Fear of Crime: Causes, Consequences, and its Relation with Justice Policy

Although closely related concepts, fear of crime is independent of crime. Many studies in criminological literature suggest that fear of crime increases parallel to the increase in crime but it does not decrease with the decrease in crime. The fear of crime makes the fight against crime more difficult as it harms the social cohesion and trust which are among the most needed elements in preventing and controlling crime. For this reason, in addition to activities for the fight against crime, there is a great need to develop and implement programs specially designed to overcome fear of crime. However, there is not enough research initiatives and empirical knowledge in the Turkish context to guide the police and people who shape security policies. Even though many national and cross national studies on fear of crime have been conducted in the international arena it draws the attention that, there are only a few local studies and there is not any single national study to measure and assess the scope and nature of this problem in Turkey. Thus, in this article we present a guideline for the theoretical and practical issues that need to be dealt with in these research projects. Finally, we discussed the expected benefits of a national study on fear of crime.