Effectiveness of Fear and Crime Prevention Strategy for Sustainability of Safe City

Abstract

Crime is a manifestation of incivility that society attempts to curb, yet faces enormous challenges, as crime is a by-product of urbanization and human advancement. As more agglomeration of the population in cities around the globe, humankind’s safety from being threatened by crime needed to be safeguard to sustain everyday living in cities. Humans’ co-existence with crime and fear of crime in cities vis-a-vis efforts preventing it from occurring has been widely carried out in developed countries. An increasing trend is showing in emerging and developing countries. Therefore, this article provides empirical evidence regarding a safe city program launched in Malaysia. This study aims to identify the factors contributing to the prevention of crime and fear of crime. This study employed a survey questionnaire to 400 pedestrians’ perceptions of Kuala Lumpur city’s central business district. The result showed that prevention methods through the actor of “capable guardians” (i.e., authorities) are effective; however, methods through the actor of “suitable victims” (i.e., communities) is ineffective. Further studies should explore perspective of the actor of “likely offenders” (i.e., criminals) to fill in the gap of safe city program’s effectiveness and sustainability.