Fear Of Crime

Over the past few decades, there have been many approaches in which have evolved surrounding American policing. From an institution which was originally known for being conservative and often times resistance to chance, many approaches began to emerge and eventually become adopted, in result of several studies suggesting the “standard model” of policing as ineffective, civil unrest, and the challenges of a rapidly evolving society during the 1970s. According to Kelling et al. (1974) and Superman and Broken (1981), such studies suggested that standardized practices, such as, preventative patrol or responding rapidly to police calls had a very little impact on crime itself or the fear of crime within communities (As cited in Weisburd and Eck,

However, while such policies have had success in combating the fear of crime within neighborhoods, there are still many problems associated with them that need to be addressed. Such issues include, the inability to form a consensus about the definition of fear of crime (Warr, 2000); the inability to differentiate between fear and other cognitive and emotional components, such as anxiety, worry, or concern about crime (Cordner and Melekian, 2010); how to measure the construct, of fear as most studies who measure the link between fear and crime use unidimensional definitions and do not differentiate between crime types, therefore assuming no variations of fear among different types of crime, individuals, and geographic locations (Rountree, 1998; Warr, 2000); to properly differentiate between the measures of perceived risk and measures of fear as they do not behave similar in respect to other variables (Rountree and Land 1996); to use the appropriate time interval or unit of analysis to capture events correctly in order to avoid overlooking crucial aspects of fear (Warr, 2000); and how to correctly regulate the fear of

According to Weisburd and Eck (2004) available research suggests that when police partner with the public, levels of citizen fear will decline and thee has been strong support for the ability of community policing tactics to indeed reduce fear of crime among the citizenry. Given that such strategies clearly remain to be in use today and the inconclusiveness of the research, it is important to determine whether or not certain tactics of community policing are indeed effective at reducing the fear of crime. Therefore, this literature review aims to demonstrates the need to shift the direction of future community policing policy, with a focus on applying the techniques which have been deemed to be the most effective in reducing fear of crime among the citizens and avoid the strategies in which have resulted in