Sociological Problem: The Public Perception Of Crime

1.1 Sociological Problem

The public perception of crime is that it has increased whilst official statistics show that overall, crime has decreased over the years. In this ‘risk society’, a fear of victimisation has become part of our lifestyle and we are constantly reminded of the potential dangers of becoming victims of crime. The famous study by Stanley Cohen (Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972)) is a prime example of how society is encouraged to worry about certain groups and use them as a scapegoat to blame society’s problems on. Sociologists are concerned with this topic as the fear of crime is becoming a bigger problem to tackle than crime itself.

1.2 Research Question

Why has the fear of crime increased when statistics
They are accused of giving a distorted image of crime, criminals and policing. There are studies that indicate that the proportion of news devoted to crime has increased over the past 50 years. An example is a study that found the proportion of space given to crime reports in the Daily Mirror and the Times from 1945 to 1991 increased from 8% to 21% (Reiner et al., 2000). The coverage of violent and sexual crimes is significantly greater than their incidence as measured by official statistics, victim studies and self report studies. Homicide accounts for one third of all crime news. William and Dickinson’s (1993) study of 10 national newspapers in 1989 found 64.5% of crime stories were about violence against a person, whereas the British Crime Survey only showed 6% of crimes reported by victims in 1989 about violence. The amount of violent and sexual crimes tended to be more frequent the more ‘down market’ the newspaper. Although murder stories attract much of the public eye, it only accounts for 600 or 700 offences a year, with most of these being domestic violence. Table 3.03 (see appendix 2) shows the difference between tabloid newspapers and broadsheet newspapers and people’s perception of crime. 81% of people who read ‘popular’ newspapers believed crime had increased, in comparison to 59% of people who read ‘broadsheet’ newspapers. This shows how the type of newspaper affects people’s view of crime and how the media want certain groups to worry about crime more than others. If the working class are living in fear of crime, they are less likely to rise and revolt, as they are too busy fearing the ‘vicious’ streets. Crime news focuses on the actual incident of the crime rather than the causes. However broadsheets such as the Guardian are more likely to contain an analysis of the causes of crime (Carrabine et al.,