“…In the years following reunification and the fall of the 'Iron Curtain', the new federal states (from the former German Democratic Republic, GDR) experienced an increase in perceptions of insecurity (Boers and Kurz, 1997;Bundesministerium des Innern und Bundesministerium für Justiz, 2006). Since then, fear levels have been higher in the East than in the West (Bilsky, 1996;Bilsky et al, 1995;Boers, 2003a; Bundesministerium des Innern und Bundesministerium für Justiz, 2006;Dittmann, 2005;Ewald, 2000;Forschungsgruppe 'Kommunale Kriminalprävention in Baden-Württemberg', 1998;Kury et al, 1992;Reuband, 1996), although the mid-1990s witnessed decreasing public anxieties in both the East and the West, producing what has been a gradual alignment of the old and the new federal states in levels of fear of crime (Bundesministerium des Innern und Bundesministerium für Justiz, 2006;Dittmann, 2005;Dörrmann and Remmers, 2000).…”