Perceptual Fear and Risk of Victimisation

• Author: Derek Chadee and Jason Ditton
• Pages: 653-673

653

PERCEPTUAL FEAR AND RISK OF VICTIMISATION

Perceptual Fear

and Risk of

Victimisation

Derek Chadee and Jason Ditton

Thirty

Fear of crime is defined by Ferraro (1995, 4)

as ‘an emotional response of dread or anxiety

to crime or symbols that a person associates

with crime.’ This is fundamentally a social

psychological concept which has informed

the discipline of criminology (Chadee 2006).

Fear of crime is an under-researched area in

the Caribbean, a gap which this paper seeks

to fill.

This paper looks mainly at findings from

a longitudinal research project on fear of

crime undertaken in Trinidad and conducted

in 1999, 2000 and 2001. This project

consisted of three cross-sectional surveys

with some questions repeated across the

three years and others asked only once. This

paper focuses on findings from fear of crime

and media questions, risk of victimisation

questions and longitudinal results.

MEDIA AND FEAR OF CRIME

Morgan (1983, 146) pointed out that

Gerbner and his associates (Gerbner et al.

1976, 1979, 1980) directed the attention of

researchers to media effects on anxiety and

away from the then current interest in

aggression.1 Two of Gerbner’s works

(Gerbner and Gross 1976, Gerbner et al.

1979) were influential in establishing that

frequent television viewing was associated

with the belief of becoming a crime victim.

Gerbner’s findings were challenged by a

number of authors including Doob and

Macdonald (1979) who argued that the

‘neighbourhood effect’ and sample

demographics moderated the relationship

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CRIME, DELINQUENCY AND JUSTICE

between television viewing and feelings of vulnerability to criminal victimisation.

Hughes (1980, 295) was also critical of Gerbner, noting that Gerbner’s:

hypothesis concerning television watching and the perception of environmental

menace, reverses direction after controls, and while this relationship is not

statistically significant, it suggest that those who watch television heavily are less

likely to be afraid of walking alone at night in their neighborhoods.

The findings are mixed as to the relationship between television viewing and

fear of crime. For example, some authors have found a relationship (Morgan

1983, O’Keefe and Reid-Nash 1987, Gebotys et al. 1988, Sparks and Ogles 1990,

Bazargan 1994, Haghighi and Sorensen 1996, Chiricos et al. 1997, 2000, Lane

and Meeker 2003), and others have not (Gomme 1986, Sacco 1982, Skogan and

Maxfield 1981, O’Keefe 1984).

Sacco (1982, 476) describes a typical lay and common professional

criminological attitude to the relationship between the media and crime:

The argument that mass media exert direct causal effects upon perceptions of

crime possesses a certain intuitive appeal. In general, this position seems to follow

logically from the three widely accepted assumptions upon which it is based.

First, since most people do not have direct personal experience with serious crime,

the major source of public thought and feeling regarding crime must be vicarious

in nature. Second, the mass media of communication are information sources to

which the members of modern society widely attend. Finally, as a number of

researchers have documented, contemporary North American media contain a

substantial proportion of crime-related news and information content.

Findings on the relationship between newspaper reading and the fear of crime

are similar to those on television viewing. Some have found a positive relationship

(Jaehnig et al. 1981, Gordon and Heath 1981, Heath 1984, Gebotys et al. 1988,

Liska and Baccaglini 1990, Winkel and Vrig 1990, Williams and Dickinson 1993,

Haghighi and Sorensen 1996 and Lane and Meeker 2003) and some have not

(Sacco 1982, Skogan and Maxfield 1981, Gomme 1986, O’Keefe and Reid-Nash

1987, Bazargan 1994, Perkins and Taylor 1996 and Chiricos et al. 1997).

Many studies have indicated that crime constitutes a relatively small but

variable percentage of newspaper news. Two reviews are available. Dominick (1978,

108) concludes that ‘a typical metropolitan newspaper probably devotes around

5-10 per cent of its available space to crime news’. A later review of some 36

studies suggests that between 1.6 per cent and 33.5 per cent of newspaper coverage

relates to crime news (Marsh 1991, 73).

Inevitably, different researchers have used different methods, and the

bewildering variety of sampling approaches, sample sizes, measurement techniques

and definitions of what constitutes crime prohibits any definitive quantification

of the amount of crime news in newspapers. Indeed, Reiner (1997, 198) concludes: