The Relative Importance of Institutional Trust in Countering Feelings of Unsafety in Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods

Abstract

<jats:p>The segregated nature of urban areas reflects an uneven exposure to risk and unsafety. This article analyzes the relevance of place to people’s feelings of unsafety by comparing questionnaire responses from people living in a segregated, disadvantaged neighbourhood to a random sample of people living in the same city. The results suggest that the central factors explaining the individual’s feelings of unsafety differ in this particular neighbourhood compared to the broader population. The article shows that place has a moderating effect on feelings of unsafety. Trust in public institutions is argued to be particularly important in segregated, disadvantaged neighbourhoods because of its potential to prevent feelings of unsafety.</jats:p>

Trust and Safety in the Segregated City: Contextualizing the Relationship between Institutional Trust, Crime‐related Insecurity and Generalized Trust

“…As the inhabitants face greater risks and are exposed to more disorder, they are also more dependent on the efficacy and fairness of the legal institutions as well as on the intentions of the political institutions. Indeed, trust in institutions and in the police has been shown to play a particularly crucial role for perceived safety in disadvantaged neighbourhoods (Persson ). In addition, the sense of powerlessness, common in neighbourhoods with high levels of crime, vandalism, graffiti, danger, noise and drugs, has been shown to amplify the effect of neighbourhood disorder on mistrust (Ross et al ).…”

“…As control variables, we include some familiar concepts in research on institutional and generalized trust, both in general terms and related specifically to ethnic diversity and disadvantaged neighbourhoods. We include respondent age, education level, employment status, ethnic origin and social capital (voluntary association engagement) since these have been examined and shown to correlate with both institutional and generalized trust (Kumlin & Rothstein ; Gijsberts et al ; De Vroome et al ) and crime‐related insecurity (Persson ). These control variables also make it possible to better sort out the independent effect of neighbourhood from its individual structural characteristics (Gijsberts et al ).…”