Brendan Alferez
03/25/2015
Sociology 04
Prof. Alvarado
Predictors of Fear of Criminal Victimization At School Among Adolescents
The article of predictors of fear of criminal victimization was one that greatly caught my attention due to the fact of how many and what types of people are scared to be around criminal activity and being targeted as a victim. Just like anyone, no one wants to be a victim in a crime and be put in a stressful situation. This article reveals how fear of criminal victimization can effect our youth and also a great number of adults.
To start off my section of this article it was shown that at this school 57.4 % of white students have had fear for being victimized and 42.6% of African American students were. What stood out to me the most was that 57.3 % who had been victimized were female while 42.7% were male. Perception is a great role for any type of topic and for this article it is important. Perception is important because as stated in the article perceived safety at school is a great predictor of adolescent fear of criminal victimization at school, as those youths who perceived school as an unsafe environment were more likely to be fearful than those youths who did not have the same perception. To add to that, students in lower grades were significantly more fearful than those students in higher grades. Contrary to research examining fear of crime among adults, gender, race, economic status, and victimization experience did not have a statistically significant effect on adolescent fear of crime at school. It goes to show that there are different reasons and dynamics involved in what drives the victimizing with adults VS adolescents.
Even though there are plenty of studies done on fear of crimes for adults there are not many done for adolescents which criminologist would like to start doing more to possibly figure out the root of what causes these crimes and why do they victimize certain people. It is found that youth are much more likely to actually experience crime through participation, victimization, and observation so by targeting younger generations they can possible find trends in crimes at a young age and put a stop to it so it does not reach adulthood. Although adults and youth have different variables as to why they are in fear they do have a few in common such as their neighborhood, one of the most important variables due to perception. In a controlled gender race interaction females were found more likely to be fearful of crime which youth and adult hood both shared the same fact. One difference they do have is that socioeconomic status was not found to affect adolescent fear but it did come into play for adults. Finally, the variable of grade in school was found to be inversely related to fear of crime. In other words, adolescents were likely to fear crime as they matriculated through high school in which of course adults in the work force do not have grades.
A part of the research that interested me was that male and female adolescent fear is influenced differently. The effect of race operates differently for males and females. It was found that African American male adolescents were more fearful of crime at school. On the other hand, no race effect was witnessed for females. For female perception of school had a great deal of why they had fear of crimes. It is argued that the specific fear of rape by women is the dominant factor that explains gender differences for fear of crime. Rape is a serious crime that does come into females minds which for a good reason does lead to fear. This type of research is one that is fairly new and must be replicated in other ways. Given that the study concentrated on school fear, as well as experiences within the school context, it would perhaps, be useful to examine victimization experiences and safety perceptions in a larger context. Fear of crime within school is only one dimension of overall adolescent fear. Thus, fear of crime in other environments is likely to affect specific fears. Further, attention needs to be paid to the cultural context of adolescents and its relationship to fear of crime. With the media adding a great toll to what is perceived of certain schools and of course mainly reporting negativity and violence, it can defiantly change someone’s perception on what they think of not only the school but city as well. The Media plays a great roll on how a city and school can be seen. Finally, fear-of-crime research in general may want to consider a life-course approach in order to understand when fear of crime develops in individuals and whether fear of crime is constant across one’s life span.
QUESTIONS
1) Do you believe the media plays a roll in instilling fear to the viewers and students watching? Why or why not?
2) As a young female in school do you believe that it is tougher then being a young man? Why or why not?
3) Do the demographics play a great toll to instill fear on attending school? Why or why not?