Fear of Crime, Safety and Police Work in a Pandemic Time

Abstract

This paper discusses the fear of crime, a concept long studied by scholars and researchers, from the second half of the 1960s to the present times. With the increase of the academics and the general public interest for topics in the field of subjective perception on crime and its impact on feeling of safety, even the police work has gained new value from fields such as criminology, sociology or psychology. Thus, the inclusion of the citizens' expectations on the agenda of the law enforcement agencies, mainly the police, marked a turning point in the history of these institutions. At present, the police is no longer just a fighter against crime, responsible for implementing measures to prevent and combat crime, now it must also address the repression of fear of crime and increase the feeling of security of the population it serves. There are several theoretical approaches to the fear of crime construct: individual-level theories (vulnerability perspective – social or physical vulnerability to crime), contextual-level theories (disorder thesis, social integration thesis), and a more recent approach (the multilevel perspective, which combines individual vulnerability, contextual disorder and the absence of social integration). Starting from simple definitions, developed in the early 1970s, in which the fear of crime was seen as a negative emotional response to the threat of crime, the concept has evolved, more recent research showing that the fear of crime is a multidimensional construct, that refers to the interaction between emotions, cognitive processes, crime and environment. Although no consensus has been reached on defining the fear of crime, most definitions have the following elements in common: it is a negative emotional response, which appears in the face of a real danger or a potential threat of a criminal incident.