Place, social relations and the fear of crime: a review

Abstract

This article reviews the literature on fear of crime of interest to the geographical and environmental disciplines. After discussing definitional and methodological issues, the article focuses on accounts which link fear with the physical environment, and then on fear, social identity and exclusion. It considers the significance of one area of recent research that attempts to link place and social relations through developing local ethnographies of fear. The review concludes with some suggestions for building upon this work, and highlights the relevance of the geographical themes discussed to current policy debates.