Abstract
Despite a long and rich history of fear of crime research, studies which focus on the importance of local specifics are rather limited. This study fills this gap by analyzing fear of crime—measured as concerns about crime and feeling of safety—among residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods. Drawing on victimization and vulnerability theories, the aim of the study is to examine fear of crime and its determinants and assess whether there are significant differences between people living in disadvantaged and more affluent neighborhoods in Czech municipalities. For this purpose, the data obtained from a cross-sectional face-to-face survey carried out across 13 regions of Czechia were used and a hierarchical binary logistic regression analysis was employed. In line with existing literature on fear of crime in the general population, the results of the analysis confirm that fear of crime among inhabitants of disadvantaged neighborhoods is mainly associated with crime-related variables. The strongest effect was found with respect to crime trend perception, with those who perceived crime in their municipality to be increasing being more fearful than those who perceived it to be stable. Higher levels of fear of crime were observed among inhabitants of disadvantaged neighborhoods, though the effect of locality proved negligible. In addition, once respondents perceived crime to be on the rise, the difference between fear of crime among inhabitants of SELs and non-SELs became blurred.
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Notes
Converting dependent variables into binary has analytical justification. The variables are skewed and the absence of heteroscedasticity, one of the assumptions of OLS regression, was not met. Similarly, ordered logistic regression could not have been used since the proportional odds assumption was not met either. In addition, we generally prefer not to use multinomial regression because the scales of dependent variables cannot be easily divided into natural categories.
1 CZK was the equivalent of 0.037 € in 2016 (Kurzy.cz, 2022).
49% of the SEL population were victimized compared to 33% in the non-SEL population.
We did not include official crime data in our analysis as they are only available at the level of police precincts and thus only rarely correspond geographically to SELs. In addition, research suggests that perception indicators such as perceived crime trend may be even better determinants of fear of crime compared to official statistics, since people usually have distorted information about criminality and crime trends in their neighborhood (e.g. Forde, 1993; Tomášek et al., 2019).
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Krulichová, E., Kupka, P. & Walach, V. Does Location Matter? Fear of Crime and its Determinants in Disadvantaged and More Affluent Neighborhoods in Czechia. Eur J Crim Policy Res 30, 157–180 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10610-022-09533-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10610-022-09533-7