Abstract
This article investigates different types of fear of crime as predictors for punitive attitudes. Using data from a Germany-wide representative survey (n = 1272) it examines the reliability and validity of survey instruments through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to explain variations in the level of respondents’ punitive attitudes. The results show that different emotional and cognitive responses to crime have a distinctive effect on the formation of punitive attitudes. These effects vary significantly depending on socio-demographic factors and assumed purposes of punishment. A crucial observation of the study is that men’s fear of crime works in a different way in the formation of punitive attitudes than women’s fear of crime. The perceived locus of control for the crime threat is a possible explanation for this difference.
Highlights
This article investigates different types of fear of crime as predictors for punitive attitudes
Social fear of crime is a significant predictor for punitive opinions of men, but not of women
Individual fear of crime is a significant predictor for punitive opinions of women but not for men
Summary
This article investigates different types of fear of crime as predictors for punitive attitudes. The results show that different emotional and cognitive responses to crime have a distinctive effect on the formation of punitive attitudes. These effects vary significantly depending on socio-demographic factors and assumed purposes of punishment. This paper examines the influence of different types of fear of crime on the formation of punitive attitudes in the German population. This study examines in more detail how fear of crime influences punitivity depending on other predictors such as gender, education, age, and assumed purposes of punishment. This study focuses on the former with the intention that its results contribute to more holistic research on punitivity, including its relation with fear of crime at the micro and macro level. As emotions play an important role in criminal justice (Karstedt 2002, Karstedt et al 2011) scholars in criminology have carried out empirical research on the question of how both concepts are interrelated (Baker et al 2015, Costello et al 2009, Qi and Oberwittler 2009, King and Maruna 2009, Kury 2008, Messner et al 2006)
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