Fear of Crime: Analyzing the National Crime Victimization Survey

• Activity Number: 579
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 3, 2011 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Social Statistics Section
• Author(s): Elke Amelie Moons*+
• Companies: Statistics Netherlands
• Keywords: crime victimization survey ; fear of crime ; safety

Abstract

'Fear of crime' recently became an often discussed topic in the criminology literature and it is frequently used by policy-making officials too. However, this 'fear of crime' has become a container concept over the years, so in order to analyze it properly it is necessary to make a distinction between its three different components: the cognitive aspect (i.e. the perceived risk), the affective aspect (i.e. feelings of unsafety) and the behavioral aspect (avoidance, prevention measures). The Dutch Crime Victimization Survey (DCVS) that is carried out on a yearly basis by Statistics Netherlands contains several questions that may help to determine 'fear of crime'. This paper focuses on 'fear of crime' concerning (attempted) burglary. The data are those of the 2009 DCVS. Several statistical techniques are applied to determine whether there exists a difference in the three concepts determining 'fear of crime' on the one hand and on the other hand between individuals that have been victims of (attempted) burglary in the past five years or not. Differences in socio-demographical characteristics between respondents are also accounted for.