vague feeling of insecurity – remained a prominent explanation for the fear of crime (Pleysier 2010:291-292). And Cops (2012) confirmed this to be the case for young people as well.

Hummelsheim et al. (2011) found an association between welfare state regimes and public insecurities about crime, through a large survey sample collected in 23 European countries. Welfare state regimes seemed to provide the public with a buffer against social and economic fears and insecurities. And so, ‘(t)he more public insecurities are neutralised by welfare security arrangements the less social anxieties may be channelled into crime’ (Hummelsheim et al.

2011:337).

Taking a social-constructionist, qualitative approach, Van den Herrewegen worked out how people construct, justify and manage their fear of crime in interaction with their environment (Van den Herrewegen 2011:261). Besides personal and environmental aspects, people also refer to social and cultural changes when recounting their fear of crime (Van den Herrewegen 2011:58).

Earlier research of my own (Spithoven 2012, Spithoven, De Graaf & Boutellier 2012) highlighted that people maintain a definite psychological distance from crime, since they associate the problem of crime particularly with the level of society. Even when respondents experienced more crime and social incivilities in their own neighbourhood, they did not involve themselves. Instead, they attributed these problems to the larger society (also see Van Noije 2010).

Based on an earlier quantitative study by Hirthenlehner (2008), Hirtenlehner and Farrall (2013) assumed that fundamental societal changes of recent decades had led to ‘(…) a general feeling of unease, in which various risks and insecurities lose their uniqueness and blend into a generalised threat’

(Hirtenlehner 2008:133). Fear of crime is one part of this broader amalgam of unease (Hirtenlehner 2008:133, also see Garfalo & Laub 1978, Girling et al.

2000, Hollway & Jefferson 1997, 2000, Jackson 2004a, Taylor et al. 1996). This form of fear of crime actually stands on its own as a type of generalised insecurity, rather than it feeding into people’s local community concerns (Hirtenlehner & Farrall 2013).

So, there are clear signs that an undercurrent of discomfort about a range of social and cultural conditions has found its way into the crime discourse. It may be that the fear of crime is characterised more by a general sense of discomfort and

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT ‘THE FEAR OF CRIME’

dissatisfaction about the state of larger society than previously believed (Farrall, Jackson & Gray 2009:239, Hale 1996:132, Mosconi & Padovan 2004:137-138 and Pleysier 2010:162). Through the classical fear of crime research orientation, perhaps ‘societal concern about crime has been transmuted into a personal problem of individual vulnerability’ (Ditton & Farrall 2000:xvi). But empirical studies into this aspect of the fear of crime are still rare (Pleysier & Cops 2016).