Crime as an environmental stressor

Abstract

While relatively few people are victims of criminal attack each year, many people fear personal crime and take safety precautions that limit their lives. This paper proposes a model of crime as an environmental stressor in order to explicate the links between the threat of criminal attack and people's attitudinal and behavioral reactions to that danger. Processes that affect both the assessment of the extent of danger and the choice of strategies to reduce that danger are examined. The paper concludes with a discussion of the social policy implications of an environmental stress model of crime.

Socio‐Demographic Correlates of Fear of Crime and the Social Context of Contemporary Urban China

“…The influential theories that inform most research are vulnerability theory and disorder theory (Dubow et al 1979;Perkins and Taylor 1996). Within community psychology, a good number of papers have been published to explicate the key factors that influence fear of crime (Norris 1992;Perkins et al 1990;Perkins and Taylor 1996;Riger et al 1981;Riger 1985;Ross and Jang 2000;Taylor and Shumaker 1990;Thompson and Norris 1992).…”

Definitional and measurement issues in the study of community violence among children and youths

“…While some have adopted more restrictive definitions and operationalizations (e.g., Cooley et al, 1995), others have argued that community events and contexts that provoke feelings of dangerousness and pervasive fear, even, for example, abandoned buildings or darkened elevator shafts, may be as injurious in their psychosocial consequences as discrete and deliberately injurious acts themselves Van Soest & Bryant, 1993). Certainly, perceptions of fear and dangerousness in the community suggest that community events and contexts such as these profoundly affect daily choices people make on a widespread basis, for example, in decisions about with whom to socialize, what locations to avoid for meeting and socializing, and which school routes to travel (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1996;Riger, 1985). Perhaps most profoundly, perceptions of pervasive community violence may serve to provoke a "contagion" effect, leading to distrustful, suspicious, and hostile social interactions, and even serving to heighten the likelihood of further violence as a response (Lorion, 1998).…”

“Out of Place” in the City: Development of Sociospatial Disorder Sensitivity Scale in Urban Settings

“…Social and emotional support can be considered an effective way to regulate emotions in a potentially threatening environment (Riger, ). If we accept the hypothesis about the relationship between social support access and ways to regulate emotions that allow for interpreting ambivalent signals in a relatively unthreatening manner, then bonding social capital and quality of neighborhood relations should be predictors of lower sociospatial urban disorder sensitivity.…”