Gangs of Chicago: Perceptions of Crime and its Effect on the Recreation Behavior of Latino Residents in Urban Communities

Although crime and the fear of crime affect both the men and women who live in cities, women are especially affected. In numerous studies they express significantly higher levels of fear than men. For example, according to a 1972 national poll,1 over half the women surveyed, compared with 20 percent of the men, said they were afraid to walk in their neighborhoods at night. The proportion of women reporting such feelings has grown in recent years.2 Accompanying this fear may be an increased use of certain safety precautions, such as staying home at night or avoiding certain parts of the city. This results in what Biderman3 has called "foregone opportunities." Beyond serving as means of protection for women, such restrictions may serve as instruments of social control. Feminist analyses of one crime, rape, have made this point eloquently:

A community needs assessment was conducted to explore barriers and facilitators to good physical and mental health among Cambodian and Latino residents in an urban community in Southern California. Thirty-six Cambodians and 29 Latinos completed the interviewer-facilitated survey administered door-to-door, and another 20 Cambodian and 18 Latino residents participated in focus groups. Crime, limited knowledge of positive health behaviors, lack of access to affordable healthcare, and lack of access to safe spaces for recreational activities were identified as threats to good health. Participant recommendations to support health in the community included increasing police presence to improve safety and reduce violence, and increasing opportunities/locations for physical exercise. While differences between Cambodian and Latino residents exist, the identified threats and suggested improvements were primarily associated with environmental factors, highlighting the need for systems level approaches that recognize the relationship between community context and health.

Over the last decade, influenced by various political, economical, and social changes, human security issues have become relevant topics at the global, national, and local level. In the present article, we were interested in how the fear of crime and perceptions of crime and substance abuse in the local area were associated with subjective well-being. The survey was conducted in November 2008 through face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of Croatian citizens (N = 4,000). Fear of crime was assessed by feelings of safety in three specific situations at night (in neighborhood streets, at home, and in public transport). Additionally, perceptions of the prevalence of different types of crime and substance abuse (corruption, minor crime, violent crime, delinquency, domestic abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse) in the local area were measured. Overall life satisfaction was used as well-being measure. Measures of various demographic variables were also included in the analyses (i.e., age, gender, income, education level), as well as the objective measures of urbanization level and crime rates in the counties where participants live. In accordance with previous findings, results showed relatively little association of most demographic characteristics with fear and perception of crime and substance abuse. The urbanization level and crime rates were positively related to both fear and perceptions of crime. Living in more urbanized areas and higher crime rates were associated with higher fear of crime and greater perception of all types of crime as problems. While controlling for demographic variables and objective measures of local conditions, better life satisfaction was significantly but weakly predicted by higher feelings of safety and by lower perceptions of corruption in the local area.

This paper examined the relationship between “actual crime” and “fear of crime” based on police archival crime data and door-to-door survey on 44 face blocks in Lansing, Michigan USA. Statistical analysis showed that the residents' perception of crime is somewhat reflection of the actual crime rate. However, our main interest is on the variance of perceived crime which are not explained by the “actual crime”. The variance can be mainly explained by sense of community and income. Other variables such as demographics (except income), physical layout, land-use were not significant predictors of the residual. Rich, neighboring communities have less fear of crime than one might expect from the block's real crime rate. Poor and disintegrated urban neighborhoods are more likely to suffer from unwarranted fear of crime. Practical implications are as follows. First, the perceptions of crime need to be taken seriously by both public servants and NGO activists. Second, residents should be aware of their right to be informed on actual crime rates in their neighborhoods from comparative point of view. Deprivation of information on the part of residents may negatively affect the reflexive social meaning attached to their own neighborhoods. Third, building up sense of community is the appropriate measure for “self-barricading neighborhoods out of exaggerated fear of crime.” Sense of community may be related to the birth of “preventive community.”

Neighborhood characteristics impact residents’ fear of crime. Empirical research supports these ideas, but the majority of these studies are based on residents of a single city. The relationship between social control, disorder, perceptions of crime, and residents’ fear of crime has not been fully explored across multiple cities. The current study examines the relationship between residents’ perceptions of neighborhood safety, disorder, and social control using survey data from residents across three cities in the United States. The findings suggest that shared expectations lead to decreased fear, while increased levels of social disorder lead to a greater fear of crime across each of the three cities. Other factors, including perceptions of crime, exposure to victimization, and demographic characteristics are not consistently related to the fear of crime. This suggests the structural impact of city factors, or increases in disorder and crime, might be influencing the perceptions of risk and constrained behaviors of residents.

This is the first study to examine adult offenders’ fear of property, personal, and gang crime. We examine five research questions among 2,414 jail inmates, focusing on how afraid offenders are of crime. We compare current, ex-gang, and non-gang members. We ask if more experience with crime perpetration and victimization and more perceptions of social disorganization increase offenders’ fear of crime. Finally, we ask if the importance of these factors in predicting fear varies by gang status. Results show that offenders, generally, were not very afraid of crime. Although ex-gang and current gang members believed they were more likely to experience property, personal, and gang crime, they reported less fear than non-gang members. Crime perpetration did not influence offenders’ fear, but less experience with personal crime victimization predicted fear of personal and gang crime among non-gang members. The results also indicate that perceptions of social disorganization better explain fear among non-gang members than ex-gang and current gang members.

A study of traffic pattern modifications in an urban crime prevention program

The study of public perceptions and reactions towards crime has become prominent in the criminology of ‘fear of crime’ since the 1980s. As Smith suggested in one of the early formulations of the concept, fear of crime broadly refers to ‘an emotional response to a threat: an admission to self and others that crime is intimidating; and an expression of one’s sense of danger and anxiety at the prospect of being harmed’ (Smith, 1987: 2). There is now a rich tradition in criminology that typically revolves aroundthe study of the prevalence, distribution and multifaceted meanings and experiences of crime fears as being related to ‘people’ (e.g., the socio-demographics, social relations and identities of people with crime concerns), ‘places’ (e.g., spatial or structural contextual conditions that shape crime concerns), or ‘problems’ (e.g., social exclusion, unemployment, poverty, environmental planning) (Innes, 2014: 5-6; see also Pain, 2000). In societies where high levels of crime have become a routine social fact (Skogan, 1990; Garland, 2001; Farrall et al., 2009), public concerns about crime may spur moral panics signalling wider anxieties about social order, underscoring boundaries of ‘us’ (respectable, law-abiding society) versus ‘them’ (the criminals, social deviants) (Cohen, 2002 [1972]; Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009). In many Anglo-Western societies such as the USA and the UK, fears tend to focus on stereotypical ‘others’ on the margins of society whose presence threatens mainstream life and values. As Garland (1996: 461) has pointed out in relation to ‘criminologies of the other’, the association of danger with the ‘threatening outcast, the fearsome stranger, the excluded and the embittered’, is also invoked by politicians to ‘govern through’ the fear of crime (Simon, 2007; see also Roberts et al., 2003). To what extent can these criminological insights help us make sense of social reactions to crime and public sentiments about safety in low-crime societies beyond Anglo-Western contexts? This chapter examines public perceptions of crime and disorder in HongKong. Hong Kong has consistently been described as one of the safest cities inthe world and was ranked 11th out of 50 global cities in terms of overall safety in the 2015 The Economist Safe Cities Index (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2015). According to official figures, Hong Kong’s crime rate per 100,000 population in 2012 was 1,061. ‘Though higher than that of Singapore (584), the figure was lower than those of Paris (10,455), London (9,500), New York (2,361) and Tokyo (1,387). This indicate[s] that the overall law and order situation in Hong Kong [is] rather good when compared with other major cities’ (Hong Kong Police press release, 28 January 2014, ‘Overall law and order situation further improved in 2013’). On the surface, Hong Kong does not exhibit the conventional signs of disorder which may point to crime and social decline central to the oft-cited ‘broken window thesis’ in other high-crime societies (cf. Wilson and Kelling, 1982). There are ‘very few outward signs of grave physical disorder such as public drinking and vandalism. In Hong Kong, people do not write on the walls or drink in public’ (La Grange, 2011: 1190). Against this background, the subject of fear of crime has been ‘virtually unexplored’ in Hong Kong (Chui et al., 2012: 479). So what do people in Hong Kong actually think and feel about crime and disorder? Do they feel safe, and if not, why not? This chapter aims at providing some pointers to researchers and studentsinterested in understanding public perceptions about crime as a social issue. Our starting point is that public sentiments and perceptions about safety are not a simple correlate of overall crime levels and aggregate crime rates. Instead, people’s sense of security is influenced by crime as well as what they perceive as troubling behaviours and disorderly environments that send ‘signals’ (Innes, 2004, 2014) to them about the distribution of risks and threats in particular locales. Furthermore, people’s fear of crime is multifaceted, changeable, and embedded in the local details of individuals’ circumstances and everyday experiences in their neighbourhood and beyond. As Pain (2000: 368) suggests, ‘we all move in and out of shades of fear over our life courses, influenced by our own experiences and by spatial, social and temporal situation’. In the rest of this chapter, we provide a brief review of the existing (largely quantitative) studies of crime victimisation and public perceptions of safety in Hong Kong. We then draw on the findings of our focus group study on fear of crime in Hong Kong in order to understand what citizens think and feel about dangerous ‘others’ and anti-social behaviour through their ‘crime talk’ (Sasson, 1995). We conclude by highlighting the potential of the ‘signal crimes perspective’ (Innes, 2014) in providing new directions for understanding the situated and local nature of people’s crime fears and perceptions of safety in Hong Kong.

Perception of safety has been reported as a factor that can impact the walking behaviour of older adults. This paper aimed to investigate the association between the Perception of crime, traffic and walking behaviour of older adults in a small city in China. The subjective method of the questionnaire was used to collect the data on Perception of traffic, crime and walking activities in ChenZhou. The multiple regression analysis methods was used to test the relationship between the perception of traffic, perception of crime and walking activities of seniors. The result showed that perception of traffic was positively related to total walking and recreational walking. In contrast, perception of crime was found to be negatively associated with recreational walking, even though the correlations were very weak. No relationship was found between transportation walking and safety. And there was no relationship between perception of crime and total walking behaviour. Although the result of this study demonstrated that there was a weak positive relationship between safety and walking of seniors, it still cannot ignore the perception of traffic as it was an essential factor in increasing the total walking and recreational walking. And perception of crime can decrease recreational walking.

Individuals’ fear of crime exhibits a complex spatial relationship with not just actual crime incidents , but a mix of actual crime, perceptions of crime, neighborhood disorder , and collective efficacy . If people have a high fear of crime, they may be more likely to report suspicious or criminal activities to the police . The fear of crime individuals maintain is most often directly linked to the fear of violent crime ; however, a spatially explicit examination of the impact of violent crime calls for service to police officers, neighborhood disorder and collective efficacy on the fear of crime is still needed. In the current study, we examine the relationship among all of these factors using measures of spatial correlation and spatial regression . While the reactive policing strategy of responding to calls for service is more cost-effective than community policing , targeted proactive strategies might be more useful for long-term crime prevention . Our findings illustrate the potential of spatial analysis in informing policing strategies, by highlighting variation in the spatial relationships between fear of crime, violent crime incidents, collective efficacy, and neighborhood disorder. Using the results of this type of analysis can lead to a better use of police resources to avert crime.

Ensuring safety during door-to-door public transport trips is a fundamental challenge to service providers, as safety influences individuals’ mobility. Using reported safety perceptions of travelers waiting at six bus stops with different characteristics in Stockholm, this study investigates factors that have an impact on determining travelers’ perceived safety and crime perceptions. This is done by assessing the importance of real-time information provision and the environmental characteristics of bus stops during the day and at night for different types of crime, after controlling for travelers’ individual and trip characteristics, and their previous experiences of victimization. Interaction effects of age, gender, and travel frequency are also tested. The results suggest that bus shelter characteristics, natural surveillance, and trustworthy real-time information are the most important factors influencing safety and crime perceptions. Additionally, safety perceptions are strongly influenced by previous experiences of victimization. The effect of perceived feelings about crime and safety are found to be nuanced by age and gender. Unlike some common beliefs, travelers: (1) feel less worried about becoming a victim of crime at bus stops associated with high crime rates; (2) prefer opaque shelters at night; and (3) have higher safety perceptions when the stop is located in an area of mixed land use. The impact of a bus stop’s number of passers-by is found to be insignificant. No direct or indirect effects can be attributed to frequency of travel by bus, indicating that familiar places and routine behavior have no effect on declared crime and safety perceptions.

Daytime and nighttime PM2.5 samples were collected from an urban community in Tianjin. The major chemical components in PM2.5, including metal elements, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and inorganic water-soluble ions, were monitored. A positive matrix factorization (PMF) model was used to apportion the potential sources of PM2.5 under different weather conditions. When the Air Quality Index (AQI) was below 200, the concentrations of BaA, BbF, BkF, Na and NO3- during the nighttime were higher than those during the daytime. PMF analysis indicated that secondary aerosols (37.3%), biomass burning (26.7%) and coal combustion (26.0%) were important sources of PM2.5 in the urban residential community when the AQI was greater than 200. When the AQI was less than 200 in the urban residential community, the main sources of PM2.5 in the urban residential community were secondary aerosols (50.7%) and fossil fuel combustion (47.2%). The pollution status of PM2.5 in the residential community of the urban area was serious, and the source apportionments of the PM2.5 samples in the urban area were different under different weather conditions.

Fear, crime, and space: The case of Viçosa, Brazil

This study was initiated at the request of city police department officials to determine if fear of crime is influenced by actual crime occurring within communities. Police officials were interested in understanding community members’ perceptions of crime in the locality in order to effectively focus police efforts and services. Findings suggest residents’ fear of drug crimes and burglary are in line with levels of actual crime in the city, while low levels of fear of auto-related crimes are not consistent with actual crime in this locality. The fear of crime/risk paradox does not appear to be strongly evident in this locality. Interestingly, men reported higher levels of fear than women. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Even though the study of urban sociology in China is just a beginning, it doesn’t mean that urban social problems in China are new or simple. As a very sensitive field, urban residential community has not been deeply analysed before owing to various reasons. This article tries to start with the background of China’s social development and analyse the pattern, essence and evolution direction of China’s urban residential community which is in the course of transfer of social pattern. This article first analyzes the functional mechanism of seven main elements affecting Chinese urban residential community in the course of transfer of social pattern. Some of the elements come into being under the social economic background, with Chinese characteristics, and have a profound influence on urban residential community. Based on that, the author then respectively infers the evolution of four main patterns of urban residential communities in China now. Finally, it puts forward the basic principles of urban community development in the current transfer period in China, and with a development eyesight, it makes a summary of the general characteristics of the Chinese urban residential community in the future.