Abstract
In victimology, fear of crime is understood as an emotional response to the perceived threat of crime. Fear of crime has been found to be affected by several variables besides local crime rates and personal experiences with victimization. This study examines the relationship between religion and fear of crime, an underexplored topic in the criminological literature. This gap is rather surprising given the central role religion has been found to play in shaping the attitudes and perceptions of congregants. In particular, religion has been found to foster generalized trust, which should engender lower levels of distrust or misanthropy, including that which is directed towards a general fear of crime. OLS regression was performed using data from the West Georgia Area Survey (n = 380). Controlling for demographic, community involvement, and political ideology variables, frequency of religious attendance was significantly and negatively associated with fear of property crime. This relationship remained even after a perceived neighborhood safety variable was introduced to the model. However, religious attendance was not significantly related to fear of violent crime, and religious orientation was unrelated to fear of property and violent crime. These results suggest that religious involvement conditionally reduces fear of crime, and the authors recommend that future research explore relationships between religion and fear of crime.
Highlights
In victimology, fear of crime is understood as an emotional response to the perceived threat of crime
The West Georgia Area Survey (WGAS) was designed to follow from decades-long studies like the General Social Survey (National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago), the Houston
The current study offers preliminary evidence that religious involvement can reduce fear of crime, though not necessarily in the expected direction
Summary
Ferraro and LaGrange defined fear of crime as ―an emotional response of dread or anxiety to crime or symbols that a person associates with crime‖ [3]. For example, may perceive high risk of crime but not be highly afraid of it [5] These concepts should not be confused with general concern over crime [5], which has more to do with recognition of crime as a social problem. That religiosity is an important factor of public perceptions of criminal behavior in that the strength of religious belief is positively related to punitive and morally indignant responses to crime [10] It appears that more religious persons may have more ―tough on crime‖ attitudes, but how fearful do they tend to be of crime? Aside from being too few, religion was not the focus of prior studies and they used dated or questionable measures of fear of crime, such as those noted in the review above
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