Schaut, Andreas

6th Semester

Eberhard Karls University, Tuebingen

The Fear of Victimization ­ Paradox:

disproportional fear of women and the elderly ­ rational or irrational?

Seminararbeit

Im Schwerpunktbereich 7:

Rechtspflege in Strafsachen

Im Rahmen des

XXII. POST GRADUATE COURSE OF

VICTIMOLOGY, VICTIM ASSISTANCE, AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE

1. - 14. MAY 2006

INTER UNIVERSITY CENTRE DUBROVNIK, CROATIA

Sommersemester 2006

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List of Contents

1. Introduction 3

2. Description of the Paradox 3

2.1. Women 4

2.2. The elderly 6

2.3. Conclusion 7

3. Theoretical Explanations 7

3.1. Generalized Fear Hypothesis 7

3.1.1. Explaining the fear of women 8

3.1.1.1. Generalized fear of sexual molestation and hidden violence 8

3.1.1.2. Altruistic fear 9

3.1.2. Explaining the fear of the elderly 10

3.1.3. The role of the media 10

3.1.4. Indirect victimization 11

3.2. Vulnerability Hypothesis 12

3.2.1. Physical vulnerability 13

3.2.2. Social vulnerability 14

3.3. Differential Exposure Hypothesis 15

4. Valuation and personal suggestions 18

Appendix: 20

Supplement: Historical Completion 21

1. Offences against persons: the persecution of the Jews 22

2. Offences against public authority: the "Bundschuh" 24

3. Offences against property: the alchemist 25

Last consideration 27

References 28

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1. Introduction

Regarding the fear of victimization, researchers soon found a disproportional high fear among

women and elderly people. In this paper I do not only want to describe the different attempts

of explanations dealing with these findings. I also want to test if and to what extend the single

explanations fit to the fear of victimization among young German law students.

For that reason I developed a questionnaire with 13 questions. During a history of law ­ lec-

ture I had 15 minutes to hand out my questionnaires among the first semester students. I chose

the first semester, because I expected them to be mostly at the age between 18 and 25, so in

order to compare women and young men, who ­ as we will see ­ differ enormously in their

fear of victimization. After sorting out persons over 25, I received 122 questionnaires: 58 by

young men and 64 by young women. Neither knowing many older persons nor having that

much time for further research during the semester I focussed my own work on this compari-

son.

Although my questions are well thought-off and some of them even quotations of large sur-

veys, this research cannot lay claim to be representative - and it does not want to be. To gen-

eralize my findings, the number of participants is on the one hand too small; on the other hand

they all have more or less the same economic and social background. Dividing the students

into smaller groups according to how they marked the questionnaire, the single groups left are

certainly too small to be generalized. Of course one has to be careful with the results I re-

ceived: Differences of three, four or five percent are almost inconsiderable. But on the other

hand clear and obvious diversities even within this quite small group I asked indicate that dif-

ferences to some extent indeed do exist. As I already mentioned, my aim was not to do a rep-

resentative research - there are anyway lots of them ­ but to find out if and to what extend the

attempts of explanations concerning the Fear of Victimization - Paradox fit to young German

law students at the University of Tuebingen.

2. Description of the Paradox

First of all, the Fear of Victimization - Paradox is in the literature more commonly known as

the Fear of Crime - Paradox.1 But this is inexact: Speaking about the fear of crime, you have

to distinguish between a person′s perception of his own chances of victimization and the indi-

vidual estimation of the seriousness of criminal activity in society.2 In this context the fear of

crime is viewed just as fear of victimization. This is the cognitive dimension of fear of crime,

the perception that one is vulnerable and exposed to victimization, and that victimization has

1 Boers, 1991, p. 57.

2 Giles-Sims, 1984, p. 223.

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serious consequences for oneself.3 That′s why I prefer the term "Fear of Victimization ­

Paradox".

Such fear is usually measured by the so called standard term. That is ­ with some formulation

variants: "How safe do you feel when you walk alone in your community at night?" This

question asks if the person is personally fearful of crime, and less if he or she is concerned

about rising crime as a social issue. But the validity of this standard term is not undisputed:

One the one hand, it does not contain the victimization as reference point of fear at all4, on the

other hand it is not able to cover public crime inside buildings.5 Nevertheless it certainly con-

tains aspects of fear of victimization and it enables former investigations to remain compara-

ble to recent ones.6

Since the advent of systematic research on fear of victimization in the late 1960s, researchers

have continually sought to explain the following finding:

Fear of crime of women and men in Germany ordered by age groups (in %)7:

2.1. Women

Females, indicated in the table by the two lines drawn through, exhibit substantially higher

fear of victimization than males ­ on average three times higher.

The question I used to measure the fear of victimization was the standard term:

"How safe do

you feel when you walk alone in your community at night?"

The possible answers were:

"safe", "quite safe", "quite unsafe" and "unsafe":

3 Yin, 1985, p. 31.

4 Ferraro/ La Grange, 1987, p. 77.

5 Lindesay, 1991, p. 55.

6 Greve/ Hosser/ Wetzels, 1996, p. 33.

7 Source: public-opinion poll Heidelberg/Freiburg 1998

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100

80

60

safe or quite safe

40

unsafe or quite unsafe

20

0

young men

women

The result regarding the young law students matches the already mentioned finding: 58 % of

the women feel "unsafe" or "quite unsafe" ­ in contrast to just 10.3 % of the men ­ whereas

almost 90 % of the young men marked "safe" or "quite safe".

It is of course fair to assume that the high fear of women is founded on a high risk of victimi-

zation. The higher the possibility to become a victim, the higher the fear. Surprisingly investi-

gations regarding the fear of victimization among women show the contrary: The fear is in-

verse proportional to the risk of victimization.8

One would then perhaps suppose that the fear of victimization is due to the experience of be-

ing victimized. The more often a person was victimized, the higher the fear. Whereas some

researchers supposed a positive relation between fear of victimization and being victimized9, a

connection between actual victimization and fear of victimization could empirically not be

proofed. Depending on different types of measurement, some authors reported a positive rela-

tionship between actual victimization and fear, some reported a weak correlation and some

even a non-existent one.10

I also asked one question which refers to actual victimization. Because the possibility of hav-

ing become a victim during the lifespan is higher when you are 25 years old than at the age of

18, I had to limit the time span:

"Did you become a victim of a criminal offence (e.g. theft,

bodily harm, damage to property, sexual assault etc.) during the last three years?"

The

possible answers were "yes" and "no".

8 For all: Boers, 1991, p. 57.

9 Smith, 1976, pp. 203-219.

10 for all: Hale, 1996, p. 104.

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100

group: m an, s afe/ quite

80

safe

60

group: m en, unsafe /quite
unsafe

40

group: w om e n, uns afe/
quite uns afe

20

group: w om e n, s afe/quite

0

safe

ye s

no

73 % of the women who felt unsafe or quite unsafe and all of the fearful men have never been

victimized. On the other hand, 15 % of the women and 18 % of the men of the safe/ quite safe

group have already been victimized. A positive correlation of the fear of victimization with

the experience of being victimized is not apparent.

2.2. The elderly

Who "the elderly" are, can surely not be decided objectively.11 Speaking about "the elderly",

most empirical researches deal with persons at the age of more than 60 or 65 years.12 The

mentioned finding is also valid for the elderly13:

11 ,,You are as old as you feel", German proverb.

12 Boers, 1991, p. 71.

13 Source: Police Crime Statistics 2006 ­ Federal Republic of Germany.

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Empirically gathered data show that the elderly are generally less victimized than other age

groups.14 Corresponding to that, those offences which are supposed to primarily concern the

elderly are among the smallest group of officially registered offences in Germany.15 At the

same time, the elderly are enormous fearful of being victimized.16 As Clemente and Kleiman

expressed, it "is reasonable to argue that for the older people fear of crime is even more of a

problem than crime itself."17

2.3. Conclusion

These findings lead to the so called "Fear of Victimization - Paradox": Although women and

the elderly are not disproportional often victimized and although their risk of victimization is

the lowest, women and the elderly have the highest fear of victimization.

While the paradox is obvious for women and the elderly, it seems not to be valid concerning

ethnic descent and income.18

In the face of this apparent paradox, investigators have advanced a variety of alternative ex-

planations.

3. Theoretical Explanations

3.1. Generalized Fear Hypothesis

"Is fear of crime simply the fear of crime?", asked Garofalo and Laub in 1978.19 What they

meant was, that - as researchers soon realized - the fear of becoming a victim is not a concern

that can be analyzed in itself without considering the way that persons perceive others and

society in general.20 Convinced, that the fear of victimization is mixed up with a number of

other fears and aggravations, both attempted to link the fear of crime with the quality of life.

That included economic abundance, various social indicators, e.g. health service, environ-

mental pollution and education as well as subjective indicators like individual happiness, sat-

isfaction and personal well-being. In that way they showed that with the increase of general

pessimism and depression the fear of victimization increased as well. Already in 1967 the

President′s Commission wrote in its report, that "the tendency of many people to think of

crime in terms of increasing moral deterioration is an indication that they are loosing their

faith in their society". The conclusion they drew was that the fear of victimization is just a

14 Yin, 1980, p. 499.

15 Polizeiliche Kriminalststistik 2004.

16 Lindquist/ Duke, 1982, p. 118.

17 Clementa/ Kleiman, 1976, p. 207.

18 Boers, 1991, p. 57.

19 Garofalo/ Laub, 1978, p. 243.

20 Brillon, 1987, p. 3.

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