Current work on fear of crime centers largely around three dominant theoretical models: indirect victimization, community concern, and incivilities. Previous work (Taylor and Hale 1986) confirms the importance of the central construct in each model and shows that no one model has more explanatory power than another. But work to date has not examined ecological impacts of some key constructs, even though the models clearly imply processes operative at the neighborhood level. This study extends earlier work, combining central predictors from each model and distinguishing between-and within-neighborhood sources of impact, with data from surveys of 1622 residents of 66 Baltimore neighborhoods and from on-site assessments. Findings indicate ways in which these theories, particularly indirect victimization and incivilities, need further theoretical articulation of central constructs. The results also confirm the generalizability of Merry's diversity thesis-developed from field work in a multi-ethnic subsidized housing context-to urban neighborhoods in a major metropolitan area.

FEAR OF CRIME operating in the residential environment that would "spread" the impacts of criminal events. The indirect victimization model, discussed below, is an example of a model constructed along these lines. Third, the patterning of fear across areas does not match the patterning of crime levels. Although at least one study has found that actual victims of crime are more fearful than non-victims, 7 areas with higher crime or victimization rates do not always have residents who are more fearful." This failure of fear levels to covary spatially with crime levels has led to an ongoing debate concerning the meaning or construct validity of fear of crime survey items. Turning to the issue of construct validity, it is accepted that fear is "the emotional dimension of [people's] response to crime .... 9 More recently, fear has been further circumscribed. Garofalo has suggested that fear taps the emotional response to possible violent crime and physical harm, while the term "worry" captures the emotional response to possible property crime (e.g., burglary, larceny). 0 Maxfield has concurred in the view that fear is linked to violent crime and worry to property crime. 11 The emotional "fear" and "worry" responses can be captured with items about " 'how afraid,' 'how uneasy' people feel about the occurrence of crime in general or a specific type of crime." 1 2 Most assume that the standard National Crime Survey "day fear" and "night fear" items ("How safe do you feel (or would you feel) alone at night in your neighborhood?") capture the fear people anticipate due to the possibility of violent crime. A. THE DISORDER PERSPECTIVE Nonetheless, despite these suggestions by researchers about how to tap fear of crime and what fear of crime questions "get at,"

Researchers suggest that fear of crime arises from community disorder, cues in the social and physical environment that are distinct from crime itself. Three ecological methods of measuring community disorder are presented: resident perceptions reported in surveys and on‐site observations by trained raters, both aggregated to the street block level, and content analysis of crime‐ and disorder‐related newspaper articles aggregated to the neighborhood level. Each method demonstrated adequate reliability and roughly equal ability to predict subsequent fear of crime among 412 residents of 50 blocks in 50 neighborhoods in Baltimore, MD. Pearson and partial correlations (controlling for sex, race, age, and victimization) were calculated at multiple levels of analysis: individual, individual deviation from block, and community (block/neighborhood). Hierarchical linear models provided comparable results under more stringent conditions. Results linking different measure of disorder with fear, and individual and aggregated demographics with fear inform theories about fear of crime and extend research on the impact of community social and physical disorder. Implications for ecological assessment of community social and physical environments are discussed.

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