Post-emotional man and a community safety with feeling

Abstract

This article focuses on the affective dimensions of crime and victimisation. Presupposing that human emotion is important generally in understanding social relations, it operates at two levels. At one level it explores potentially complementary approaches to the study of human emotion in criminological, victimological and community safety research and theory. Flowing from these ideas, I suggest that the subjective, embodied and experiential aspects of doing crime and surviving victimisation are crucial in the search for secure and compassionate communities. Examples of emotions that have the potential to stimulate both negative and positive motivations and actions are considered. At this level the article considers human emotion and feeling as a prominent policy concern. While acknowledging the difficulties in the struggle to establish compassionate communities, the importance of cultivating emotions that are likely to enhance safety and promote security, emotions based on empathy and compassion for others are explored. Arguing that gender-sensitive emotions particularly matter to crime prevention and community safety endeavours, this article contributes to a more developed criminological sociology of emotions.