The genesis of 'fear of crime'

The `fear of crime' has, in the past three decades or so, developed as an important area of criminological research and inquiry. Debates have proliferated within and outside of the discipline of criminology about what crime fear might be, the rationality or irrationality of crime fear, which socio-demographic groups are most fearful of crime and why, and how to measure `fear of crime'. This article traces the emergence of `fear of crime' as a topic of criminological and governmental discourse. It argues that `fear of crime' is not a pre-discursive `social fact' but a contingent category born of a set of very particular discursive arrangements and shifts. As such it poses some serious questions about the power effects of doing `fear of crime' research and about the relationships between criminological knowledge and the processes and practices of government.