More Problems, More Fear

People react differently to becoming a victim of crime when they live in disadvantaged neighborhoods: Their fear of crime increases more strongly compared to victims from privileged neighborhoods. This is the finding of a study involving over 3,000 participants from the German cities of Cologne and Essen, conducted by Florian Kaiser and Dietrich Oberwittler from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg, Germany. It has long been established in criminological research that a person's fear of crime rises after a victim experience. But what influence does their living environment have on this effect? This was the question pursued by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law, when they repeatedly surveyed 3,300 adults in 140 different neighborhoods in the cities of Cologne and Essen: first in the spring of 2014, and then again in the fall of 2015. Such a repeat survey of the same people enables researchers to assess changes in fear of crime levels in relation to violence experienced in a neighborhood. This allows them to accurately analyze cause-effect relationships. What the researchers found was that, in the aftermath of experiencing an act of violence, the residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods became more afraid of becoming a victim of another crime than people from more privileged neighborhoods.