Disorder affects judgements about a neighbourhood: Police presence does not
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Psychiatry and Psychology
- Keywords
- social capital, police visibility, disorder, fear of crime
- Copyright
- © 2013 Hill et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
- Cite this article
- 2013. Disorder affects judgements about a neighbourhood: Police presence does not. PeerJ PrePrints 1:e130v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.130v1
Abstract
Many police forces operate a policy of high visibility in disordered neighbourhoods with high crime. However, little is known about whether increased police presence influences people’s beliefs about a neighbourhood’s social environment or their fear of crime. Three experimental studies compared people’s perceptions of social capital and fear of crime in disordered and ordered neighbourhoods, either with a police presence or no police presence. In all studies, neighbourhood disorder lowered perceptions of social capital, resulting in a higher fear of crime. Police presence or absence had no significant effect. The pervasive effects of disorder above other environmental cues are discussed.
Supplemental Information
(a) Mean perceptions of social capital by neighbourhood order and police presence (b) Mean fear of crime by neighbourhoodorder and police presence
(a) Disordered neighbourhoodwithout police presence; (b) Ordered neighbourhood without police presence; (c)Disordered neighbourhood with police presence; (d) Ordered neighbourhood withpolice presence
(a) Mean perceptions of social capital byneighbourhood order and police presence, Study 2 (b)Mean fear of crime by neighbourhood order and police presence
(a) Mean perceptions of social capital byneighbourhood order and police presence, Study 3 (b) Mean fear of crime by neighbourhood order and police presence, Study 3
Competing predictions of the effects of policepresence in disordered and ordered neighbourhoods on fear of crime