Exploring Criminological Imagination: Fear of Crime and Vulnerability

This report delves into Martin Killias's article on fear of crime and vulnerability, exploring key factors like exposure to risk, loss of control, and the seriousness of consequences. It examines physical, social, and situational components influencing these factors, such as age, gender, social background, and environmental context. The analysis critically assesses the author's arguments, relating them to real-world examples and statistics while acknowledging their limitations in individual scenarios. The report concludes that while the identified factors are significant, they are incomplete without considering the interplay between them and other potential influences on the fear of crime.

Running Head: Criminological Imagination 0
Criminological Imagination
Student’s Name
11/27/2018

Criminological Imagination 1
Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Learning and Key Points of the reading..........................................................................................1
Critical Analysis..............................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................4
References........................................................................................................................................4

Criminological Imagination 2
Introduction
Fear of Crime can be understood as a risk or fear of being a victim of a crime. Fear of crime is a
sincere social problem that gets affected by a number of factors, out of which Vulnerability is an
important one to discuss. For this presentation, the selected reading is an article written by
Martin Killias on the subject of Fear of Crime and Vulnerability. In the presented report, the
focus will be made upon to the key points of the subjective reading along with critical analysis of
the same.
Learning and Key Points of the reading
The selected reading stated that there are implicit variables that affect the level of fear of crime
in people. Author has reflected three key factors on which fear seems to depend. These factors
are the following:-
 Exposure to Risk
 Loss of Control
 The seriousness of consequences (Killias, 1990)
The entire three aforementioned factors have their social, physical, and situational components.
Starting with the first factor, this is to be stated that exposure to risk influence the fear of crime
in people. The more exposure to risk, lead more fear of crime. If to talk about a physical aspect
of this factor, this is to mention that due to age and gender, different people have a different level
of exposure to risk. Further, there are many social factors too cause which people from different
social background and conditions have different exposure to risk (Rader, Cossman and Porter,
2012). This can be understood with the help of an example. For instance, the social factor such as

Criminological Imagination 3
late night visit enhances the chances of predatory crime. Other social factors such as the risky
nature of the job and economic status of people are also there cause of which different people in
society have a different level of exposure to risk.
In addition to the physical and social vulnerability, situational vulnerability also plays an
important role to check and increase the exposure of fear among people. For instance, people in a
society with terrorism have more exposure and possibility of happening of a crime in comparison
to people who live in a safe society.
Moving towards the other factor, which is a loss of control; this is to say that different people
have a different kind of safety measures against a risk. This is the reason that not every person
feels the same level of fear in respect to a crime. The more control over a risk reduces the fear of
crime. There are some physical, social, and situational elements, which affect the effectiveness
of control/defense measures. Firstly, the physical elements such as age and gender affect the
level of defense that a person has in against of a crime. For an example, in comparison to male,
females have less control on the happening of a crime or it may say that females have less
defense to deal with such issues and therefore females have more fear of crime in comparison to
males. Some social factors again such as loneliness and respectability are there which have an
influence on the ability of a person to avoid risk or to deal with the same in an effective manner.
At last, many times a person loses his /her control and become unable to prevent the crime in
some situations. For instance, in the darkness, a person often loses his/her control. Many other
situations are there that must be considered while checking the fear of crime among the public.
The last but obviously not least factor is the seriousness of consequences (Doran and Burgess,,
2012). A similar crime can lead to different consequences to people, depending on the physical,

Criminological Imagination 4
social, and situational components. The more serious consequences of a crime lead more fear.
Physical factors such as age, gender, and sex affect the seriousness of the crime. For instance, in
comparison to young people, elder people have more dangerous consequences of a road accident
and this is the reason that they afraid of the same more in comparison to young ones. In many of
the cases, social due to social elements, a crime affect different people in different ways.
Similarly further, situational elements also affect the seriousness of the consequences of a crime.
Critical Analysis
The aforementioned discussion consists of key points of the chosen readings. Now, to make the
critical analysis of the reading, this is to mention that the arguments of the author seem to be
correct as one can relate the same with real-life examples. In support of the argument of the
author, this is to say that all the three factors are very important while determining the risk or
fear of crime. Because of gender, females have more exposure to crimes such as rape and
physical harassments (Cossman and Rader, 2011). Gender is lead factor cause of which females
have lack of effective defense against a crime. Further, the other physical component such as age
affects the seriousness of consequences, as elder people are less able to deal with such issues.
Not only the physical factor but also the rest of the two factors i.e. social and situational
components plays their vital role in influencing the level of fear of crime among people (Ditton
and Farrall, 2017).
By reading the crime news, it is far clear that people, who live isolated, are very fearful regarding
happening of crime. Elder people who live in old age homes have more fear of robbery than to
younger ones and even to (Ceccato and Bamzar, 2016) another elder who lives with their family
because they have back up plans in cases of such crimes. On the other hand, the cases of rape are

Criminological Imagination 5
coming out on a daily basis in which 54% of total victims are females of 18-34 years (Rainn.org,
2018). These statistics prove that the factors mentioned by the author in the subjective reading
are not baseless and have their real-world implications. However, these factors are not sufficient
in the individual conditions and can be helpful to check the fear of crime at a micro level.
Conclusion
To conclude the learning and critical analysis on the reading, this is to say that although many of
the proves are there which agrees with the arguments of the author, yet the factors provided by
the author are not complete and cannot be apply as it is to the real world when it comes to the
individual scenario. Therefore, the factors mentioned by author have their limited applicability
and they are incomplete without each other.
References
Ceccato, V. and Bamzar, R., 2016. Elderly victimization and fear of crime in public
spaces. International criminal justice review, 26(2), pp.115-133.
Cossman, J.S. and Rader, N.E., 2011. Fear of crime and personal vulnerability: Examining self-
reported health. Sociological Spectrum, 31(2), pp.141-162.

Criminological Imagination 6
Ditton, J. and Farrall, S. (2017) The Fear of Crime. USA: Routledge.
Doran, B.J. and Burgess, M.B., 2012. Why Is Fear of Crime a Serious Social Problem?.
In Putting Fear of Crime on the Map(pp. 9-23). Springer, New York, NY.
Killias, M., 1990. Vulnerability: Towards a better understanding of a key variable in the genesis
of fear of crime. Violence and victims, 5(2), p.97.
Rader, N.E., Cossman, J.S. and Porter, J.R., 2012. Fear of crime and vulnerability: Using a
national sample of Americans to examine two competing paradigms. Journal of Criminal
Justice, 40(2), pp.134-141.
Rainn.org. (2018) Victims of Sexual Violence: Statistics. [online] Available from:
https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence