Why Don’t the Police Make Me Feel Safe? Using Black’s Theory of Law to Potentially Extend Current Findings on Crime Victims’ Fear

ORCID

May: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8275-6773

MSU Affiliation

College of Arts and Sciences; Department of Sociology

Creation Date

2026-06-01

Abstract

Despite an extensive body of literature centering around the fear of crime, victim fear, especially as it is affected by policing, remains understudied. To fill this research gap, we use National Crime Victimization (NCVS) data to analyze whether and to what extent police can influence fear of crime among violent crime victims, and whether variables inherent within propositions outlined by Black (1976) interact with police effort and actions, including whether an arrest was made in the case, to predict such fear. Findings suggest that few such variables interact with whether an arrest was made, and no variables interact with police effort in impacting victim fear. Specifically, only living in an urban area and renting rather than owning one’s home interact with an arrest being made in one’s case in predicting victim fear such that living in an urban area and having one’s case cleared with an arrest results in greater fear whereas being a renter whose case is cleared with an arrest yields decreased fear. Further, like earlier empirical work, we find that police effort itself increases victim fear while an arrest being made, in and of itself, has no significant effect on victim fear. A deeper analysis into our results and directions for future research are also discussed.

Publication Date

12-23-2024

Publication Title

American Journal of Criminal Justice

Publisher

Springer

First Page

181

Last Page

204

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-024-09787-3