The Routledge International Handbook on Fear of Crime

The Routledge International Handbook on Fear of Crime brings together original and international state of the art contributions of theoretical, empirical, policy-related scholarship on the intersection of perceptions of crime, victimisation, vulnerability and risk. This is timely as fear of crime has now been a focus of scholarly and policy interest for some fifty years and shows little sign of abating. Research on fear of crime is demonstrative of the inter-disciplinarity of criminology, drawing in the disciplines of sociology, psychology, political science, history, cultural studies, gender studies, planning and architecture, philosophy and human geography. This collection draws in many of these interdisciplinary themes.

This collections also extends the boundaries of fear of crime research. It does this both methodologically and conceptually, but perhaps more importantly it moves us beyond some of the often repeated debates in this field to focus on novel topics from unique perspectives. The book begins by plotting the history of fear of crime’s development, then moves on to investigate the methodological and theoretical debates that have ensued and the policy transfer that occurred across jurisdictions. Key elements in debates and research on fear of crime concerning gender, race and ethnicity are covered, as are contemporary themes in fear of crime research, such as regulation, security, risk and the fear of terrorism, the mapping of fear of crime and fear of crime beyond urban landscapes. The final sections of the book explore geographies of fear and future and unique directions for this research.

Murray Lee is Professor of Criminology at the University of Sydney Law School, Australia. He is the author of Inventing Fear of Crime: Criminology and the Politics of Anxiety, co-author of Policing and Media: Public Relations, Simulations and Communications, co-author of Sexting and Young people, co-editor of Fear of Crime: Critical Voices in an Age of Anxiety, and editor of the scholarly journal ‘Current Issues in Criminal Justice’. His research focuses broadly on representations and perceptions of crime and how these lead to processes of criminalisation.

Gabe Mythen is Professor of Criminology in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Liverpool, UK. He is also Regional Director of the ESRC North West Doctoral Training Partnership and President of the International Sociological Association Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty Group. His current research interests include critical approaches to fear of crime; the limits to state counter radicalisation policy and the securitisation of everyday life.