Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4 Consequences and Control (1994) / Chapter Skim
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Public Perceptions and Reactions to Violent Offending and Victimization
Public Perceptions and Reactions to Violent Offending and Victimization
Pages 1-66
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Others will never experience violent victimization directly but will instead learn of such events indirectly, through the social networks in which they participate, through news and other depictions of violence in the mass media, or from other sources. Still others will learn about violence through a mixture of direct and indirect information.
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Following this, we consider social evaluations of violent behavior, specifically, the perceived seriousness of offenses. Then we conclude with an examination of public opinion concerning legal sanctions and criminal justice.
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FEAR OF VICTIMIZATION In The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice {1967:3) offered this observation: "The most damaging of the effects of violent crime is fear, and that fear must not be belittled." By adopting this position and by commissioning research on fear, the commission granted legitimacy to an area that had largely been ignored or dismissed by criminologists.
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However, the range of English-language terms commonly used to describe states of fear Terror, worry, alarm, apprehension, dread) , as well as selfreports and physiological measures of fear, indicate that fear is a quantitative or continuous rather than a discrete variable {Sluckin, 19791.
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Another problem with physiological measures of fear is that the physiological changes commonly associated with fear are not unique to that emotion and may accompany other emotional states as well ;Mayes, 19791. Thus, for example, there appears to be no physiological basis for distin
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The question has appeared intermittently in both the Gallup survey and the General Social Survey {GSS) since 1965 Gallup, 1983; National Opinion Research Center, 1988~.
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Data on trends in fear naturally invite comparisons with trends in crime rates. However, data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation {FBIJ Uniform Crime Reports {UCRJ and from the National Crime Survey iNCSJ do not concur closely as to recent trends in crime, and in any event, there are too few observations in the fear series for a rigorous time-series analysis.
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A serious crime will not be highly feared if it is viewed as unlikely, nor will a seemingly inevitable offense be highly feared if it is not serious. To provoke high fear, an offense must be viewed as both serious and likely, meaning that fear is a multiplicative function of perceived risk and perceived seriousness, that is, Fj = aRjbiSjb2, where Fj is the mean fear of the jth offense, and Rj and Sj are the mean perceived risk and seriousness, respectively, of the jth offense.
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The most striking feature of these data is the order in which the offenses are feared. As the multiplicative model implies, there is no strong direct correlation between fear of the offenses and either perceived seriousness (R2 = .31)
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If all crimes were perceived to be equally likely, as in this example, violent crimes would clearly outweigh all other forms of crime in the fear they evoke. That is an unlikely scenario, to be sure, but the point is that even moderate increases in the perceived risk of violent victimization have the potential to increase fear enormously.
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12 / MARK WARR is true. Although they have the greatest fear, females and the elderly are actually at substantially Tower risk of victimization than mates and the young for most crimes {e.g., Hindelang et al., 1978; Flanagan and lamieson, 19881, a situation that is sometimes called the paradox of fear E.g., Stafford and Galle, 1984; Warr, 1984; Skogan and Maxfield, 19811.
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Using data from a sample of Seattle residents, Warr {1984) found substantial age and sex differences in sensitivity to risk across a variety of crimes.
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Using data from the Seattle study, Warr jl985) found that {1)
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In the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) surveys of 26 cities conducted during 1972-1974, the proportion of respondents who reported feeling "very unsafe" or "somewhat unsafe" when alone in their neighborhood at night ranged from a low of 26 percent in San Diego to a high of 58 percent in Newark ;see Skogan and Maxfield, 1981; Garofalo, 1977J.
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was distinctly higher, suggesting that violent offenses are most important in defining areas as "dangerous places." This may be true because violent offenses carry the greatest fear potential, but it is also true that persons traveling outside the home are more susceptible to personal crimes than to property crimes See Hindelang et al., 1978~. The propensity to view these two areas of Dallas as dangerous places also increased with the number of years that respondents had lived in the city, which suggests that people come
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Using data from the attitude supplement to the National Crime Survey, Hindelang et al. (1978:168J found that "respondents were much more likely to view their own neighborhoods as safer, rather than more dangerous, than other neighborhoods in the metropolitan area." The same pattern was also observed by Reiss {1967J using data from Boston and the District of Columbia.
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Warr {199OJ has shown that a key cue to danger is novelty; novel or unfamiliar environments evoke fear of criminal victimization. For most individuals, of course, home and the surrounding neighborhood are the environments that they are most familiar with {e.g., Holahan, 1982J and, hence, should fear least.
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jl984) found substantial proportions of residents who believed that the in-migration of blacks into their neighborhoods would result in higher crime rates.
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Reactions to fear take many forms, but they can be classified under some general rubrics. Avoidance behaviors are those actions "taken to decrease exposure to crime by removing oneself from or increasing the distance from situations in which the risk of criminal victimization is believed to be high" iDuBow et al., 1979:311.
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For example, 77 percent of a sample of Dallas residents reported that they avoided "certain places in the city," as did 63 percent of Seattle residents jWarr, 19851. As noted earlier, there is a strong tendency among individuals to perceive crime in geographic terms; hence the tendency to avoid "dangerous places" is not surprising.
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said that they did not know the area well, suggesting a Tong-standing pattern of spatial avoidance. If people commonly avoid dangerous places, they also avoid dangerous times, the most obvious example being nighttime.
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The most reliable national data come from the 1983 Victim Risk Supplement to the National Crime Survey (U.S. Department of Justice, 1987)
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As Garofalo and McLeod (1989:326) have said, "Neighborhood watch has been the centerpiece of community crime prevention in the United States during the 1980s." According to the Victim Risk Supplement to the 1983 National Crime Survey ;U.S.
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Another is that the initial interest taken by residents often fades quickly, with the result that many neighborhood programs soon become dormant {Taub et al., 1984; Garofalo and McLeod, 1989J. Finally, it is possible that neighborhood watch programs, by drawing attention to or dramatizing local crime, increase rather than alleviate fear among some residents.
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A second issue concerns the extent to which fear of crime actually prevents citizens from engaging in normal everyday activities. Drawing on their findings from the National Crime Surveys, Hindelang et al.
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Viewed this way, the effect of fear of crime is not socially disintegrative, but rather integrative See Conklin, 1975J. Although it may be difficult to believe that violence has any positive consequences, Durkheim's position is supported by the nationwide growth of neighborhood watch programs and other community crime prevention organizations in the United States.
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To understand public perceptions and reactions to violence, therefore, we must examine the indirect sources of information on violence to which the general public is exposed. One of the principal ways in which Americans learn of violence is through news coverage of crime in the mass media.
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report that "every day each paper reported at least one story about a violent crime in a prominent position." The number of violent crime stories averaged 4.4 to 6.8 stories per paper per day, with half of the stories devoted to homicides. Although crime stories are a staple of media news coverage, this fact means little if the general public is not exposed to or is not attentive to such information.
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In a study of media crime coverage in New OrIeans, Sheley and Ashkins {1981J found that violent crimes constituted 68 to 87 percent of the crime stories in local television and newspaper outlets, but only 20 percent of the offenses known to police. Skogan and Maxfield jl981J report that murder and attempted murders constituted 50 percent of all newspaper crime stories in the cities examined.
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is slow, column space or air time may be filled in with crime stories. If crime news is routinely employed in this way, then the amount of time or space devoted to crime over time will not bear any constant relation to the actual number of crimes occurring.
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Crime and "cop" shows have been a staple of television fare almost since the advent of television itself, owing no doubt to the immense public demand for such shows and to the fact that crime shows, with their emphasis on action, tension, and moral dilemma, are ideal dramatic settings for writers and producers. Like news coverage of crime, television crime dramas have been subjected to withering criticism for misrepresenting the reaTities of crime and law enforcement.
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also reports a number of differences between public conceptions and media depictions of criminals, as well as evidence that crime news is not accepted uncritically by the public.- Accordingly, she rejects the notion that "the public is a mere blotter for media images, absorbing them in rough outline." Although Skogan and Maxfield il981~ found an association between exposure to television news coverage and fear, the association proved to be spurious: both fear and exposure to media news were strongly associated with certain demographic characteristics
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INTERPERSONAL DIFFUSION OF CRIME NEWS The mass media, of course, are not the sole sources of information on crime in the United States. Individuals may learn about crime by talking with friends, neighbors, family members, or coworkers.
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These data, then, suggest that interpersonal diffusion of crime news is not constant from one crime to the next, but rather increases with the seriousness of the crime. News of violent crime, especially, travels farther through social space than other crimes.
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These same data also indicate that the social channels through which crime news passes can be very restrictive indeed. Of the homicide victims known to blacks, fully 98 percent were black.
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Yet even if all crimes could be gauged against some common objective metric, the value of such a scale would be debatable. The reason is that there is no necessary relation between the objective seriousness of crimes and their perceived seriousness.
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is occupied almost exclusively by violent crimes. Nonviolent offenses do not appear with any frequency until the seriousness scores drop to about 13-14.
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30.5 A person plants a bomb in a public building The bomb explodes and 20 people are injured but no medical treatment is required. 30.0 A man forcibly rapes a woman Her physical injuries require hospitalization.
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19.0 A person intentionally shoots a victim with a gun The victim requires treatment by a doctor but not hospitalization. 18.3 A man beats his wife with his fists She requires hospitalization.
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10.5 A person smuggles marijuana into the country for resale. 10.4 A person intentionally hits a victim with a lead pipe The victim requires hospitalization.
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9.0 A person, armed with a lead pipe, robs a victim of $1,000 No physical harm occurs. 8.9 A person intentionally hits a victim with a lead pipe The victim requires treatment by a doctor but no hospitalization.
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6.9 A person beats a victim with his fists The victim requires hospitalization. 6.9 A person breaks into a public recreation center, forces open a cash box, and steals $1,000.
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2.9 A person steals property worth $50 from outside a building. 2.8 A person breaks into a department store and steals merchandise worth $10.
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1.5 A person takes barbiturates, such as sleeping pills, without a legal prescription. 1.S A person intentionally shoves or pushes a victim No medical treatment .
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Because they involve a social interaction between two or more parties, violent crimes naturally raise certain sociological questions. First, does the relation between the victim and the offender affect the perceived seriousness of a crime?
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Much of the seriousness literature has been aimed at assessing the degree of social consensus on the seriousness of crimes. Because legal and social reactions to crimes are so strongly contingent on their seriousness, it is important to determine the extent to which the general public shares similar perceptions of the seriousness of crimes.
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_ , , PUBLIC OPINION ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE One of the most revealing methods of obtaining insights into public attitudes toward violence is to examine public opinion on legal sanctions for crimes and criminals. Because legal sanctions have an expressive as well as a utilitarian function, public opinion on legal sanctions can be construed as an expression of social sentiment concerning crime and criminals.
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Indeed, so strong is the relation between preferred punishments and perceived seriousness that the two are sometimes regarded as substitutable if not outright identical variables. Another consistent finding concerns the form of punishment that individuals assign to crimes.
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, where the prison sentences preferred by a national sample were compared with the average times served in 13 states. -- a, Across crimes, the average sentences preferred by respondents exceeded actual time served bY ratios ranging from approximately 2:1 to 6:1, with the largest ratios again occurring for violent crimes and drug offenses.
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VICTIM, OFFENDER, AND RESPONDENT CHARACTERISTICS If the perceived seriousness of offenses is the major determinant of preferred punishments, there is evidence that individuals also attend to characteristics of the offender and victim in deciding on appropriate punishments for crimes. The punishments recommended for juveniles are consistently Tower than those for adults ;Warr et al., 1982,1983; lacoby and Dunn, 1987)
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ETHNOPENOLOGIES When Americans decide on appropriate punishments for offenses, what theories of punishment do they rely on? As we have seen, there appears to be wide social consensus on the principle of proportionality between offense seriousness and sanction severity.
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Data from a 1982 national survey conducted for ABC News show that, of the 35 percent of respondents who had called the police during the prior year, 72 percent reported that the police had responded within "a short time" {McGarrell end Flanagan, 1985~. In the same survey, majorities of respondents said that they had a "great deal" or a "good amount" of confidence in the ability of the police to prevent {61%)
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FUTURE RESEARCH As we have seen in this paper, the state of knowledge on public perceptions and reactions to violence has improved substantially during the past two decades. Although this trend is certainly encouraging, a good deal of both descriptive and analytical work remains to be done.
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Aside from individuals or households, research is also needed on the consequences of fear for businesses, including the reactions of commercial establishments to ostensibly dangerous environments. To what extent does spatial avoidance affect the livelihoods of retail businesses?
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~, One reason its that many of the behaviors that investigators commonly construe to be seli-protect~ve may In fact be primarily intended to protect others. Home security precautions are an obvious example {as is participation in neighborhood programs!
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. Such data could be collected on an annual basis in the United States through a supplement to the National Crime Survey.
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Yet it is impossible to assess the effects of such movements on public opinion without longitudinal data on the perceived seriousness of crimes. To date, the only longitudinal study is that of Cullen et al.
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Although there is a good deal of research on both public preferences with regard to criminal penalties and public evaluations of the criminal justice system, there is no comparable body of research on public knowledge of the criminal justice system. What little research exists suggests that the American public is largely ignorant of the statutory punishments for crimes and has a limited understanding of the legal elements that constitute or differentiate criminal acts Gibbs and Erickson, 1979; Williams et al., 19801.
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1973 Crime and law enforcement on prime time television. Public Opinion Quarterly 37:241 -250.
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Garofalo, T 1977 Public Opinion About Crime: The Attitudes of Victims and Nonvictims in Selected Cities. Law Enforcement Assistance Administration.
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Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research 1982 ABC News Poll of Public Opinion on Crime, December 1982. Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, University of Michigan.
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National Opinion Research Center 1988 General Social Surveys, 1972-1987: Cumulative Codebook. Chicago: National Opinion Research Center.
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Sheley, t.S., and C.D. Ashkins 1981 Crime, crime news, and crime views.
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U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics 1987 1992 National Crime Surveys: Victim Risk Supplement7 1983.
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Erickson 1982 Contending theories of criminal law: Statutory penalties versus public preferences. linquency 19:25-46.
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