Conversations about Crime, Place, and Community

Abstract

This chapter explores the emotional reactions, cognitions, and connections people make when talking about crime, their environment, and community. It reveals human emotions to be complex, episodic, and dynamic. Thoughts, perceptions, and experiences come and go over time and form an integral part of the evolving order of stimuli, which make up the life-world of the individual. This chapter details the place that the fear of crime takes in the context of people's everyday lives, communities, and important locales. Exploring and presenting participants' in-depth discussion provides a ‘thick’ layer of analysis and uncovers further avenues for consideration. Through the use of qualitative data this chapter not only attends to the kind of interpretative analysis of how people respond and relate to crime, but also contributes to a wider intellectual terrain by refining the broader conceptual framework, developed thus far. This chapter analyses qualitative data arising from two previous ESRC-funded studies that explored public perceptions of crime, community, and fear of crime in two major UK cities — London and Glasgow.