Inventing Fear of Crime

At a time of falling crime rates but rising fear of crime the notion of fear of crime has become as important as crime itself, and absolutely central to the way governments in the western world are now going about the task of crime control and crime prevention. For the media, it is part of their staple diet and informs their approach to the reporting of crime. Yet the concept of fear of crime has not hitherto been subjected to a rigorous analysis. This provocative, wide ranging book aims to fill this gap, tracing the emergence of fear of crime as a meaningful concept in both social enquiry and governmental and political discourse - looking in particular at the UK, Australia and New Zealand and North America. In doing so, it draws upon a wide range of literature and research, including interviews with prominent researchers and policy makers involved in this field.

ISBN 184392174X   DEWEY edition DC22 ISBN13 9781843921745 (What's this?)   Pages 232 Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd   Volumes 1 Imprint Willan Publishing   Weight (grammes) 521 Format Paperback   Published in Cullompton Publication date 20 Dec 2006   Height (mm) 234 Library of Congress 2007297513   Width (mm) 156 DEWEY 364.4   Academic level Professional / Scholarly

1. Introduction 2. Fear of crime: a pre-history 3. Anxieties in the knowledgeable society: the birth of a new criminological object 4. Surveying the fearful: the expansion of the victim survey 5. Fearing subjects 6. Governing and policing the fearful 7. The marketing of monsters 8. Conclusions: don't mention the 'F' word

'Murray Lee's work on the fear of crime is tremendously important; it cannot be ignored by anyone wishing to seriously pursue this most slippery and politically-charged of concepts. This book does a wonderful job of locating the fear of crime in the wider social and political contexts. In so doing, Lee touches on a number of important areas of contemporary criminological concerns (CCTV, private security and risk to mention but three of them). This book deserves to be widely read - I am sure that it will be.' ae' Stephen Farrall, University of Sheffield 'It was Thomas Hobbes that identified the potency of fear as a source of political motivation. Fear has once again returned to the centre of our public life and everyday experience in late modernity. 'Our citizens have the right to live without fear' intone political leaders. But supplying the knowledge, advice, services and products that support the fear industry - exploring, measuring, engendering, tempering, assuaging everyday fears - is now an endeavour joined by a range of agents from the market, voluntary, academic and government sectors. A sparkling intellectual genealogy of the relentlessly proliferating discourses around fear of crime, Lee's book provides a fresh way of viewing the concept that has spawned this industry and which in a short time has managed to become a staple of criminological knowledge and crime policy. He shows how fear has become a new object of knowledge and a new device of rule for governments, communities, households and individuals. Governed through fear, citizens as consumers are exhorted to the responsible self-management of their insecurities, communities are united on the back of little more than shared anxieties and states seek to renew their legitimacy in terms of security. Lee however also demonstrates the unruliness of this new object as new programmes for knowing and managing fear serve to foment the very thing which they seek to control. This book will be of particular interest to criminologists but should attract the attention of many others inside and outside the academy. It will change the way we think about fear of crime.' ae' Russell Hogg, University of New England

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