Crime Prevention, Disorder and Community Safety (Criminolgy) Free Essay Example, 3750 words

As the percentage of terrorism is increasing in the world so as the fear of victimization among people; Williams (2000) d: â€Å"Thus there is no consensus on a "best" measure for fear of crime, or even on exactly what may be measured by a particular approach. The most common approach to fear of crime measurement uses some variation of the National Crime Surveys "walking in the neighborhood" questions, which offer a very general approach to crime fear. Few researchers have been concerned with the exact type of fear they are tapping and those few have generally attempted to make the distinction in an ex-post-facto fashion. In reality, the term "fear of crime" is an artifact of a broad interest in what is presumed to be the psychological effect of crime. As a result, there is no clear rationale behind its use. † Researches indicate that people especially women fear crime more than men but they do not report it quite often so it can be concluded that the actual statistics of women victimization is higher than reported. Stanko (1992) observed that according to the surveys, males are more capable of being victimized than women despite of the fact that women show more insecure behavior. We will write a custom essay sample on Crime Prevention, Disorder and Community Safety (Criminolgy) or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now It is perceived that the fear is irrational and unrealistic. However it should be noted that crimes happened with women are not reported all the time as women are more sensitive to their social image than man thus less willing to report that they are being victimized. Young (1988: 174) wrote that: "Domestic crisis and sexual crimes are less likely to enter the statistics than property crimes, which leads to the systematic underestimation of crimes against women". It should also be considered that researches and surveys only consist of crimes happened in front of witnesses or road-crimes. Women are often victimized within the walls of their own homes and do not report to any one. Warr (1984, 1985) investigates that as women are scared more of sexual assault than men so the general fear gets mix with the fear of sexual assault and heighten their insecurity. He also suggested that womens fear of victimization should be differently analyzed than men as men rarely fears sexual assault. Keane (1995) suggested that women’s fear of crime consists of two fears basically i. e. concrete fear and formless fear. Concrete fears are the fears of some specific crimes while formless fear is general fear or fear that can not be associated with some specific crimes. This theory of Keane has an underlying assumption that some crimes are more fear inducing than others.