Fear of crime among students of faculty of Law in Split

Abstract

One of the main challenges of this paper is to clearly define fear of crime as a sociological phenomenon in its terminological sense, and to critically analyze the basic criminological and sociological concepts that surround it. A key issue to be explored is the legitimacy of the fear of crime concept in itself. Based on such an introductory analysis, relevant international and domestic research on fear of crime shall be presented, as well as its key findings. Then the theoretical framework explaining fear of crime is explored, followed by the presentation and discussion of empirical research on fear of crime conducted in 2011 among students of the Faculty of Law in Split (N=243). Finally, there rises the question of what actually will be left for the relevant scientific disciplines, foremost sociology and criminology, if the state reaction to criminal behavior will be based upon questionably legitimate concepts about feelings and fears of citizens, instead of scientific insights as a result of empirical and theoretical research into crime?

Keywords

• fear of crime
• criminal victimization
• students