Everyday Emotion and the Fear of Crime: Preliminary Findings from Experience and Expression

Abstract

This Working Paper - the first a series of discussion papers drafted under the auspices of an ESRC research grant (RES 000231108) - outlines our approach to a rather thorny set of conceptual and methodological issues relating to fear of crime research. We come at the topic from a quantitative/crime survey perspective. However, we use qualitative data from our previous studies and others' reports of ethnographies, diary studies and the such, to inform and support the arguments that we wish to make. We start with the concern that standard research tools have exaggerated public experience of the fear of crime. We outline findings from three studies which cumulatively suggest that criminologists have been rather naïve in capturing everyday emotions about crime. Failing to appreciate their complexity, antecedents and effects; failing to contextualise worries with other day-to-day concerns; asking rather blunt questions 'How worried are you' - all this may have led to over-estimations of the impact of worry about crime on peoples' everyday lives.

Keywords: Fear of Crime, Methodology, Everyday Emotions, Criminology

JEL Classification: I18, I31, I38