A crime is an act which is unlawful and punishable by any country or by the authority. The modern criminal law crime does not have universally and simple definition that is accepted through definitions of statutory have been given for definite purposes. The known view of crime is that it is a category created by the law. The idea that acts like vandalism, robbery, assault, theft, prostitution, domestic abuse, racial harassment, tax evasion, rape, and murder are banned globally them a criminal offence which is harmful to some individual and also to the community (Ferraro, 2013, p. 158). Any government has authority to restrict the liberty of individual after committing a crime.
The fear of the crime is a term used to denote the fear of being a crime victim as opposed to the real possibility of being a crime victim while fear of crime may be differentiated from the fear of the public, behaviors, and thoughts concerning the personal risks of criminal victimization, difference may also be made between the tendency to notice circumstances as fearful. In the current world, there are procedures to which trials and investigations must follow. If the person if found guilty he or she may be sentenced to any form of punishment like community sentenced depending on the type of the offence. Other forms of punishments may be execution, imprisonment and life imprisonment. While every crime breaks the law, not every violation of the law is enough to be called a crime (Kury, 2013).
Official Measures of Crime
The UCR and FBI are the greatest commonly used approved for crime measurement in the US. The reports of uniform crime give many of offences that are criminal known to the police. The crime rate reported represents only those offences known as section one crimes which include robbery, murder, assaults, and murder. They are majorly violent crimes in nature. The section two crimes which are majorly composed of drug offences, fraud, and kidnapping are not composed in the computation and the crime rates reported. The final rates of crimes hence represent only a part of offences with which the system of formal criminal justice come into contact (Lab, 2015).
It is possible for the department of the police to change their figures so as to enhance their operation image or jurisdiction since the funding of the police is based on the delivery of service hence productivity is measured by the crime numbers in their reports. Therefore, the department may decide the change the data collection and a reporting s as to make themselves look better but on the negative side, the rate of crime is actually higher. The law enforcement officers may also decide to refrain from making a rest or reporting an incident formally (Snell, 2011).
Measuring Victimization
The surveys of victimization are surveys of the population done to gauge the criminal victimization level in the community. These methods of measuring crimes were encouraged by the administration of justice and the commission of law enforcement in 1967 which commissioned the research to access the accuracy of the UCR. The results of those research suggested that the data of the police reflected only a fraction of the crime in the community. The surveys of the victims became a common method for crime measurements in 1097s. These research usually required about the experiences of victimization of an individual who is a victim or his households over a particular duration (Ferraro, 2013).
Fear of Crime
The fear of the crime is a term used to denote the fear of being a crime victim as opposed to the real possibility of being a crime victim while fear of crime may be differentiated from the fear of the public, behaviors, and thoughts concerning the personal risks of criminal victimization, difference may also be made between the tendency to notice circumstances as fearful. The real involvement while in those positions and wider expressions concerning the social and cultural importance of symbols of crime and crime in the neighborhoods of people (Kury, 2013).
The behaviour, thoughts, and feelings may have numerous dysfunctional and functional impacts on the group and individual life depending on the real risk and subjective tactics of the people to danger. On the adverse side, they may erode the psychological well-being and public health. The factors influencing the fear of crime comprise of the perception of the public of neighborhood breakdown and stability, risk perception psychology, the influence of neighborhood situation, and circulating representations of victimization risks (Kury, 2013).
Measuring the Fear of Crime
When measuring the fear of crime, the first step is to measure the generalized fear of perception and perceived risks. Perceived risks are measured by the use of questions enquiring about the probability or likelihood whereas fear is measured with questions enquiring about emotional feelings like “how worried are you?” or “how afraid are you?” The fact that few people regard a certain place to be insecure does not mean that all of them fear same things or they fear things at the same magnitude. The fear of women of assault due to their physical weaknesses may cause a lower sense of safety (Snell, 2011).
Fear and Demographics
In addition to the diversity in the relationship between fear and victimization, the level of fear is not constant in all the demographic groups making a whole population. It is typically a problem in urban areas and affects the women and elderly to a greater level than their members of society. More than 60% of people staying in urban areas are experiencing the fear of crime, while only 305 of the people living in rural areas have similar fears. Studies also reveal that the women and the elderly are the most fearful people in the community despite the fact that they are the ones who are less victimized in the society. Some researchers also claim that the people who are fearful are usually blacks, with lower social economic status and living in large communities (Lab, 2015).
Divergent Findings and Explanations
From the inspection of the past studies on the fear of crime, the two basic questions which arise is how a person can justify the fear levels in light of the real levels and of the chances of victimization. And the second one is why the different research find divergence sets of features among the fearful individuals. Some of the contributing factors to the above-mentioned questions whose answers and clear include perceived risks and harm, incivility, methodological factors and the vicarious victimization. Vicarious victimization refers to the knowing somebody or hearing about another individual who has not been a crime victim. Incivility refers to social and physical factors involved in the community decline and disorder (Ferraro, 2013).
Crime Prevention
These are policies and programs put in place so as to prevent which may include the law enforcement officers arresting the culprits as part of an operation to handle the problems of gang, correction facilities such as court, and in case of extreme cases, then the culprit may face the sentence of death penalty.
Crime prevention model and Alternative model
The crime prevention model involves initiatives in community regeneration, parenting skills, and literacy and also programs of offender treatment both of which can be joined with approaches that are situational in the similar projects of multi-agency. The alternative prevention model focus on preventing the incidence of crime before they may occur. Such approaches include education and anti-poverty campaign.
Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Crime Prevention
The primary prevention approach aims at the direct crime event prevention and hence it is offence oriented and not offender oriented such as reducing the number of fire arms in circulation will reduce the level of criminal activities. The secondary prevention approach focus on combating the criminal motivation before individuals become involved in criminal activities such as education and anti-poverty programs. The tertiary prevention approach aims to reduce criminal careers through the punishment or treatment of any culprit found such as court proceedings (Ferraro, 2013, p. 158).
Conclusion
This research paper is the description and summary of the fear of crime and crime. A crime is an act which is unlawful and punishable by any country or by the authority. The fear of the crime is a term used to denote the fear of being a crime victim as opposed to the real possibility of being a crime victim while fear of crime may be differentiated from the fear of the public, behaviours and thoughts concerning the personal risks of criminal victimization. The official measurements of crime, crime and fear victimization are also discussed in this paper together with the fear and demography, and divergent finding and explanation.
References
Ferraro, K. F. (2013). Fear of Crime: Interpreting Victimization Risk. New York: SUNY Press.
Kury, H. (2013). Fear of Crime – Punitivity: New Developments in Theory and Research. Toledo: Brockmeyer Verlag.
Lab, S. P. (2015). Crime Prevention: Approaches, Practices, and Evaluations. California: Routledge.
Snell, C. (2011). Neighborhood Structure, Crime, and Fear of Crime: Testing Bursik and Grasmick’s Neighborhood Control Theory. Colorado: LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC.