Contextual and multifactorial influence on perception of safety from crime among selected Malaysians

Despite official crime figures showing a continuous decline in the rate of crime, the perception of the high level of crime by many Malaysians suggests other factors are affecting their perception of safety from crime. The objective of this study is to identify and understand these factors through a qualitative study that employs online focus group discussions. This study argues that the perception of safety from crime is the result of interactions of a number of factors such as the experience of victimisation, crime information, neighbourhood conditions as well as the perception of law enforcement and government crime reduction policy. The sense of safety from crime is also contextual as it may fluctuate according to time, place, activities and situations. Analysis of the data from the focus group discussions found that participants generally have a high perception of safety from crime. However, participants felt less safe when they were in public places and when interacting with online services. In most circumstances, participants' sense of safety is affected by the pressure to be vigilant and to avoid criminal victimisation. This pressure is exacerbated by low-quality information on crime that is often received through social media. Crime information on social media has a significant impact on participants’ perceptions of crime. The overall analysis of the findings suggests that the most important factor which affects the perception of safety from crime among these selected Malaysians is their sense of safety in their homes and their neighbourhood. Hence, efforts to increase the sense of safety among Malaysians should focus on this context.

Perceptions of Crime Seriousness and Punitive Attitudes in Post-Secondary Students

Public perceptions of crime seriousness and attitudes towards the punishment of crime stem from the social norms and values that shape society and are informed by ways of knowing about crime. Located within a social constructionist paradigm, the purpose of this study was to examine the influence of post-secondary education, crime type and crime representation on perceptions of crime severity and punitive attitudes for different crime types. A sample of 971 students from the University of Winnipeg completed an online questionnaire measuring perceptions of crime severity for one-line crime descriptions as well as crime scenarios based on actual court data. Results show that both wrongfulness and harmfulness are strong predictors of perceived seriousness. As predicted, violent crimes ranked highest on measures of seriousness, wrongfulness, and harmfulness, and received the most severe sentencing recommendations. While the level of education completed had no significant difference on perceptions of crime severity, differences between fields of study showed significance. Comparisons between responses to the one-line crime descriptions and the crime scenarios revealed significantly stronger severity ratings for the scenarios than for the one-line descriptions although the ranking of crimes remained similar. Findings suggest that universal notions of wrongfulness and harmfulness exist that influence perceptions of seriousness and are resistant to change. Perceptions towards crimes are informed by a socially constructed reality of crime that shapes our knowledge of crime. Understanding the underlying factors that influence perceptions and attitudes towards crime may shed new light on the social approaches to dealing with crime and provides new insights into crime control practices and government crime policy. Finally, results also emphasize the importance of reflecting on the matter of crime representation in academic research.

Religious perceptions of crime and implications for punitiveness

This study tests the role of crime perceptions in mediating the relationship between religiosity and punitive attitudes about criminal justice. Specifically, we estimate the effects of (a) religious affiliation and (b) fundamentalism on punitiveness and assess mediation by dispositional attribution of crime, perceived rising crime rates, perceived immigrant crime, and fear of violent victimization. Data are from the 2014 wave of the Chapman Survey on American Fears, a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States (N = 1,573). We estimated religious effects on punitiveness using ordinary least squares regression and assessed mediation by crime perceptions with the Karlson-Holm-Breen (KHB) method. Punitiveness was positively associated with Mainline Protestant affiliation (vs. non-religious), Catholic affiliation (vs. non-religious), and fundamentalism (fundamentalism also largely accounted for heightened punitiveness among Evangelical Protestants). Perceptions of crime accounted for about 60% of the effects of religious affiliation on punitiveness and nearly 100% of the effect of fundamentalism. Perceptions of crime as caused by evil or moral failure, belief in rising crime rates, and perceptions of immigrant crime were important to explaining religious effects on punitiveness, while fear of violence was relatively unimportant. These findings illuminate the perceptual mechanisms underlying religious effects on criminal justice attitudes.

Towards a Place-based Measure of Fear of Crime: A Systematic Review of App-based and Crowdsourcing Approaches

Few researches have considered fear of crime as a context-specific experience. This article promotes a place-based theoretical framework for studying crime perceptions through presenting app-based and crowdsourcing measures of perception of crime and place as a robust methodological framework. A systematic review of published studies that use crowdsourced or app-based measures to explore perceptions of crime was conducted. From the 27 studies that met our inclusion criteria, reported strengths and limitations were synthesized to determine key developments and common issues, illustrated with data from three app-based studies. We found consensus that app-based and crowdsourcing measures of fear of crime capture more precise spatial and temporal data alongside auxiliary information about the individual and the environment. Practical benefits, such as reduced cost of data collection and implementable outputs that are useful to practitioners were also highlighted. However, limitations around sampling biases, generalizability of findings, and the under-representation of certain areas persist.

The Supervision of Guilty Pleas by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales – Workable Relationships and Tragic Choices

The judgments of criminal appeal courts are an example of Calabresi and Bobbitt’s concept of ‘tragic choice’. Judges justify convictions by reference to the values which they attribute to criminal procedures: fairness, truth and rights, rather than the full range of considerations which have influenced the introduction of those procedures: cost, efficiency, crime control, public perceptions of crime, etc. The difficulties facing the Court of Appeal in justifying convictions by juries after a full trial are multiplied in the case of convictions following guilty pleas. A procedure which on its face is less capable of identifying guilt than a trial, has to be defended on the basis that it is overwhelmingly more capable of identifying guilt (or so fair as to justify disregarding the possibility of innocence). Recent changes to the plea system restricting maximum sentence discounts to pleas made at the earliest opportunity further distance guilty pleas from the protections afforded by trial, and compound the difficulties in justifying these convictions as ‘safe’. With guilty pleas we have reached a situation where the Court of Appeal seems unable to provide a remedy for miscarriages, but instead, like the judges of the 19th century opposing the creation of the Criminal Court of Appeal, claims the procedure is so safe that there is little or no need for review, even in cases of procedural irregularity (short of abuse of process) or new evidence (short of exoneration).

Functional and dysfunctional fear of crime in inner Sydney: Findings from the quantitative component of a mixed-methods study

This article presents the quantitative findings from a mixed-method study of perceptions of crime in inner Sydney. A survey was deployed via Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview on a randomly selected sample of the inner Sydney population ( n = 409). We find that less than half of the participants worry about crime but that a sizable minority (13%) indicated that they have some worry about a category of crime every week of the year or more. Building on a recent conceptual advance, we differentiate between functional and dysfunctional fear of crime. We find that greater direct and indirect experience of victimisation, believing one’s neighbourhood to be disorderly, and believing that collective efficacy is low, all predict moving up the scale from no worry, to functional fear, to increasingly frequent dysfunctional fear. The findings suggest gender and age are largely unrelated to worry about crime, controlling for perceptions of community disorder, perceptions of collective efficacy, direct victimisation experience and indirect victimisation experience. We conclude with some thoughts on the role of environmental cues in shifting people’s functional response to perceived risk to dysfunctional patterning of emotions in people’s daily lives.

Fear of the Unknown: Examining Neighborhood Stigma’s Effect on Urban Greenway Use and Surrounding Communities

Neighborhood stigma, founded on the idea that individuals avoid and denigrate spaces occupied by residents of color due to perceptions of crime and disorder, can influence travel patterns, impact housing markets, and exacerbate social and environmental justice issues. As a proliferation of urban greenways connecting once stratified communities, such stigma may also influence recreation behaviors. Using a series of observations and interviews with users and local residents, this study examined the impact of neighborhood stigma on recreational use of Chicago’s 606 Trail and surrounding communities. Results revealed why stigma occurs, how it manifests, and how different groups (e.g., White vs. Latinx residents) respond. Specifically, neighborhood stigma led White users to avoid trail segments, fueled discrimination, and catalyzed redevelop efforts in neighborhoods in the stigmatized area. This study illuminates concerns about the social impacts of urban park projects and provides insight for city officials looking to integrate greenways into diverse communities.