CRIM 3654 - OCTOBER 4TH LECTURE NOTES

CRIM 3654 – FALL LECTURE NOTES October 4th, 2013 Crime Prevention in a Climate of Security - security is not a thing, but a configuration of social relations (umbrella term) - what kind of social relations inform 'security' - security as productive of social relations - criminalization of security - what are the social implications of the culture of security? - think about the productive nature of security - the ways that both insecurity and security produce certain kinds of ideas, ways of knowing or being in the world, and certain kinds of people Fear - regardless of whether this fear is realistic, fear itself is treated as an important indicator of people's quality of life --- "quality of life indicator" - rather than telling people not to be afraid, instead we find that articulation of fear is taken seriously, and many crime prevention techniques are meant to reduce people's anxiety about crime, rather than crime itself - in 1960s we begin to see surveys of population that begin to ask people questions directly about fear of crime - before, fear of crime did not exist as an independent variable - fear of crime became important variable as the primary indicator of the quality of life - part of the difficulty of measuring fear of crime is: (1) the definition of crime, (2) tendency to conflict fear of crime with people's perception of their risk of crime - fear of crime is used as a central index of the quality of life, and there are good reasons for doing this - more of our resources go to decreasing anxieties and fears - racial politics coalesce with the fear of crime Fear of Crime and Gender - women report themselves as more fearful than do men - we're not necessarily interested in assessing the quality of the fear, it's about the articulation of the fear in and of itself - women limit their opportunities because of their fear of crime - demonstrates that whether these women are right about these perceptions, fear is a culpable force --- a salience beyond its statistical correctness - poor people were criminalized by aggressive pan-handler - Ontario Safe Streets Act: (1) "in a manner that is likely to cause a reasonable person to be concerned for his or her safety or security, (2) makes an offence out of feeling intimated Ontario Safe Streets Act - people\s fear of crime becomes the basis for this law - in this culture of control, there is no such thing as a victimless crime - we are making victims out of people because they seem fearful - this validation of the fear of crime is donned by the media -- we are told that there is danger out there, so if we are afraid it is normal - if we weren't buying, the media wouldn't be selling -- we have to take some of the responsibility Fear of Crime - Murray Lee suggests we reverse the causality argument of fear of crime - common sense story is that people are afraid of crime so it is our responsibility to study, map, and interpret that as criminologists - Lee says think of that reversely; rather than treating fear as a fact that we should study, fear of crime is actually produced by our efforts to study it - it is suggested that our efforts to study and then govern it creates "fearing subjects" (what is regulated, and for people whom regulation is targeted to) - they are produced and discovered by our attempts to study them in the first place - Fearing subjects: fear of crime does not exist independent of our attempts to study it - Fear of crime produces political subjects and authorizes ideas about the social world - this fear of crime technically ends up producing a governing order on how we should live our life based on these fears - security is the "cure" to the fear of crime Josh Lauer (2005): SUV's and Fear of Crime - SUV's emerged as the quintessential reaction to America's fear of crime - "defended social space" - came to this conclusion by studying ads about these SUV's - SUV manufacturers market these vehicles specifically around fear - "no matter how far the journey, the need to make it home is basic...why is it the farther away we travel the more we think about home? is it the fear of not making it back? - the environment is a metaphor for the city -- the city is inhospitable, a growing urban jungle - ads suggest pure safety of solitude -- market it in the way of those with means to get across the urban jungle of the city to the top of the mountain or whatever - the inside space of SUV's is marketed as domestic space - Allows those with the ability to purchase an SUV to distance themselves from what they perceive to be the dangerous city, to exclude themselves from disorder, and project themselves as providing security for themselves and their loved ones - SUV's represen