Outline

1. Reassessing Fear of Crime in England and Wales: Preliminary findings from the Experience and Expression project Jonathan Jackson, London School of Economics Stephen Farrall, University of Keele & Emily Gray, University of Keele. Funded by UK Economic & Social Research Council Award No. RES000231108

2. Outline • Introduction to the logistics of the project • Point of departure of the research • What is the fear of crime? • Rationale of new measures of the fear of crime • Who are the ‘Worried-Well’? • Theorising the ‘Worried-Well’ • Further analysis on the processes that underpin fear

3. The project • Roots in Farrall et al.’s (1997) qualitative investigation of fear of crime measures • New questions were then piloted in Farrall & Gadd (2004) and inserted into the 2003/2004 British Crime Survey (BCS) • Hence our current ESRC-funded project, where we analyse the BCS and return to qualitative data from previous ESRC grants • GERN Interlab: Keele, March 2007 • LSE conference: June 2007 • Working papers available from ESRC website and Jon’s LSE homepage • ESRC grant to fund proposal to the EC 7th FP

4. Point of departure [notes page] • Public thoughts & feelings about crime and crime-risk are multi-faceted • Questionnaires inevitably struggle – e.g. Farrall et al. (1997) • Psychological and sociological literature on everyday emotion – ways forward for criminology? • Social theory on cultural significance of crime • ‘Fear of crime feedback loop’ a la Murray Lee

5. What is the fear of crime? • Those rare, but terrifying bursts of emotions “A chair came flying over our hedge one night. Now I don’t know where it came from ‘cause I went shooting out to punch somebody’s lights out and there was nobody there [laughs]. […] I felt threatened for about two seconds at the time but now, nah, it was somebody pissed as a fart, “yeah let’s toss this chair, I can’t be bothered carrying it anymore”, that sort of thing, you know. They probably stole it out a bar or something. That’s the end of the story.”

6. What is the fear of crime? • Longer-term, enduring ‘social troubles’ “I would say I was more, concerned with the cause than the whole structure of … what seems to be, er, causing crime to be on the increase … and to my mind it’s not just parental control, drugs, violence on television, lack of control by, oh, schools being allowed to control, having discipline. I think it’s a combination of all these factors, plus the limitations that some of the courts have […] the real danger of remand and let out on bail, pending a court case, they’ve picked up new tricks and they go out and I think this, which is in progress at the moment, I think what judges are allowed to mete out in terms of punishment, the quality of punishments for certain crimes”.

7. Thus, the fear of crime is … • Short-lived experiences related to specific and immediate threats to security. • Concerns expressed for others (‘vicarious fear’). • Fears in the absence of direct experience (‘it would be terrible if’) • Wider, more expressive, social concerns and ‘troubles’.

8. Thus, the fear of crime … • . . . means different things to different people • But can we devise measures that tap into specific aspects of fear? • And can we make some sense of what different measures are measuring?

9. Measuring the ‘experiential’ dimension • After the pilot work was completed these new questions were incorporated into the 2003-04 British Crime Survey and fielded as part of the survey. The wording was as follows: • During the last 12 months, that is since [date], have you ever felt worried about [having your car stolen/having your home broken into and something stolen/being mugged or robbed ]? [yes/no]. • How many times have you felt like this in the past 12 months? [raw count recorded]. • And on the last occasion you felt worried about [having your car stolen/having your home broken into and something stolen/being mugged or robbed ] how worried did you feel? Would you say you felt … [not very worried/a little bit worried/quite worried/or very worried, with cannot remember as a hidden code].

10. Measuring the ‘expressive’ dimension • “Most of us worry at some time or other about being a victim of crime. Using one of the phrases on this card, could you tell me how worried you are about the following”. The following crimes were then asked of in turn: “having your home broken into and something stolen?”, “being mugged and robbed?”, “having your car stolen?” • When people say they are worried yet have not worried recently, we treat fear of crime as more of an expressive anxiety

11. Top-line findings

12. Top-line findings

13. Top-line findings Cross tabulation of old and new measures – Robbery

14. Robbery Robbery Burglary Burglary Theft of car Theft of car 100 100 90 90 80 80 70 70 60 60 % 50 % 50 40 40 30 30 20 20 10 10 0 Not at all worried Not very worried Fairly worried Very worried 0 No times 1-3 times 4-11 times 12-52 times 53+ times Worry about crime – standard measures. Worry about crime – new measures of frequency

15. Two knee-jerk reactions? • You’re trying to ‘magic away’ the real fears of people! • Ivory-tower academics … ! • The conspiracy theorists were right – it’s a methodological artefact! • You cynical criminologists having been funding the very ‘fear of crime industry’ that supports you all along … !

16. A more thoughtful position? • Fear of crime is not reducible to concrete mental events (events are the experiential dimension of fear) • It also involves mental states (diffuse anxiety) and condenses a range of social concerns (a more expressive dimension) • Worry about crime means different things to different people; different measures tap into different components of fear • Our next step is to explore the distribution and significance of what we call ‘experience’ and ‘expression’ in the fear of crime

17. Correlates of worry about mugging • Compared to ‘old’ intensity measures, the frequency of fear of mugging is: • Associated with victimisation experience and witnessing crimes; • More strongly associated with knowing victims and levels of crime in one’s area (a la IMD); • Not associated with newspaper readership or age.

18. Correlates of worry about mugging • Therefore, the frequency of fear is capturing the type of ‘fear of crime’ that affects people who live at the ‘sharp end of life’: • the ‘new’ intensity measure for mugging was only associated with health, crime levels and previous victimisation experience • These patterns were also found with burglary and car crime, albeit to a lesser degree

19. Integrating measurement strategies • The next step of the analysis was to combine old and new measures • This way we can construct a more detailed typology of fear, and then explore the correlates and underlying mechanisms

20. Top-line findings New and Old Questions: Mugging New measure Fearful in Not fearful in Total  past year past year Old measure Worried (very, fairly 613 (14%) 2868 (65%) 3481 (79%) and not very) Not worried (not at all) 23 (<1%) 925 (21%) 948 (21%) Total 636 (14%) 3793 (86%) 4429 (100%) Cells are n (total %).

21. Top-line findings • Looking across the three crime categories: • 15-20% of respondents are UNWORRIED on both measures; • 15-30% of respondents are WORRIED on both measures; • 50-65% of respondents worry ‘expressively’ but have not experienced fear-provoking episodes. These people we shall refer to as the WORRIED WELL.

22. Who are the worried-well? They appear to be … … amongst the better off in society, home-owners, living in areas with high rates of professional employees, living in ethnically ‘white’ neighbourhoods, living in areas with low levels of disorder and low levels of deprivation. … more victimised than the UNWORRIED, but less victimised than the WORRIED. … a socially and criminologically ‘middling sort’?

23. Some Possible Explanations? • Middle class ‘fear of falling’? (Ehrenreich, 1989, Taylor & Jamison, 1999). • Anxiety about wider social change? (Girling et al, 2000). • The creation of ‘fearing subjects’? (Lee, 2001). • Intrusion of crime into middle class life? (Garland, 2001).

24. So, where are we? • Measuring fear of crime by asking how often people worry produces a very different picture, compared to ‘old’ questions: • Events of worry are relatively infrequent; • A good proportion of people who say they are worried about crime do not actually worry; • The frequency of fear is more closely related to crime, victimisation experience, witnessing crime, and knowing victims; • By contrast, those people who express worry but do not actually worry seem to fall into some kind of ‘middling sort.’

25. 11% 01% 00% 8% 12% 13% 16% The next step: modelling the processes .21* Expressive fear: mugging .27* Perception of disorder .25* .10* .09* .26* Experential fear: mugging .28* Perceived likelihood of mugging .07* IMD: crime levels .06* .13* .02 .06* .05* .24* .17* ACORN: changes in area Perception of social cohesion and control .07* Knowing victim of mugging Victim of mugging .09* .05*

26. Modelling the processes: early results • Levels of crime and broader social changes predict public perceptions of disorder and social cohesion/collective efficacy • Signs of disorder signal to observers a danger to social cohesion • Both disorder and cohesion shapes perceived risk • Both types of ‘fear of crime’ are shaped by perceived risk and concerns about order/cohesion • However, the frequency of fear is also correlated with victimisation and knowing a victim

27. Modelling the processes: early results • Therefore, both types of fear express how people make sense of their local environment • Both types of fear are ‘lay seismographs of social cohesion and moral consensus’ • In expressive fear, worry about crime is a way of expressing a generalised sense of risk and concern about community breakdown • In experential fear, worry about crime is the same, but it also manifests in everyday ‘spikes’ of emotion, partly because these people live at the ‘sharp end of life’

28. Four working papers so far • http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/methodologyInstitute/whosWho/profiles/j.p.jackson@lse.ac.uk.htm • The ESRC website is:http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/index.aspxSearch in the 'Find a researcher' box for FARRALL, and then click on the item for ‘experience and expression’ for the project page. • Book, book chapters and journal articles under review / in the pipeline