Cognitive Mapping of the City Center: Comparative Perceptions of Dangerous Places (From Crime Mapping and Crime Prevention, P 193-217, 1997, David Weisburd and Tom McEwen, eds. - See NCJ-170277)

• NCJ Number: 170284
• Author(s): G F Rengert; W V Pelfrey Jr
• Date Published: 1997
• Length: 25 pages
• Sale Source: Criminal Justice Press/Willow Tree Press
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter illustrates the disjuncture between crime maps based on official data about crime and those based on perceptions of crime.

Abstract

This study compares the knowledge and perception of relative safety of recruits being trained to patrol central Philadelphia and a control group of students at Temple University with actual locations and safety levels of those neighborhoods to determine which communities were not perceived accurately. Results demonstrate that knowledge of the area did not translate into perceptions of safety. Rather, preconceived notions of the neighborhoods' ethnic composition translated into notions of relative safety. Both minority and non-minority students and community service recruits defined dangerousness in relationship to the proportion of minorities in an area. The paper concludes that these faulty impressions should be corrected before recruits are assigned to serve the central Philadelphia community. Otherwise, the community cooperation so necessary in modern community policing will not be forthcoming and the coproduction of safety between the community and the police will be short-circuited. Tables, figures, references