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What may make people feel vulnerable?
As we explored in the toolkit, anyone at any stage of
their life can be fearful about crime, given the wrong set
of circumstances and / or information. For example, if a
person has been mugged, then regardless of their personal
circumstances, abilities, background or geographical
location, their experience may make them feel more
vulnerable and consequently more fearful.
Similarly, if the readers of a local paper are bombarded
with sensational stories about the supposedly high levels of
crime in their area, it may have a profound impact on how
vulnerable they feel.
Real-life examples abound, but perhaps the most dramatic
illustration is the collective anxiety, which can grip
communities and even countries in the wake of a high-profile
child abduction. An unmeasured response to ‘Stranger
Danger’ doesn’t just impact on the fearfulness of
children themselves, but can also profoundly affect their
parents, grandparents, friends of the family and so on.
Consequently, vulnerable groups or individuals can be divided in to
those that are more fearful because of external factors,
such as where they live or their own experience of crime,
and those that feel vulnerable for intrinsic reasons related
to their gender, ethnicity, ability, health, age and sexual
orientation.
This triangle is
designed to assist the identification of key drivers of
disadvantage and where there are perceived to be more than one
reason for this. The triangle provides assistance in
identifying the prime driver for that perception in order to
direct the individual to the appropriate source of assistance
to reduce their fear of crime. The model reflects the perfect
state of drivers for vulnerability, but in practice the model
will be skewed according to the predominant characteristic as
perceived by the individual.
External factors
External factors can increase or decrease fear across
every group or range of individuals. It is only once these
external factors have been isolated and identified that the
discussion can move on to what more can be done to
specifically reduce the fear of crime amongst more
vulnerable groups.
So what are these crosscutting factors?
The physical environment
Communication of information
A perceived lack of support
mechanisms
Other factors
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