NCJ Number
181430
Journal
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology Volume: 32 Issue: 3 Dated: December 1999 Pages: 227-246
Date Published
December 1999
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This article attempts to plot the proliferation of disciplinary and governmental interest in the fear of crime and explain how this interest has effected both the subject of inquiry and the modes of inquiry themselves.
Abstract
Since the 1970s the fear of crime has become an increasingly popular subject of inquiry for criminology, victimology, and other academic disciplines. Scholars have offered explanations from an assortment of theoretical positions for the supposed rise of the crime-fearing individual, the “fearing subject.” Much of this scholarship has focused on the rationality or irrationality of those fears in particular population demographics. This article is somewhat critical of that approach, although it does not call for an end to the study of fear of crime as such. Rather, coming from a genealogical perspective, it attempts to briefly plot the proliferation of disciplinary and governmental interest in the fear of crime in the West and explain how this interest has effected both the subject of inquiry and the modes of inquiry themselves. The article concludes by suggesting that the power effects of the knowledge being amassed on this subject may actually be implicated in the production of fearing subjects. Notes, references