NCJ Number
199945
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 20 Issue: 1 Dated: March 2003 Pages: 131-157
Date Published
March 2003
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This study examined whether fear of crime by community residents was shaped by cognitive assessments of the willingness of community residents to help one another.
Abstract
The authors first review the background literature on perceived risk and develop a conceptual argument to link perceived risk with perceived community cohesion. Data for the study were obtained from the 1992 wave of the International Crime Survey (ICS). Similar in structure to the National Crime Victimization Survey in the United States, the ICS is a victimization survey that also solicits information on the perceived risk of victimization, social and demographic characteristics of respondents, and perceived neighborhood characteristics. Data were obtained for respondents from 11 countries. The outcome of interest for this analysis was a measure of perceived risk of victimization. The key independent variable measured a perceptual/cognitive aspect of the respondents' neighborhood environment, i.e., community cohesion. The survey asked respondents whether people in their neighborhood mostly helped each other out or mostly went their own way. The findings provide substantial support for the hypothesis that individuals who perceive their communities to be cohesive express lower levels of perceived risk of criminal victimization in their neighborhoods. 5 tables and 51 references