Since the 1960s the fear of crime has created dominant parts of the criminological landscape and it has also created a major role in crime policy. Over the past half-century there has been an increasing concern internationally when it comes to the fear of crime. Ferraro (1995) says that the definition of fear of crime is simply ‘an emotional response of dread or anxiety to crime or symbols that a person associates with crime’. Talking about fear of crime raises questions like ‘what does it mean’, ‘how do you measure it’ and ‘how does it start’.
Fear of crime is so important that about 300 scholarly books and articles base their focus on it also ‘one of the strongest reasons to study fear of crime is the impact it has on the quality of life or what Conklin (1975) calls the indirect cost of crime in society. ‘Findings from the 2003/04 BCS showed that two key factors associated with increased levels of worry about crime are believing that they are likely to become victims of crime in the coming year, and perceiving there to be high levels of physical disorder in their area’.
The British Crime Survey (BCS) indicates 84% of people in England and Wales think crime has risen nationally despite the fact that overall rates of crimes are falling and statistics like these are what creates fear in people when it comes to crime and ‘Fear of crime has consequences beyond a deep-seated sense of personal anxiety’ (hale, 1996:1). In this essay I will be talking about media and focusing on the television aspect of it and its impacts on the fear of crime.
The mass media ‘are diversified media technologies that are intended to reach a large audience by mass communication’. Mass media constantly surrounds us; it informs us as well as misinforms us as ‘Gerbner & Gross (1976) suggest that mass media mainstreams us into a common reality. Mass media includes radios , televisions , newspapers cables and so on , everyone agrees that we are all affected one way or the other by mass media but the main debate is usually between if it affects its audience positively or negatively.
Gerbner and Gross put forward the view that ‘television is the cultural arm of American society and it represents an agency of the established order and by doing so its aim is to extend and maintain rather than alter, threaten, or weaken conventional concepts, beliefs and behaviours’. In television world there is said to be more violence than there is in the real world and it is said that the TV world increases fear amongst its viewers.
Annenberg public olicy centre at the university of Pennsylvania conducted a study comparing annual changes in the amount of violence portrayed on popular primetime dramas from the early 70s through 2010 and the study shows that “Incidents of TV violence on broadcast television have increased since the late 1990s and has the public’s fear of crime, the study also says that its findings suggest that TV drama may “transport” viewers emotionally into the imagined world of TV shows in a way that creates fear of crime beyond the influence of the national violent crime rate or the reported perception of local crime”.
For example programmes like ‘crime watch’ on BBC one, the show features around three to four cases and each case has its own reconstruction of the crime, they usually show the audience key evidence from the crimes, the show also has a CCTV section, where they show cctv footage/reports of different crimes with enhanced imagery of suspects that the police are trying to get hold of, pictures on screens of suspects are also included.
Viewers can also contact crime watch by phoning or texting to help the detectives in solving the crimes, if they have any information on any image or footage they have viewed. The show tends to frighten people and create fear in them most especially if the viewer watching the show happens to live in the area highlighted as an area to be careful of due to high risks of crime, ‘fear of crime fractures a sense of community and neighbourhood and it transforms some places into no-go areas’ (Morgan, 1978; Wilson, 1975).
Another example is the series ‘criminal minds’ , criminal minds has been said to portray intensely ‘violent and sinister depictions’ of crime ,’ In many episodes women and children are seen being abducted against their will, kept hostage in appalling conditions, and the barbaric actions of killers who torture and murder their victims are often depicted’.
For example in one of its season finales one of the scenes show people being shot at and killed randomly in some sort of shooting spree throughout the city of new York, these programmes tend to be aired on screen repeatedly during the day and due to this it allows fiction of crime and reality of crime to be very similar, therefore creating fear even when not necessary.
To show how extreme these shows can be , Jason Gideon The leader of the FBI’s Behavioural Analysis Unit on Criminal Minds, Jason Gideon, decided to leave the show after two seasons due to the show revolving around familiarity of what could be called dark scenarios, ‘a stance written to appear almost as ‘art imitating life’.
Watching crime dramas on the television is said to have a huge influence on peoples fear of crimes, crime dramas tend to exaggerate crime , it does not just portray crime as negative but rather it extends it and in the process it increases fear of crime and it affects everyone in the community , ‘elderly people especially may become virtual prisoners in their own homes (Skogan and Maxfield, 1981) , ‘there is also considerable evidence to suggest that women are more likely to restrict their behaviour because of crime (maxfield,1981), these few examples simply show how widely media in the form of television affects its audience and creates a fear of crime in the audience either it be a young or the elderly , female or male and so on.
Although on the other hand some researchers could not seem to discover the link between watching television and fear of crime especially after considering other demographics such as age , education , income and so on , these demographics are said to be the real correlation between fear of crime , demographic factors are said to influence fear of crime and that they are better than the media in terms of explaining fear of crime, for example women are said to be more afraid of crime as well as elderly people , also these demographics is what determines how the audience take in information from things like crime drama and how it relates to their fear or non-fear of crime. Additionally Home Office statisticians state that ‘the increase in people’s fear of crime could be due to changes in the way the survey had been conducted’.
The view of the correlation between fear of crime and television viewing has been seen as a simplistic analysis of data, Some have also put forward the view that fear of crime and TV viewings link is only present for those who have a belief of television which Potter names as the ‘magic window’ showing a belief that TV apparently shows the world as it really is. It is also said that for some watching crime dramas on television, helps them cope with their fear of crime, it is said to be some sort of calming or coping mechanisms of dealing with fear of crime, Because they see the dramas are being acted, so rather than television adding to their fear of crime, it actually reduces their fear of crime.
‘Other researchers found that the relationship to fear of crime in TV viewing was related to ‘the world out there ‘rather than to the local areas or neighbourhoods (Coleman, 1993) The correlation between the media in form of television viewing and its impact on the fear of crime is ery complicated because it is said that other factors play an important role on peoples fear of crime for example the type of programme on the TV that is being watched, it could be the news or it could be a TV series, it could be the reliance of the viewer on what they take in, how apprehensive the viewer is even before viewing and so on.
Although some people disagree and say fear of crime in people increases when watching crime related things on the TV, it has been noted that television crime drama is noticeably violent and because most people do not have a direct experience of crime and they see it on television so they tend to believe what they see even if it might be exaggerated , or in the case of crime news when it is being reported they tend to be very selective and really want to portray to the viewers and terrible the crime is , creating fear of crime for the viewers.
Medias impact on fear of crime could also be positive rather than negative , because some TV shows on crime teach and help people on how to take safety precautions for example lock the doors, close the window and so on but on the other hand extreme fear could have its negative effects on people for example it could affect people emotionally causing them to isolate themselves, causing them to feel vulnerable , it could be very expensive as well because there are so many adverts on the television of new products and ways to prevent crime and these could be quite expensive because e a lot of people are now trying to invest in their safety due to fear of crime ,they may even refuse to leave the house and stay indoors more than they should. Fear of crime could also cause negative things like increasing social division for example between the rich and the poor, those who can afford private security measures and for those who cannot afford private security measures.
In conclusion people in general believe that crime is a national problem and there is an increase in crime, despite the fact that crime trends are actually declining and this is due to mass media and how they portray crime and in this case, television and how it portrays crime, fear of crime is encouraged by the display of violent programmes on prime time television and also by the exaggeration of crime on television news.
However despite these proofs of link between television and how it cultivates fear of crime a lot of people still disagree and believe that television in form of media does not have direct correlation with fear of crime, they also go on further to say that even if television has a direct link there are other orms of media that are more powerful in creating or taking away fear from its audiences, some also consider other important factors of how audiences receive crime information from the television and base that on how fear of crime increases or reduces.
For example demographic factors age, gender and so on. Older people are more likely to watch crime news and have fear instilled in them whilst younger people might have fear instilled in them but not as much as older people , also women tend to be more scared of crime compared to men due to men stereotypically being ‘hard’ , ‘macho’, ‘dominant’ and so on. So media plays a big role and has a big impact on fear of crime, but there are other factors that affect fear of crime apart from the media and even under the media some forms of media are said to affect fear of crime more than others.
