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Fear of Crime: Beyond a Geography of Deviance

Criminological research has always embraced the spatial perspective. A geographical dimension pervades most major trends in the study of deviance, from Europe's nineteenth-century 'cartographic' criminologists through Chicago's early twentiethcentury ecologists to the 'environmental criminologists' of the present day (these schools of thought are variously reviewed in Davidson, 1981; Herbert, 1982; Smith, 1986a). Only recently, however, have the effects of crime been recognized as significant in their own right (demente and Kleiman, 1977), and the challenge of assessing a 'geography' of fear must now be confronted (see Smith, 1984a, for some preliminary observations). The significance of fear as an issue distinct from (as well as related to) the problem of crime first emerged from analyses of the United States' National Crime Survey (NCS) (see Biderman et al, 1967; Ennis, 1967; Reiss, 1967). The NCS is a sample survey administered regularly since the mid-1960s to elicit people's experi­ ences of, and attitudes towards, crime. During the 1970s, many countries followed the lead of the USA and instituted their own national surveys. The British Crime Survey (DCS), however, which evinces increasing sensitivity to the salience of fear, came much later, and only two sweeps (in 1982 and 1984) have so far been completed. Based on the new evidence this brings to light, and on the new research the advent of the crime survey has prompted, this paper offers both a general assessment of key conceptual issues in the analysis of fear, and a comparison of recent British studies with their longer-established North American equivalents. The aim, therefore, is both to review the literature and to fill a conspicuous gap in it, by setting an emerging body of British experience in its international context, and by illuminating the contribution of a geographical perspective with its emphasis on neighbourhood, community and the spatial organization of social relations to an understanding of the fear of crime.