My colleague Paul Richards has started a blog related to his research on crime, mapping and fear. Thinking about ‘fear of crime’ and its various definitions caused me to remember my favourite interpretation from Teresa Caldeira, in her book “City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in Sao Paulo“.

“The talk of crime – that is , everyday conversations, commentaries, discussions, narratives and jokes that have crime and fear as their subject – is contagious. Once one case is described, many others are likely to follow. The talk of crime is also fragmentary and repetitive. It breaks into many exchanges, punctuating them, and repeats the same history, or variations of it, commonly using only a few narrative devices. In spite of the repetition people are never bored. Rather, they seem compelled to keep talking about crime as if the endless analysis of cases could help them cope with their perplexing experiences or the arbitrary and unusual nature of violence. The repetition of histories, however, only serves to reinforce people’s feelings of danger, insecurity, and turmoil. Thus the talk of crime feeds a circle in which fear is both dealt with and reproduced, and violence is both counteracted and magnified” – (Caldiera, 2000 p.19)

Thus fear of crime derives from narratives about crime, much in the same way that place is constructed by narrative, or ‘stories so far’ as per Massey (2005). The suggestion of this kind of interpretation relates to the plural nature of crime and the social construction of fear of crime – it is a constantly revisited and reappraised phenomena.

References

Caldeira, T. (2000) City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in Sao Paulo, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Massey, D. (2005) For Space, Sage, London.