Comparing Fear of Crime and Crime Statistics on a University Campus
Campus crime at colleges and universities has resulted in a call for more safety and preventive measures from policymakers, students, to citizens. While research highlights students’ fear on campus crime, few studies have examined this topic from a spatia
- PDF / 689,423 Bytes
- 19 Pages / 439.37 x 666.14 pts Page_size
- 101 Downloads / 182 Views
Comparing Fear of Crime and Crime Statistics on a University Campus Sven Fuhrmann, Niem Tu Huynh, and Ruojing Scholz
Abstract Campus crime at colleges and universities has resulted in a call for more safety and preventive measures from policymakers, students, to citizens. While research highlights students’ fear on campus crime, few studies have examined this topic from a spatial and cognitive perspective. In this chapter the authors report on a novel methodology to compare campus crime data with participants’ selfreported cognitive fear of crime maps. In this study, 313 undergraduate students provided fear of crime maps at a middle-sized university in the southwestern United States. The students’ perceptions were aggregated and compared to university crime statistics to produce five bivariate maps. These maps represent perceived fear of crime in relation to four broadly observed crime categories namely burglary, theft, harassment, and sexual assault. In this research effort, students’ fear of crime is aligned with data for actual burglary and theft occurrences but their fear is exaggerated for harassment and sexual assault. The implications of this study are multifold, extending from potential safety improvements and better decision-making (e.g., aid law enforcement to target specific areas for crime monitoring) to developing educational workshops to dispel myths and present facts on campus safety. The introduced bivariate mapping technique provides another step towards safer university and college campuses.
S. Fuhrmann (*) • R. Scholz Department of Geography, Texas State University – San Marcos, San Marcos, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] N.T. Huynh Association of American Geographers, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected] M. Leitner (ed.), Crime Modeling and Mapping Using Geospatial Technologies, Geotechnologies and the Environment 8, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4997-9_14, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
319
320
S. Fuhrmann et al.
Keywords Crime mapping • Campus crime • Cognitive maps • Fear of crime • Geographic information systems
14.1
Introduction
College campuses have been described as microcosms of society (Rund 2002). Although a generally safe place for students, faculty and staff, campuses are also subject to criminal activity like its surrounding communities. The majority of offences recorded on campuses are property crimes while violent crimes are rare (Robinson and Roh 2001). Nevertheless, the frequency and severity of events have made campus crime a priority for Congress and state-level policymakers with parents and students demanding more preventative measures (Fisher et al. 1997). College-related crime has received major public awareness with the murder of Jeanne Clery in 1986. Her case resulted in the Clery Act of 1990 (20 U.S.C § 1092(f)) which requires all institutions of higher education to disclose campus crime information publicly on an annual basis. The campus security report includes crime statistics, information about safety, prevention, a
Data Loading...
