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Experience and expression: interpreting subjective
assessments of the fear of crime?
Emily Gray, Keele University,Stephen Farrall, Sheffield University,
Jonathan Jackson, LSEBritish Society of Criminology Conference, September 2007
Outline
Point of departure of the research Theoretical model is based on subjective
assessments of crime and risk ‘Experience’ and ‘expression’ – early results Case studies Conclusions
Point of departure Roots in Farrall et al.’s (1997) qualitative investigation
of fear of crime measures 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? Crime related anxieties biographically embedded in a
set of unconscious fears and desires (Hollway and Jefferson, 2000).
Social theory on cultural significance of crime ‘Fear of crime feedback loop’ a la Murray Lee
Theoretical model
Ferraro (1995) is the starting point
1. Defined ‘fear’ as ‘…an emotional response of dread or anxiety to crime or symbols that a person associates with crime.’
2. Defined ‘risk perception’ as subjective probabilities Central to evaluations of risk was how people define their
situation through the formation of judgements and interpretations, which are themselves social products
Physical environment shapes judgements of criminal activity and threat, as does socially shared information: People are ‘lay criminologists’: they employ the incivility hypothesis and criminal opportunities theory
Early Results: Experience & Expression
Top line findings: episodes of worry about crime may have been overstated.
We have distinguished between ‘Experiential’ fear and ‘Expressive’ fear
Modelling the data has shown that: In expressive fear, worry about crime is a way of expressing a
generalised sense of risk and concern about community breakdown
In experiential fear, concern and risk are also major contributory factors. Same processes at play, except that fear manifests as everyday ‘spikes’ of emotion, partly because these people live at the ‘sharp end of life’
Integrating qualitative data into the analysis
Explored over in-depth interviews from two related ESRC projects.
This data draws attention to how the interpersonal, material and social contexts of the participant’s life mediate the experience and expression of worry, giving rise to different consequences and interpretations.
Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, this study not only attends to the kind of interpretative analysis of how people respond and relate to crime, but seeks to contribute to the wider intellectual terrain by testing the conceptual framework developed throughout the working papers thus far.
Nina Middle aged, white, woman, with grown/ growing up children. Single, employed. Long connections to the ‘estate’ and surrounding area’s. She and many of her immediate family members have been victims of
localised crime (burglary, intimidation, theft), often repeat victimisation.
“….you often know who are committing the crimes. My mum’s been robbed three times. Some guy actually turned up in her bedroom with no clothes on, and someone stole her Hoover. And she’s 70-odd now you know, and that really upset her”
“I mean the girl next door, she actually got raped three times by the same bloke. ”
“I’m right in the crime element on the estate - with all the villains and everything”
Nina Individually she has black and minority ethnic friends, although she
is against immigration and feels a real sense of threat from recent waves of immigrants.
Concerned about poor resources (housing, police, education etc) “the poor are getting poorer” “the buildings are hell”
Very suspicious of young men “horrible kids messing up the area” and drug users “Zombies”
Says there is social cohesion and ways of managing the effects of crime – got her mum’s Hoover back. “community polices itself”
Nina Maintains she try’s to control her worry about crime, but it does affect her
quality of life. “You’d be a nervous wreck if you sat here worrying about everything… I worry
about my car though, cause I’ve had it stolen before.. And I wouldn’t go out of here without putting my deadlock on my door, I have to think about these things everyday ”
Crime makes her angry“Crime is not irritating, it’s bloody, it makes you angry, that people get away
with it. And they never learn from, a lot of them don’t learn from their mistakes…on the estate, you know, they’re always in and out, in and out of nicks, forever in the nick.
She see’s herself as ‘robust’.“I find I can kind of get out of situations cause I’ve been in the environment
virtually all my life anyway, you know, with assholes”
Acclimatised or contradictory?“But actually I don’t think the level of crime’s that high on this estate. It hasn’t
been. It doesn’t seem to be. I know we’ve had a couple of murders and you get that everywhere”
Maud 80 year old white woman. Widowed.
Not a recent victim of crime
Moved to the estate from rural area 20 years ago;‘“I mean I’d lived in a hamlet, outside a small village, and to come and live on
the estate, that was a bit of a culture shock…. I was surrounded by people, I mean if you opened your door, you saw a neighbour. [When I moved], we lived on the top floor of a low-rise block and there was six flights of stairs and they were filthy, nobody bothered to keep them clean.”
Maintains the area is “physically ugly” and “lacks character” and “evidence of nature”
However, says it is a friendly place “I give my friends keys to get into my flat, but its selective”
Maud Active community member: Tenants Association, Youth Clubs, Activities for
pensioners
Non-plussed by the young people on the estate playing ‘cops and robbers’“I’ll tell you why I don’t feel scared, because those people in their teens now, Doris
and I worked with them from five up to 11 years of age, and I, wherever we go, the kids say hello to us, even the teenagers now. And most people feel that the threat would come from youths but I don’t feel that. So no, there isn’t an area here where I don’t feel safe or that I feel is particularly unsafe, to use.”
Does not consider rowdy young people criminal, problem is a perceptual one “there are folk who think kids kicking a ball around is a crime. Okay, it may be
aggravating but although I’m 80, I remember I was young once and I don’t think it does any of use any harm to forget that we were young and did these things and aggravated adults. We’ve all done our share of that. But crime is when it interferes with people’s lives…I suppose some crimes are more subtle than others, aren’t they?”
Maud Safe indoors. Does not ‘worry’ about crime – in fact concerned she s not
appropriate to interview“I get the feeling I am not being very helpful... But I can honestly say that I don’t
think about this on a day-to-day basis”
Determined not to be intimidated“I object to intimidation, you know, if I think something’s really wrong or it’s really
interfering with my peace of mind or ______ there are certain basic things that we’re all entitled to, aren’t there? I wouldn’t keep quiet about that. I mean I’d complain.”
Expressive fear of crime: “I’m affected by [crime] in that I’m a part of society…. I’m not particularly religious
but if people around me get hurt, I feel for them and I get hurt. …. But I don’t feel that somebody’s coming in to rob me or whatever…. nobody’s broken in here and stolen things from me. I’m affected because I feel a sense of outrage when I read dreadful things. I have a great granddaughter of nine, and she comes to see me. I go down and fetch her because I’m worried about her coming up in the lift on her own… I’m worried about the affect [crime has] on my friends and neighbours and so on, you know, people who concern me…”
Some conclusions… Suggesting – and demonstrating – that public responses to crime and ‘fear of
crime’, involve participants individual evaluations about the broader meaning of crime, place and community, is by no means a simplistic task. Contradictions are inevitable.
Emotional responses to risk are driven by a complex set of assessments of risk. Perceived risk of crime was shown to incorporate more than just lay judgements of likelihood but also judgements of personal control and the possession of vivid and accessible representations of risk.
We believe that it is possible to identify both experiential and expressive components of fear.
1. Experiential fear was characterised as a response to direct external stimuli - in a particular place at a particular time. It can be a frequent and even subtle experience. Meanwhile, the social and cultural meaning of crime was communicated by expressive fear.
2. Expressive fear is located in individuals’ understanding of the social and physical composition of their environment, as well as their sense of vulnerability and wider social values.
