Fear-of-Crime Paradox
Definition
The repeated survey finding that groups reporting the highest fear of crime, commonly older adults and women, are often not the groups facing the statistically highest risk of most crime types.
Related terms
- Lifestyle Exposure Theory
- The theory, set out by Michael Hindelang, Michael Gottfredson and James Garofalo in 1978, that a person's routine daily activities and associations...
- Punitiveness
- Public support for harsher sentencing and tougher criminal justice responses generally, which correlates with fear of crime and victimisation experience but not...
- Shadow Hypothesis
- Kenneth Ferraro's proposal that women's general fear of crime functions partly as a proxy for a more specific fear of sexual assault,...
- Structural Constraints
- In lifestyle exposure theory, the demographic and role-based limits, such as age, sex, income and family status, that shape which lifestyles are...
- Victim-Offender Overlap
- The empirical finding that the same demographic groups, and often the same individuals, show up disproportionately as both victims and offenders, because...