Perception of Crimes and Crime Rates

Perception of Crimes and Crime Rates

        Everyday, all around us, an illegal act is committed. It is sometimes done by us, around us, or even directed towards us. So should we be scared and fearful of crimes? Does Crime happen too often and nothing is done about it?

An undergraduate at the University of Central Florida did some research to find out who and how much crime is feared and what is thought about it. The author was interested in the fear of crime being greater than the crime occurrence itself, with the effect of those being scared based off their gender, age, race, social class, media exposure, perceived risk, and if they were prior victims of crimes.  His hypotheses were that older and more affluent people will report lower fear of crime; women, minorities, and people who are more exposed to the media will report a higher fear of crime, a higher percieved risk to crime and poor victimization will increase a person fear of crime; and lastly, peoples perception of crime will be greater than the actual occurrence of crimes. The author had used a data collection method (survey) to collect his information by handing out 330 surveys (received 318 back and only used 315) to two upper and two lower divisions of classrooms at the University of Central Florida during the spring semester of 2004. Her dependent variable was the fear of crime (on a scale of 1-10), and the independent variables were gender, age, race/ethnicity, social class, media exposure, victimization, and perceived risk of danger to crime. The results she got back were mostly from women aged between 18-31 with the average at 19.53, the race was split into white and nonwhite with 71.9% being white and 28.1% not white. Social class was mainly middle class (49.5%), 2.5% wealthy, 31.7% upper middle class, 13% working class, and only 3.2% poor. With the results and independent variables in mind, the overall results showed that women had the higher fear of crime compared to men, but minorites also had higher rates of fear to crime. Age is not a factor in fear of crime and there is no significant relationship between social class and fear of crime. Of the people surveyed, 41.7% had been victims of crime- 24.8% property only, 10.5% violent only, and 6.1% both property and violent crime victims. These people did not show significant increases in fear of crime compared to those who were not victims of crime. It also showed that if one watched local TV news, they were more likely to have a higher fear of crime.

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Violent crime rates, according to the UCR include murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assauly. When looking at the UCRs crime report information on violent crime rates over the years, it is easy to note that the crime rates were steadily increasing from the early 70’s to their peak in 1991 at 758.2 violent crimes happening per 100,000 people. It then started to decrease until eventually starting to level out in 2011.

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Going from the UCRs graph of crime rates to the NCVS’s, it is important to note that the UCR is rated per every 100,000 while the NCVS is rated per every 1,000 that is twelve years old and up. Also, NCVS does not include murder in its serious violent victimization rates, otherwise it would match the UCRs graph much better. While they both show very similar lines and represent the same things, the rates are different, but they still represent the same things.

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