Fear of crime perceptions of university students

In this research, university students’ perceptions of fear of crime are examined in terms of sex, nationality, living area, marital status, victimisation and disorder. The aim of the research is to observe fear of crime literature’s key parameters on university students. Data was obtained from 330 university students studying in one of the state universities through a survey. Bivariate and multivariate results show that female students experience a greater fear of crime compared to male students. Fear of crime is greater amongst Turkish students as opposed to Turkish Cypriot students. Also, it is found that a high perception of disorder factors has an impact on fear of crime among women. Lastly, this study found that neither direct nor indirect victimisation has an impact on fear of crime.

Enhancing Punishment or Repairing Harms? Perceptions of Sentencing Hate Crimes Amongst Members of a Commonly Targeted Victim Group

This article investigates the attitudes and emotional reactions of LGBT+ people to enhanced sentencing (ES) and restorative justice (RJ) interventions for hate crime. When forced to choose between interventions, our survey (N = 589) found a preference for the use of RJ over ES, which was perceived to be better at reducing reoffending and supporting victims. Nevertheless, the study found greater average levels of support for the use of ES for hate crime, which was predicted by previous experiences of hate crime, perceptions of threat and feelings of anger. An additional experiment (N = 120) revealed RJ, in response to a hate crime, elicited less anger and sadness and higher levels of satisfaction compared with an ES intervention.

Religious perceptions of crime and implications for punitiveness

This study tests the role of crime perceptions in mediating the relationship between religiosity and punitive attitudes about criminal justice. Specifically, we estimate the effects of (a) religious affiliation and (b) fundamentalism on punitiveness and assess mediation by dispositional attribution of crime, perceived rising crime rates, perceived immigrant crime, and fear of violent victimization. Data are from the 2014 wave of the Chapman Survey on American Fears, a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States (N = 1,573). We estimated religious effects on punitiveness using ordinary least squares regression and assessed mediation by crime perceptions with the Karlson-Holm-Breen (KHB) method. Punitiveness was positively associated with Mainline Protestant affiliation (vs. non-religious), Catholic affiliation (vs. non-religious), and fundamentalism (fundamentalism also largely accounted for heightened punitiveness among Evangelical Protestants). Perceptions of crime accounted for about 60% of the effects of religious affiliation on punitiveness and nearly 100% of the effect of fundamentalism. Perceptions of crime as caused by evil or moral failure, belief in rising crime rates, and perceptions of immigrant crime were important to explaining religious effects on punitiveness, while fear of violence was relatively unimportant. These findings illuminate the perceptual mechanisms underlying religious effects on criminal justice attitudes.

Crime perceptions among international leisure tourists in Cape Town

Purpose The main purpose of the study is to determine international leisure tourist perceptions with regard to crime, to assess the influence of demographic factors and to investigate the influence of prior, during and post-visit measures on international leisure tourists’ crime perceptions. Design/methodology/approach A personal intercept interview survey was used to collect the data at popular Cape Town (CT) tourist attractions via structured questionnaires. A generalized linear model was used to statistically assess respondents’ crime-related perceptions. Qualitative data was also generated via individual in-depth interviews, which were conducted among nine international leisure tourists. Findings The study found that international leisure tourists exhibited favorable sentiments regarding crime preparations; general safety information; post-visit crime related perceptions but were less positive about security safety information during their visit. International leisure tourists maintained that crime did not inhibit their activities and was not worse than anticipated during their visit. A majority of tourists indicated that they were not deterred by crime and would revisit CT. Research limitations/implications The research was limited to a single city and to English-speaking international leisure tourists. The study was cross sectional in nature and the number of data collection sites was limited to four of the popular tourist attractions in CT. Practical implications The study showed that a relatively high number of international leisure tourists had either witnessed or experienced crime in CT. Hence, a separate South African Police Service tourism protection unit could be established to help circumvent crime in CT. Originality/value The study used both quantitative and qualitative approaches to provide a comprehensive overview of international leisure tourist crime perceptions, which included prior, during and post-visit measures, of one of the top tourist destinations in the world. Additionally, this study is one of the few recent endeavors to assess the influence of a broad range of demographic and crime-related factors on international leisure tourists’ prior, during and post-visit crime perceptions in an African developing country.

Media and Crime Perceptions: Evidence from Mexico

This article examines whether individuals’ crime perceptions and crime avoidance behavior respond to changes in crime news coverage. I use data from Mexico, where major media groups agreed to reduce coverage of violence in March 2011. Using a unique dataset on national news content and machine learning techniques, I document that after the Agreement, crime news coverage on television, radio, and newspapers decreases relative to the national homicide rate. Using survey data, I find robust evidence that crime perceptions respond to this change in content. After the Agreement, individuals with higher media exposure are less likely to report that they feel insecure and that their country, state, or municipality is insecure, relative to individuals with lower media exposure. Finally, I show that smaller changes on conspicuous consumption and food consumed outside the home accompany these changes in crime perceptions; while I do not find effects on stated crime avoidance behavior. (JEL: D83, K42, L82).

Towards a Place-based Measure of Fear of Crime: A Systematic Review of App-based and Crowdsourcing Approaches

Few researches have considered fear of crime as a context-specific experience. This article promotes a place-based theoretical framework for studying crime perceptions through presenting app-based and crowdsourcing measures of perception of crime and place as a robust methodological framework. A systematic review of published studies that use crowdsourced or app-based measures to explore perceptions of crime was conducted. From the 27 studies that met our inclusion criteria, reported strengths and limitations were synthesized to determine key developments and common issues, illustrated with data from three app-based studies. We found consensus that app-based and crowdsourcing measures of fear of crime capture more precise spatial and temporal data alongside auxiliary information about the individual and the environment. Practical benefits, such as reduced cost of data collection and implementable outputs that are useful to practitioners were also highlighted. However, limitations around sampling biases, generalizability of findings, and the under-representation of certain areas persist.

Biased hate crime perceptions can reveal supremacist sympathies

People may be sympathetic to violent extremism when it serves their own interests. Such support may manifest itself via biased recognition of hate crimes. Psychological surveys were conducted in the wakes of mass shootings in the United States, New Zealand, and the Netherlands (totaln= 2,332), to test whether factors that typically predict endorsement of violent extremism also predict biased hate crime perceptions. Path analyses indicated a consistent pattern of motivated judgment: hate crime perceptions were directly biased by prejudicial attitudes and indirectly biased by an aggrieved sense of disempowerment and White/Christian nationalism. After the shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, disempowerment-fueled anti-Semitism predicted lower perceptions that the gunman was motivated by hatred and prejudice (study 1). After the shootings that occurred at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, disempowerment-fueled Islamoprejudice similarly predicted lower hate crime perceptions (study 2a). Conversely, after the tram shooting in Utrecht, Netherlands (which was perpetrated by a Turkish-born immigrant), disempowerment-fueled Islamoprejudice predicted higher hate crime perceptions (study 2b). Finally, after the Walmart shooting in El Paso, Texas, hate crime perceptions were specifically biased by an ethnonationalist view of Hispanic immigrants as a symbolic (rather than realistic) threat to America; that is, disempowered individuals deemphasized likely hate crimes due to symbolic concerns about cultural supremacy rather than material concerns about jobs or crime (study 3). Altogether, biased hate crime perceptions can be purposive and reveal supremacist sympathies.