Shadow Hypothesis
Definition
Kenneth Ferraro's proposal that women's general fear of crime functions partly as a proxy for a more specific fear of sexual assault, a risk that standard offence statistics understate because it is measured separately and is itself underreported.
Related terms
- Fear-of-Crime Paradox
- The consistent survey finding that older adults and women report higher fear of crime than young men, despite young men carrying the...
- 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 tracks confidence in institutions more consistently than it tracks fear...
- 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...