POP & Fear of Crime

1. POP & Fear of Crime Gary Cordner Eastern Kentucky University

2. Why Fear of Crime? • Widely accepted part of the police mission • Recognized as semi-independent of crime itself • An important component of quality of life • Did not go down during the crime drop of the 1990s

3. Fear: What Do We Know? • Hundreds and perhaps thousands of studies of fear of crime • Fear of crime is multi-dimensional: • Affective fear • Generalized fear vs. fear of certain places • Fear for self vs. fear for family/dependents • Perceived likelihood of victimization • Behavioral effects of fear

4. Cont. • Young people, old people, and women often report the greatest fear • Women’s fear is strongly tied to assault and rape • Most people feel safer in and near their home than in other parts of town • Most people feel safer walking in the daytime than at night

5. Cont. • Parents typically express fear for their children’s safety • Most people recognize that their chances of property crime victimization are greater than their chances of personal crime victimization • Many people report that they limit their activities due to fear of crime

6. Policing to Reduce Fear: Prevailing Theories • Reducing Crime  Reduces Fear • Professional Policing  Reduces Fear • Reducing Disorder  Reduces Fear (Broken Windows) • COP  Reduces Fear

7. National Survey (n=160) • Strategies or programs specifically designed to reduce fear of crime? • 46% • Systematically measure fear? • 10% • Generalized COP • Crime prevention & public education • Traditional crime fighting • Not much else

8. What’s Missing? POP • Targeted, tailored responses • Based on careful analysis • Aimed directly at reducing fear • Followed up with assessment

9. Some POP Tools & Issues • SARA • Crime Triangle • Fear of Crime Matrix • Signal Crimes • Media

10. SARA • Scanning – to identify pockets of fear and/or new fear issues • Analysis – to determine who is most fearful, why, when, where, etc. • Response – after considering a range of responses, implementing one or more that are tailored to the specific problem • Assessment – determining whether fear was reduced, if not why not, etc.

11. Crime Triangle • Locations – places where fear is greatest, or most out of proportion to risk • Offenders – people and behaviors most responsible for fear • Victims – people most affected by fear of crime • Guardians – people who have a stake in reducing fear and/or have some responsibility for offenders/locations

12. Fear of Crime Matrix

13. Signal Crimes • A particular event or type of crime, incident, or disorder • Interpreted by the public as a warning about their level of security • May have a disproportionate impact on fear of crime

14. Impact of the Media • Real World Thesis – fear shaped by objective conditions • Cultivation Thesis – fear shaped by media messages that the world is a scary place • Substitution Thesis – media messages substitute for lack of personal experience • Resonance Thesis – media messages reinforce personal experience

15. Research on Media Effects • Individuals’ fear of crime affected by real world conditions and experiences as well as by the media • Local TV news and tabloids seem to have the biggest media impact on fear of crime • Has more impact on residents of high-crime neighborhoods than low-crime ones (more resonance than substitution)

16. Fundamental Considerations • Fear is multi-faceted • Fear varies among places • Fear varies among groups of people • Fear varies over time

17. Fear Varies -- Concord, CA

18. Fear Varies Widely • Fear of crime is high in my neighborhood: • Dana Estates – 14.7% • Highlands – 5.6% • Canterbury – 12.0% • PRA055 (Jefferson County, KY) – 51.2% • San Francisco unsafe walking at night in my neighborhood: • City-wide – 28% • Supervisory District 10 – 64%

19. Residents vs. Businesses in PRA055 • Residents agreed more strongly that: • There is a good chance they will be the victim of a property crime in the next year • They had seriously thought about moving away because of crime • Businesses agreed more strongly that: • Their fear was high • Fear was high in the neighborhood • Most of the crime problems were caused by drugs • Many of the people in the neighborhood abuse drugs

20. Sources of Fear Can Be Surprising (Jefferson County)

21. Sources of Fear Can Vary (Lexington, KY) • Three public housing sites • The primary cause of crime around here is: • Bluegrass-Aspendale – drugs • Charlotte Court – unsupervised kids • Pimlico Park – outsiders

22. Fear of Crime Matrix – San Francisco

23. Groups of People • San Francisco – less safe walking alone in my neighborhood at night: • Women • People over 60 years old • Lower income residents • Less educated residents • Unemployed and under-employed residents • Latino-Hispanic and African-American residents

24. Change Over Time • San Francisco 1997-2003 • Safe walking alone during the day: 73%  79% • Safe walking alone at night: 40%  45% • Chicago 1994-2003 • Afraid to go out at night: 40%  25% • Gap between men and women cut in half • Gap between young and old eliminated • Hispanics remained the most fearful

25. COPE • Baltimore County in the early 1980s • Came to the conclusion that they had a fear of crime problem • Special units created • Evolution: saturation  crime prevention  POP • Assessment: POP worked best in reducing fear and improving public opinion

26. COPE examples • Garden Village • Krone Drive • Senior high-rise • Neighborhood bullies • Hate crimes

27. Policing to Reduce Fear • Generalized COP • Targeted POP • Identify and address signal crimes • Develop a media strategy designed to moderate media effects on fear of crime

28. Key Issues and Considerations • Need to measure and analyze fear (direct and indirect methods) • Competing priorities and methods of crime-control vs. fear-reduction • Pernicious effects of moral panics and phony crime waves • Ethical issues related to fear reduction • Fear of terrorism

29. Contact Information • If you know of agencies that we should contact, please let me know 859-622-2344 Gary.Cordner@eku.edu