The Fear of Crime and Self-governance: Towards A Genealogy

Abstract

Since the 1970s the fear of crime has become an increasingly popular subject of inquiry for criminology, victimology and other academic disciplines. Scholars have offered an array of explanations from a widely varied assortment of theoretical positions, for the supposed rise of the crime fearing individual, whom I refer to as the fearing subject Much of this scholarship has focused on the rationality or irrationality of these fears in particular population demographics. This article is somewhat critical of this approach, although, it does not necessarily call for an end to the study of fear of crime as such. Rather, coming from a genealogical perspective, I attempt to briefly plot the proliferation of disciplinary and governmental interest in the fear of crime in the West and explain how this interest has effected both the subject of inquiry and the modes of inquiry themselves. I conclude by suggesting that the power effects of the knowledge being amassed on this subject may actually be implicated in the production of fearing subjects. At one extreme, individuals may be “prisoners of fear”, locking themselves away behind steel doors and barred windows. At the other they may become activists, banding together with neighbours to prevent crime by taking aggressive steps to challenge strangers, intervene when they observe suspicious circumstances, and act to reduce the opportunities for crime. … [A] great deal of money has been spent by the government in an effort to encourage the latter…(Skogan, 1986; 177).

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