Fear of crime is measured mostly through surveys and polls. The appendix to this report contains a chapter on issues related to how fear of crime is measured, including a section on different types of surveys and the questions which get asked.

Focus groups and the types of community workshops done by Linda MacLeod and others permit people to tell their stories around fear. Those stories do not lend themselves to the neat categories of data preferred by most researchers but they are the flesh and bones, soul and spirit, to the skeleton of statistics. The fear dwells in the stories, not in the statistics, and it is in the stories that it can actually be addressed.

So Are Canadians Afraid? The Statistics , The Stories and The Consequences

The discussion on fear of crime in Canada is fraught with landmines, especially explosive in the use and mis-use of statistics. Vince Sacco reported in the most recent Juristat that 86 per cent of Canadians are "very or somewhat satisfied" with their general level of safety. On the one hand, that might be reassuring to the majority of Canadians and help put into perspective the occasional heightened level of fear which typically follows high profile, violent incidents. On the other hand, the 86 per cent figure ignores many significant problems; actually almost half of that group - 46 per cent of Canadians - are only "somewhat" satisfied with their general level of safety, leaving an ongoing challenge for community leaders and government policy makers in the country. The 86 per cent figure also conceals much higher proportions of fear in segments of the population such as women in general and poorer income, urban residents, including some from minority groups.

Nevertheless, the 86 per cent figure is a good perspective to remember as this report now puts fear of crime in Canada under the microscope, magnifying its reality, meaning and consequences for a better understanding of the phenomenon while not wanting to overstate its presence.

(i) What the surveys tell us

Here are some highlights from the 1993 General Social Survey and the 1993 Violence Against Women Survey:

• one in four Canadians said they felt "somewhat" or "very unsafe" walking alone in their
  neighbourhoods after dark.

• women were more than four times as likely as men to say that they do or would feel "somewhat unsafe" or "very unsafe" walking alone in their area after dark, and about three times as likely to say they are "very worried" or "somewhat worried" when home alone in the evening or during the night.

• there is conflicting evidence about the elderly and their fears. There is little indication that fear increases with age, as illustrated when older Canadians are asked questions which are more relevant to their everyday lives, such as being alone at home in the evening or assessing their general safety from crime. While 27 per cent of those aged 15 to 24 stated that they are "worried" when home alone in the evening, 23 per cent of older Canadians felt the same worry. But persons aged 65 and over were almost twice as likely to indicate feeling "unsafe" when walking alone in their area after dark.

• there was a small but measurable increase in the level of fear of criminal victimization compared to 1988, reflected in respondents' levels of apprehension while walking alone in their neighbourhoods at night. But Canadians were not at a higher risk of being a victim of crime than they were five years earlier, based on individual and household victimization rates.

• victims of more serious crimes had levels of fear higher than the national average. Fear of walking alone in their area after dark was highest among victims of sexual assault (46 per cent), followed by robbery (33 per cent), break and enter (32 per cent) and vandalism (26 per cent).

• Canadians take numerous precautionary measures to protect themselves or their property from crime. Thirty eight per cent said they changed their activities or avoided certain places, 32 per cent installed new locks, 15 per cent installed burglar alarms, 12 per cent obtained a dog, 10 per cent took a self-defence course, nine per cent changed their phone number and two per cent obtained a gun.

• regarding precautionary measures women take for their personal safety: 67 per cent of women lock their car doors while driving alone, 60 per cent of women who drive check the back seat for intruders before getting in, 31 per cent try to avoid walking past teen-aged boys or young men, 17 per cent of Canadian women always or usually carry something to defend themselves or to alert other people, eleven per cent have taken a self-defence course.

• women who had experienced violent victimization were more likely to state they always take these protective measures.

Extensive analysis of the surveys by researchers begin to put a face on people's fears. Victimization rates which influence those fears vary according to the victims' gender, age, geographical location, marital status, type of main activity and whether or not they engaged in more evening activities away from the home. Examples may help here. As men get older, their fear increases; the proportion feeling very unsafe is more than three times as great in the 65 and over category when compared to the 15 to 24-year-old group. The proportion of urban dwellers feeling somewhat unsafe or very unsafe is generally twice as high that of rural residents, for both sexes. Consistent with the 1988 findings, the youngest and oldest age groups for women (15-24, 65 and older) exhibit the lowest feelings of safety. Overall, victimization rates for women are 11 per cent higher than for men, largely because of the fact that sexual assaults are rarely reported against men. Gender differences are underlined even in relation to marital status, where the rate of victimization is 27 per cent higher for single women than single men and twice as high for separate or divorced women as separated or divorced men. Separated or divorced women have the highest victimization rate of any group.

Several co-related factors increase risk of victimization, and related fears. High levels of risk and fear are evident for women who are young, single, perhaps students or in the work force, and involved in thirty or more evening activities in a mont (the last factor identifies a group who usually for social or work-related reasons go out of their homes almost every night).

From an international perspective, the 1992 International Crime Survey put Canada in the lowest third of twelve countries in terms of fear based on the typical measurement of walking alone in the neighbourhood at night. On another question, Canada placed in the mid-range of countries in terms of its citizens taking precautions when going out at night, particularly through avoiding certain risky areas or staying clear of certain persons. Twenty-one per cent of respondents acknowledged taking precautions, ranking Canada twelfth of twenty countries - Japan was the lowest at 15.6 per cent and Italy was the highest at 38.6 per cent. Asked if they felt somewhat or very unsafe out alone after dark, 20 per cent of Canadians answered in the affirmative, compared for example with Sweden at 13.5 per cent and the United States at 41 per cent. In general, there was a sense that their own neighbourhood was safe and crime was a problem elsewhere.

All these statistics can be a bit numbing and impersonal unless one moves to the stories and the real life experiences of Canadians.

(ii) Fear of Crime: A Description

The Stories:
A woman recently wrote this letter to the Ottawa Citizen:

"When one hears the term 'the silent killer' one usually thinks 'heart attack'. There is another silent killer. Fear. It engulfs you, washes over you, controls your whole being.... I find myself lost, in a sea of swirling emotions with no sense of identity and still controlled by fear - not of the unknown, but because of past memories - knowing what can still happen.... There are days I wish the threat on my life had been carried out. My fear would then be ended. I now have a life sentence of looking over my shoulder, always being on guard, waiting in case he drinks again, places the blame for his unhappiness on me and carries out the threat. To those people who have never lived in an abusive environment, please do not condemn those who remain in the relationship. It is often safer and easier to remain where one knows what is happening, how the pattern runs, what to expect and when.... When we are out of the relationship, the silent killer will devour us because of the not knowing."

High school students who are gay or lesbian report a high proportion of harassment, hostility and violence in high schools where gay jokes are rampant and many students feel perfectly justified in openly expressing their hatred.

Linda MacLeod heard of many women's fears in her cross-country workshops:
being isolated geographically; having no community network; sensing that neighbours or a passer-by would not come to their assistance if they were in danger, or were actually being attacked; believing they would not receive support from other women; not knowing how to get help if they needed it (a fear especially prevalent among immigrants, seniors or the disabled).

People's fear also seems to be influenced by the fact that, through the media, we are exposed daily to the pain of the victims of crime in a manner so intense that we imagine ourselves in the place of those afflicted.

(iii) Fear of Crime: The Consequences

The consequences of all forms of fear of crime are enormous (individual communities would need to study which of these consequences are prevalent locally):

• Studies reveal that fear of victimization increases psychological distress and decreases outdoor physical activity, both of which negatively affect health.

• Fear of crime is identified as a factor that can increase the chances that children from public housing developments will fail in school.

• As women isolate themselves and withdraw from the community in an effort to protect themselves, communities begin to die. Communities wither, Linda MacLeod reminds us, because women are still the "keepers of the community". Women tend to be the volunteers for social and health programs, run the after-school programs, attend the parent-teachers associations, etc.

• Because of a concern for personal safety or for the security of their property, citizens may be unable to take advantage of social or cultural opportunities in their communities; discretionary income may be diverted towards "security" hardware.

• Fear of crime affects zoning decisions, stops people from coming to certain tourist spots for holidays, and influences organizations in their selection of sites for conferences (this is practically non-existent in Canadian reported concerns although quite prevalent in what is reflected in the American literature).
  
  
• Parks and playgrounds are abandoned and downtowns are deserted.
  
  
• Levels of interpersonal trust are undermined, frequencies of social interaction are reduced, patterns of spatial mobility are affected. Self-protection measures can be costly in human as well as economic terms.

• Fear and the withdrawal from community which it spawns can widen the rift between classes as the rich or upper middle class move to what they perceive as safer areas and/or protect themselves with sophisticated security systems and security guards.

• The literature indicates that fear of crime may itself be seen as a form of psychological distress which lessens the quality of life, restricts access to social or cultural opportunities, and undermines the social integration of local communities.
  
  
• Some women who fear victimization and may already have been victims of sexual assault report an inability to sustain relationships over the long term. Some are afraid to leave their home, paralyzed by an experience of violence which continues to keep them hostage. Years of abuse or a single violent incident can cause nightmares for years and make physical contact or a healthy sexual relationship impossible.
  
  
• Regardless of its source, fear of crime may cause individuals to withdraw physically and psychologically from community life, consequently weakening informal social controls and a neighbourhood's mobilization capacity.
  
  
• While understudied compared to residential areas, business areas are negatively affected as well by fear of crime and related physical and social disorders.
  
  
• It seems psychologically self-evident that fear makes people more defensive and can also make people more punitive.

• Fear of crime can undermine public confidence in the police as protectors and sustainers of order in society.

• Women may choose to appear and act "masculine" to divert male attention. A woman may choose not to get into an elevator if there is a lone man in it, she may park her car on the street rather than underground parking, decide never to take a taxi at night or keep her window shut tight on a hot summer night.

However, not all of the consequences of fear of crime are negative or lead to dysfunctional living.

Fears may lead to new daily rituals and precautions that are prudent and helpful. Elizabeth Stanko captured many of those rituals in her discussions with women who survived physical and sexual violence. "I only take five dollars with me now", "I just focus on where I am heading", "I go with someone else now". Streetwise rituals included varying routes home, walking on the street-side of the sidewalk or pavement, walking assertively, avoiding dimly-lit areas, selecting parking spaces carefully, never carrying valuables in a handbag, having friends wait outside until one is safely inside, carrying articles or weapons for self defence. There are subtle, small adjustments made by those afraid of crime, for example the decision to take a taxi instead of walking or going with someone else rather than alone.

Undeniably, fear of crime and crime hurt community, especially in that they undermine people coming together and interacting through healthy, viable lives.

Who are the "Fear of Crime" Groups in Canada?

While cautious about importing and applying American research to the Canadian scene, there is valuable and fundamental data in this regard. Numerous studies point to several common variables that account for who is afraid of crime: gender, area of residence (urban or rural), satisfaction with the neighbourhood, age, health, education, social class, marital status, experience of crime, helpfulness of people in the neighbourhood, number of persons living with you, and race. For the most part, those variables influence fears in Canada as well. The most important demographic predictors were sex, area of residence, age, health and whether the individual lived alone. A large body of research has confirmed that fear of crime is greater among women, the aged and the economically disadvantaged.

This demographic profile is significant when, as Vince Sacco has noted, those at high risk of victimization in this country do not in every instance coincide with those who have the highest levels of fear. The risks of victimization in Canada are greatest for those who are young, under 25, male, living in urban areas, members of ethnic minorities and/or economically disadvantaged. Their risks increase even more so if they actively engage in evening leisures, frequently consume alcohol and if they hold certain types of employment. Interestingly, this profile of victim is quite similar to the profile of offender, who also happens largely to be from the same group as has just been described. Glaring exceptions to this risk profile are women who are victims of sexual assaults and victims of break and enter crimes in more affluent homes.

Those young males in urban hot spots may or may not be fearful. Few are at telephones waiting for Statistics Canada to call! They appear either to be a low fear group or do not admit their fear for a number of reasons - a mix of male macho and youth bravado, a feeling of invincibility and their self-confidence against any danger in the street or the neighbourhood.

But there are many primary fear groups which have been studied.

(i) Women and Fear of Crime

"Fear stalks the city. Although you might think it would prefer the shadows, it is not really afraid of the light.... Fear can strike at any time. It starts growing in childhood and is passed down from mother to daughter.... Fear knows no age limits but, like violence, carefully chooses its target. It lives and grows in the hearts of all women, regardless of their appearance, age or colour because... fear belongs to women."

"What, then, makes the death of Georgina Leimonis more frightening still? I think it is that in the dark stairwell and the night-time parking garage, I have always known the risk was there, in the shadows. Every woman does. We take it because it is, after all, a very small risk, and this is still Canada. We have calculated the odds and made our choice. At least that much seems in our control. But what are the odds of death from sitting in a brightly lit cafe on a Tuesday evening with your friends, in the midst of a cheerful crowd of strangers indulging a sweet tooth? There used to be no odds on that, not in this country, not even for a woman. Now, it seems, there are."

Women were a high fear group who were not at high risk of victimization, so the traditional theory in criminology concluded. This line of reasoning was founded on a fear of crime concept that too narrowly looked at violent crime committed in public places, mostly by strangers, and almost totally ignored fear of danger from a woman's perspective. The standard thesis failed to capture women's lived experiences of sexual and physical violence.

In more complex analyses of fear of crime, being a female always emerges as the most significant risk factor. Many researchers conclude this is more closely related to a very specific fear of sexual assault. Women have an unique vulnerability to sexual aggression. This fear of sexual assault is then woven into anxiety about other crimes, such as burglary or robbery attended by the threat of sexual assault. And, in the words of Holly Johnson, Project Manager for the Violence Against Women Survey who is writing an academic text on violence against women and their fears, "young women learn about sexual danger at a very early age. It is young women who are seen as sexually attractive. It is open season on them. It is young women who are among the highest fear group."

Women are assaulted often by known male assailants, leading to fear of known and presumably safe environments and fear of violence in familiar environments, such as neighbourhoods.

Like men, women's fears are influenced by age, residence, income, race and marital status. Yet women's fears cross the boundaries of all those variables. This report has already cited the staggering statistics confirming that slightly more than four in ten women feel unsafe in walking in their neighbourhood at night.

"It becomes apparent when women's patterns of victimization are compared to men's," writes Linda MacLeod "that because a higher proportion of women are victimized in their own homes, because women are more likely than men to be victimized by someone known to them, and because women's victimization is related to economic, physical as well as social disadvantage and vulnerability, it is much more difficult for women to avoid their victimization or to predict it, even if women were to severely curtail their patterns of daily life by reducing their activities outside their homes. Thus women's feelings of helplessness in the face of potential victimization are higher than those of men, and fear among women naturally and appropriately escalates to a higher level than fear among men."

In Surviving Sexual Violence, Liz Kelly describes this continuum of violence drawing on the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of contiuum as denoting either a basic common character that underlies many different events or a continuous series of elements that pass into one another and which cannot be readily distinguished. Women can and too often do experience abuse, intimidation, coercion, intrusion, threat and force, primarily from men. Kelly documented and named the range of sexual violence women experience and fear: sexual harassment(including looks, gestures, remarks, acts), pressure to have sex, sexual assault, obscene phone calls, coercive sex, domestic violence, sexual abuse, flashing, rape and incest. These are not clearly defined, distinct categories stretching in linear fashion in a woman's life. Rather, they intersect in layers of acts and emotions, resulting in what Holly Johnson of Statistics Canada calls fear of crime becoming "a shorthand for many things associated with women's experience and fears related to violence".

The Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women alluded to this continuum, noting that violence ranges from verbal insults through physical blows to murder and is the consequence of social, economic and political inequality built into the structure of society and reinforced through assumptions expressed in the languages and ideologies of sexism, racism and classism.

The Violence Against Women Survey in 1993 attempted to honour this "continuum of violence theory" by expanding the reference period of victimization from one year to any occurrences since the age of 16 and expanding the scope of threatening behaviour which had been previously not measured. For many, this represents a more accurate reflection of risk, although the survey had its critics for its description of sexual assault and for excluding men and everyone under sixteen.

Part of the difficulty in gauging whether the fears and precautions taken by women are warranted is in the debate on the reliability of statistics and the known under-reporting of crimes such as sexual assault. Victim surveys generally confirm that official crime rates substantially underestimate the magnitude of the problems, particularly in areas such as violence against women, children and the elderly.

The impact of violence on women is a complex matter. Acts of violence cannot be ranked arbitrarily in a line of severity based on seriousness of the offence, as if that automatically would determine the seriousness of its impact or corresponding level of fear to be expected. Yet that is what early research in this area did.

Flashing, for example, may be categorized as a minor offence vis-a-vis Criminal Code punishment and perhaps even minor from the perspective of the victim and the victim's circle of friends who might laugh it off and/or be grateful that nothing more serious happened. However, flashing is a poignant reminder of a woman's vulnerability, the victim terrorized because she has no control over the situation and knows it is largely up to the perpetrator how far it will go. Her fear of crime is linked inextricably to an imminent fear of danger. Her being "flashed" is tucked away in her book of life that will influence future chapters and future incidents where fear lurks. In the example of flashing, one immediate, localized effect is that a person may well not go to a particular place or engage in an activity at a particular time anymore. Flashing produces other negative and more general effects, adding to fears of open spaces or going out alone.

As well, obviously serious offences such as rape are seldom an isolated event. A rape may also involve a threat with a weapon, robbery, assault and even murder. In the eyes of a woman, every rape carries with it the threat of death. Rape can define a woman's life forcefully in terms of pain and terror. A woman named Linda told Elizabeth Stanko: " I think of my life as pre-rape and post-rape in some ways."

Gordon and Riger, in their book, The Female Fear, list seven factors contributing to women's fear: socialization teaching girls to be afraid of sex and men and giving women ambiguous messages about their sexuality; experiences with rapes or mini-rapes, petty rapes, unwanted hugs, pinches etc.; myths about rape which suggest women are responsible; the visible presence of a neighbourhood, anti-crime organization; personal knowledge of actual crimes; media sensationalizing of crimes; general societal condoning of sexual violence and male aggression in courtship. From her community dialogues with women, Linda MacLeod would add several more factors: isolation of the individual woman, insufficient contact with police; a general sense that no one cares about either the individual or the neighbourhood or about perceived problems; and feelings of powerlessness to affect perceived problems.

Fear is aggravated by the knowledge that women do not have power, status or even credibility in segments of society. Women's fears are intensified by their responsibility and altruistic fear for their children - that those children will be hurt or that they themselves will be hurt and will be unable to care for their children. Fears are magnified by a woman's feeling of physical vulnerability.

The many voices of women in fear were heard when Linda MacLeod did a series of community workshops in 1990 sponsored by Secretary of State Canada. Fears of sexual assault outside the home by a male stranger or a slight acquaintance, as well as sexual and/physical assault in the home by a partner, may have dominated the discussions but there were other fears:

• fear of being unprotected by the justice system.

• fear particularly pronounced by aboriginal and other racial and ethnic minority women of being assaulted physically or sexually by police.

• fear of people in authority more generally, including church leaders, health-care workers, social workers and lawyers.

• fear of being isolated by geography, lack of knowledge, illiteracy, language, racism or the lack of people's concern for one another.

• fear of intolerance and racism.

• fear that their children will not be safe.

• fear of sexual harassment and physical or sexual assault in the workplace.

• fear of prevalent portrayals of violence against women through the media, through sexist or implicitly violent advertising and through the widespread availability of pornography.

• fear of men generally.

• fear of living in a violent society.

As this report was being written, Statistics Canada released a study, Women Assaulted by Strangers, based on more detailed analysis of the Violence Against Women Survey data; the study announced that women's safety fears are also traced to encounters with strangers, with one quarter of the women surveyed from age 18 to 24 acknowledging they had been assaulted by a stranger at least once since the age of 16 in acts that ranged from unwanted sexual touching to rape involving injury.

Judging from the initial media fallout, it seemed that the pendulum had swung back to the perception that women had more to fear from the stranger than from those they knew. Holly Johnson said the very first media question asked of the Statistics Canada author was: "We were led to believe that the home was the place women should fear the most. Now this report is saying the opposite."

Holly Johnson comments: "The author's response was that this report is just the latest analysis of data from the Violence Against Women Survey. It is added to what we already knew. It doesn't contradict earlier findings. Those questions and reactions seem to indicate a lack of appreciation for the women's perspective and the continuum of violence.... We also get locked into a crime prevention mode that says it has to be either public or private danger and that the public danger has to be the stranger, the monster predator. Not enough distinctions are made."

The Women Assaulted by Strangers study indicated that only nine per cent of sexual assaults were reported to police. Forty-four per cent of the women who chose not to report those sexual assaults gave as their reason that it was too minor while another 14 per cent felt the police could not do anything about it. Holly Johnson said it is very difficult to interpret from a survey what the women mean when they describe a sexual assault as too minor. It may in fact have been minor or, quite to the contrary and typical of battered or assaulted women, they may be minimizing the offence, think no one will understand and that the criminal justice system will not be helpful.

The location of the stranger assault varied - the street, a bar or dance and public building being more common but a car, her workplace, public transport, her home and a rural area also proving unsafe. Consequently, a "geography of fear" for women slips into a "geography of limitation", curtailing lifestyles and mobility. It begs a thorny but necessary social policy debate about who is responsible for male aggression; where does one draw the line between expecting women to take reasonable, prudent precautions for their safety and their right to live full, equal and whole lives.

Meanwhile, the fears of more and more women who are either in single-parent or two parent families are aggravated in Canada because most do not have the choice of restricting movements outside the home. They must work.

Significantly, with respect to fear of crime, this new study found that among women who had been physically assaulted by a stranger, almost half reported being more fearful and two of every five women said they were more cautious or aware. For sexual assault victims of strangers, one in four women was more fearful and slightly more than one in three women more cautious or aware.

Any fear of crime study and any fear-reduction or crime prevention program needs to give prominent attention to this experience of women. Perspective is demanded too. It is good news that almost three of every five Canadian women are not afraid of walking in their neighbourhoods at night. Surely there are lessons to be gained from their lives about fear and coping with fear. Yet for too many women in our country, their fear is increased by their understanding and/or experience that they have no "safe" place. In the words of Elizabeth Stanko, "if women commonly encounter threatening and/or violent behaviour from men who are strangers and from men who are known to them, how can they predict which man will be violent to them and in what instance?"

The Elderly
Getting older in Canada does not put one at greater risk of victimization but it does increase one's fear of crime in some substantial ways. This is a significant group to assist in their fears related to crime, for a number of reasons:
in certain situations, seniors exhibit high levels of fear of crime; the fragility and pronounced vulnerability of some seniors demand greater attention; this is the fastest growing segment of the Canadian population.

Early in the next century, one in four Canadians will be a senior citizen. Studies have shown today's seniors to be more independent and financially secure than past generations with, of course a notable exception being that a disturbing number of seniors are at, or below, poverty levels. One sensible hypothesis is that crime will increase against seniors as their numbers and assets increase. Their fear of vulnerability is also likely to increase. That will result in seniors placing more calls to a police force that has trouble even now meeting all the demands from the public. Constable Chuck Prince, a British Columbia community police officer, describes seniors as a "victim waiting for a crime to happen".

We have already reported on Vince Sacco's Juristat article which suggested that there is mixed evidence for the view that fear of crime is a more serious problem for the elderly. They are almost twice as likely to indicate feeling "unsafe" about walking in their neighbourhood at night - an exercise they may not regularly do in any event - but their fear levels matched other groups when they were asked about being home alone in the evening or assessing their general safety from crime. Interestingly, elderly women had significantly lower amounts of fear about being home alone at night. Holly Johnson speculated that may have something to do with women outliving their partners and being more accustomed to being alone in the home. Those in their home alone who do report fear have difficulty managing a home and implementing sound crime prevention strategies.

The elderly have concrete fears about specific crime. They worry about grocery shopping while carrying money in their wallet or purse. Some resist and even fear the technology of credit cards or instant banking cards. In Winnipeg, according to Rick Linden, they are concerned about auto theft, purse snatching and break and enter. However, the elderly are not specifically targeted for most crime, except for a few crimes like scams or frauds.

They are a good group to examine for an understanding of the analysis that the crimes committed against them may not rank at the high end of seriousness but may have very serious consequences. There are profound differences for the lives of a twenty-five-year-old woman, as compared to a sixty-five-year-old woman, of either having one's entire savings wiped out by a fraud, or falling and breaking a hip during a purse snatching. So seniors may have high amounts of fear for crimes which many in society might not categorize as serious. Their physical and financial circumstances may hinder their recovery from crime.

Their diffused fears are related more to vulnerability than to victimization. Seniors represent three per cent of all victims of violent crime while they are 16 per cent of the population. Their rate of victimization was so low according to the 1993 General Social Survey that it could not even be measured, given the survey's sample population of 10,000.

While not seemingly at actual risk now as a senior citizen, that is not to say that earlier life experiences, including victimization, may well be colouring their fears in the present and future.

The elderly's fear of criminal victimization seems more linked to their physical and social vulnerability. It may include a logical assessment of their ability to defend themselves physically in the face of an assailant who, often enough, is much younger and a male. As a consequence, they are more frightened before, during and after the commission of the crime.

Many seniors struggle with increasing vulnerability because of aging, frailty and losing control. They are afraid of becoming ill, or poor, or being abandoned by their family and friends and, according to Ron Melchers, there are a host of far less remote fears which plague their minds constantly. If communities assisted them with their fears about crime, - both the concrete fears and the more diffused fears which relate to their other fears - that may lessen their sense of powerlessness and help them deal with the other fears which are not related to crime. Those struggles cannot be eradicated completely in the human journey but there are social supports that might well enhance the quality of life during a period many find fearful.

Research from several American studies on the fear of crime among the elderly deserve mention:

• fear of crime was related to dissatisfaction with the neighbourhood, low morale and involuntary isolation. The elderly lose access to many community facilities as they age, including churches, community centres, the neighbourhood grocer, doctor and druggist. The elderly who are poor are more afraid.
  
  
• an interesting fear of crime study on elderly Jews living in Boston and London, England revealed the significance of community interaction in dealing with those fears. Residents in both cities had comparable experiences and language to describe the problem of crime and its impact on them. But the Boston seniors retreated behind closed doors while the London residents continued their daily routine almost uninterrupted. Researchers discovered that the London group felt much more a part of their community.
  
  
• "members of kin" networks may act as threats to the elderly through their warnings of dangers from crime. Fear of neighbourhood crime was greater for those who more frequently socialized with relatives, presumably hearing the "news" and gossip of the community. This points to the need for a de-briefing and support group for seniors to speak about their fears and what they are hearing about crime. Even that group itself needs skilled facilitators to ensure that the telling of stories will not make matters worse.

• compared to rural populations, a larger proportion of urban residents are fearful in certain situations. Urban residents are twice as likely to feel unsafe when walking alone in their neighbourhoods after dark. One-half of urban residents and over one-third of rural residents feel worried when using public transportation alone in the evening.

• Those fears are at least partly related to concerns about victimization; 27 per cent of urban residents reported that they had been victims of crime in the previous year, compared to 17 per cent of rural residents. The rate of personal victimization was 44 per cent higher among urban than rural residents and the rate of household victimization was 67 per cent higher among urban than rural residents.

• fear is not only a function of area of residence but also of gender. Women in both urban and rural areas consistently demonstrate higher levels of fear than men, with 38 per cent of women in urban areas and 32 per cent of women in rural areas saying they are "very or somewhat worried" about being at home alone in the evening(compared to 12 per cent and 9 per cent for the men in each group).

• people living in urban areas were twice as likely as rural residents to have installed new locks or a burglar alarm, taken a self-defence course or changed their telephone numbers to guard themselves against crime. Less than one-quarter of rural residents changed their routine or avoided certain places to keep from being victimized, compared to over one-third of urban residents.

The rural resident may have less fear of the stranger, not only because of the smaller, more tightly-knit community he or she resides in but because statistics confirm that almost three-quarters of violent incidents there are committed by an acquaintance or relative. (71 per cent in the rural population, compared to 57 per cent for the urban population)

"Given that urban populations are victimized at a higher rate and are more likely to be violently victimized by a stranger," writes Ms. Kong, "it is understandable that urban residents are more fearful when in certain situations and more likely to take precautions to protect themselves and their homes."

The urban resident is not afraid all the time but again in mostly concrete situations, maximized by when he or she meets the "stranger", stranger in the personal sense or stranger in the cultural sense. It is urban life that gives us those situations where we meet up with so many people from different cultures.

Victims of Crime
There has already been considerable reference elsewhere in this report to the effect of victimization on fears. It was mentioned that fear of crime is measured by two primary factors - perceived risk and perceived seriousness. A 1981 survey in Seattle concluded that these two factors carry equal weight but that fear levels were not necessarily always the highest for violent crimes. Reducing perceived risk did appear to be an effective means of reducing fear.

In Canada, while there are not obvious, sharp differences generally in the fear level between victims and non-victims, there are noticeable, increased fears and added precautions for those who have been the victim of a few serious crimes such as sexual assault and robbery.

Anyone who has had a home burglarized knows the lingering, emotional damage caused by the break and enter. People for some time cannot return to their home in ease. Once the key has opened the front door, eyes dart from room to room, furniture to furniture to see if anything is out of place. Ears strain to hear strange noises in the yard or driveway. People sense a personal violation because of the penetration of their private space. Some admit to recurring nightmares.

Those who have not been victims may minimize the impact of less serious crime. However, Howard Zehr, who has worked extensively with victims and victim/offender reconciliation programs, contends that being a victim is a deeply traumatic experience even for minor crime. As well, victims will have fears from the crime which they now associate with a whole gender, male for example, or an entire race. Zehr noted that the persisting emotional intensity for victims might suggest a crime happened recently when in fact it may well have occurred many years ago. Many victims report the experience of a re-victimization through their disappointing dealings with the criminal justice system after the crime. This can also exacerbate their fears. Signficantly, the "monster" created in a victim's mind tends to shrink in many cases to manageable proportions once the victim is able to confront the offender in a safe setting and begin to get answers about why he or she was selected as a target.

The General Social Survey data from 1993 indicated that two-thirds of victims of sexual assault were unable to carry on with their normal activities for at least one day following the incident and that twenty per cent said they found it difficult to resume their normal activities for ten days or more. Psychological injuries - including stress and fear-induced paranoia - are common outcomes of a victimization experience and may be particularly severe for victims of sexual assault.

In the literature, there was reference to an interesting project in Houston where police did follow-up contacts with victims every two months after the crime. The contact reassured some victims but there were also cultural differences in how the police were received and how the program impacted on victims. Some Hispanic groups with a history of tense police-community relations did not report the same reassurance felt by others.

Finally, there was the assumption in some of the research that fear in a victim will dissipate with time. Yet, there are other studies that observed that, despite an initial decline in the fear level for victims in a first phase after the crime, that the fear level later increased, as a result of changes to lifestyle and behaviour along with taking extra precautions such as buying a security alarm.

Ethnocultural Groups
Barry Thomas and Sgt. Keith Wiltshire, from the Canadian Centre for Police-Race Relations based in Ottawa, are in the midst of a number of urban consultations with community stakeholders. While those consultations were not on fear of crime directly, the issue surfaced frequently in the discussions.

• Montreal: The Spanish and Latin American community aired its grievance about a 1994 World Cup Championship celebration in the city in which members complained that a police overreaction led to calling out the riot squad. The community said they were paranoid about making official complaints to the police. Immigrants spoke of being afraid of gang crimes and the police, the latter fear linked to the risk of deportation.

• Toronto: The concern for youth and particularly black youth predominated in the consultation here. There were references to the dangerous mix of black youth and firearms, "a daily occurrence in Scarborough". Many articulated an altruistic fear for the youth and for others in the community.

• Vancouver: Four separate consultations were held with the Chinese, Vietnamese, Black and Aboriginal communities. Barry Thomas watched a Chinatown jeweller take 25 minutes to put two steel grates over his store. Similar security was evident elsewhere. There were references to high levels of fear with personal safety and property concerns at the top of the list in the consultation with the Chinese community. Disorder and incivility are a problem for some. "You see people fixing themselves (drugs) right on the street. Chinatown is dead at 8:30 in the evening," Mr. Thomas said. The elderly have concerns with fears. Wealthier families from Hong Kong and Taiwan are concerned with the number of robberies and break and enter crimes. The Vietnamese consultation focused on youth gangs, including the threat of home invasions which are a reality in the city. Many of the gang members are from the refugee camps. "I guess the streets of Vancouver are tame compared to some of the camps and the experience of Vietnam," Mr. Thomas noted. "The kids hang around on the street, have time on their hands, get into petty and then more serious crime. They get hassled by the police, stopped, get a rap or a reputation and then bothered constantly. They get criminalized fairly easily."

Hate crimes are a source of fear for personal safety for ethnocultural groups and individuals, particularly hate organizations which promote racism. People feel threatened directly because they are members of a group which is attacked.

In cases of family violence, women may be afraid of how they will be treated by police and courts. They fear the adverse reaction that may result if they violate community norms by exposing private family matters to public scrutiny. Linda MacLeod and Maria Shin conducted telephone interviews with 39 women immigrants who had been abused as well as some community workers. These women spoke neither French or English as their first language. "We know very little about these women, for they are invisible to most people who are not part of their culture, who do not speak their language. Their abuse and suffering are often invisible even to people in their culture. They truly live silenced lives with silent fears and unheard hopes," their report stated.

The fear of reporting and its related fear of reprisal are both in evidence in ethnocultural communities. A Toronto Star story in 1989 referred to those fears and distrust of government in the Asian community making potential witnesses to crime reluctant to go to the police. Criminals then use this fear and distrust to flourish. Constable Quoc toan Trinh in Montreal estimates that 75 per cent of crime within the Asian community is not reported.

As well, those immigrants and even Canadian-born members of ethnocultural groups tend to congregate and settle in large urban centres because of their greater access to their cultural and community associations. So any fears related to crime are compounded by this urban factor. Fear of the stranger from another culture alienates these individuals even further.

When there is crime in their community, this group faces enormous obstacles. There tends to be a poor general knowledge of the law due to unfamiliarity with the Canadian way of life. People are discouraged by language difficulties. There may be limited income and apprehensiveness about dealing with people outside of their own cultural community, especially when the crime is within their cultural group.

One focus study by the Law Courts Education Society of British Columbia found that the Chinese community did not view the court system favourably and would avoid the justice system wherever possible. As well, a lack of proficiency in English can "in effect be the closed door behind which some seniors live in confined and sometimes fearful existence". People stay home, perhaps out of fear of danger, but also because it is more comfortable for them.

The Gay, Lesbian and Bi-Sexual Community

" Many of his colleagues didn't recognize (Jeff) Harris when he arrived in the emergency ward, vomiting blood. Nine doctors, including an eye specialist and oral surgeon, hovered over him, estimating he had lost more than six pints of blood. When the swelling in his brain subsided, it took more than six hours and 280 stitches just to close the wounds temporarily - and wire together the 27 facial fractures, including 11 breaks in his smashed jaw."

Incident involving Ed Pollak's partner: "He was kicked in the face, in the head, shoulder, arms with boots. Like a sack of potatatos. He had bruising from his waist to his neck for a month."

Xtra, Toronto

People have been murdered, brutalized or harassed because someone thought they were gay, lesbian and bisexual. They are verbally abused, physically harmed and sexually abused. In Ottawa, statistics from the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Police Bias Crime Unit indicate that 45 of 387 investigated offences since the unit's creation had to do with an incident based on bias against sexual orientation. Gay and lesbian students in high school report a high proportion of harassment, hostility and violence where gay jokes are rampant and many students sense an immunity in openly expressing their hatred. These students classify schools as the least safe place in the city.

The U.S.-based National Gay and Lesbian Task Force states that one in five gay men and one in ten lesbians reported being assaulted, one third reported being threatened with violence and nine of ten experienced some type of harassment, threats or assault based upon perception of their sexual orientation. Carol Holland from the Ottawa bias crime unit cited anecdotal evidence of gay bashing, including a woman beaten, a brother murdered, a harassed youth who dropped out of school and anti-bashing posters which were defaced in schools.

Hate crimes have a unique and extraordinary impact on victims. There is excessive brutality by the perpetrators - weapons such as bats, hammers or a screwdriver are not uncommon. There is the terrorization and personal rejection of someone for who they are. Gays, lesbians and bi-sexuals are viewed by the perpetrators as deviant sexual beings rather than human beings. As one young, heterosexual woman told a fellow crime prevention worker, "when heterosexuals meet another heterosexual, they see a whole person. When some heterosexuals meet a gay or lesbian person, they see only sex."

In most other hate or bias attacks, the victim makes the mistake of entering alien territory. But with "gay-bashing", attackers usually leave their own territory to hunt down their victims.

Victims of bias crimes suffer two to three times more symptoms of trauma than do victims of comparable crimes that do not involve prejudice, according to the National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence in the United States. A bias crime can directly affect the victim, the entire target group and the community at large, in terms of the distribution of fear.

Kevin Berrill, an American hate crimes expert, is eloquent in his description of the pervasive damage from these crimes:

"As with racist, anti-Semitic, sexist and other bias-motivated crimes, these attacks are intended to violate and isolate not just the victim but an entire group. Unlike opportunistic crimes, these attacks are motivated less by the desire to rip people off than to rip them apart... they are acts of terrorism intended to punish gay people, women and people of colour for being visible and to frighten them from exercising... freedom of speech, association and assembly."

As with other groups, a combination of demographic factors - for example, a woman of colour who is a lesbian - greatly escalates one's fear of crime.

There were a number of other groups either reporting much lower levels of fear or for whom very little research has been done. This report now highlights several of those groups.

Men
The study of male victimization, vulnerability and related fears is a virtual wasteland.

Pockets of fear are acknowledged in the General Social Survey data, with only about one of every ten Canadian males fearful of walking alone in their neighbourhoods at night or being alone. Those levels of fear increase as men get older. Income levels affect male fears more than female fears. Men restrict their lives less than women.

Research indicates that men are more likely to show anger than distress or shock in response to burglary. They also feel an altruistic fear out of concern for their partners, parents and children.

Co-related factors again can compound fears. Gay men have a sense of how their homosexuality places them in many situations of vulnerability. Men from several minority groups have had to assess their physical vulnerability and negotiate risk because of experiences of racism.

There are a few reasonable hypotheses and some speculation about why we have such little sense of the impact of such criminal violence on men. For sure, men are almost completely excluded from the major victimization of reported sexual assault, although more recent studies are acknowledging more and more boys who have been sexually assaulted.

Often criminology's failure to explore men's particular experiences of violence is attributed to men's reluctance to report weakness. Are men reluctant to report or acknowledge fear because of masculine bravado and the accompanying childhood and adolescent lessons regarding their personal safety - who is better than who, who is bigger than who, who is stronger than who?

The little research there is indicates that male victims of assault view their victimization through a male frame, the essence of which sees victimization as weak and helpless. Many men who have difficulties in expressing feelings find themselves isolated and unable to ask for support. There is more of a tendency in men to externalize blame for the victimization while women will internalize that blame.

Men manage danger quite differently. Sometimes they physically challenge it because of their size and stature. Danger is seldom a part of their everyday experience and they rarely need to isolate themselves, as many women reported having to do. Some men enjoy the advantages of status - economic, racial or sexual -, with profound consequences for their levels of fear.

According to Elizabeth Stanko, while women's fears are placed within a wider structural context of economic, racial and gendered inequality - steeped in the analysis of structures of patriarchy - explanations of men's experiences of criminal violence neglect the structures of men's lives, unless it be the structure of class against class. There is very little research on how men feel about the assaults in their lives or how different men respond to violent victimization.

Any focus on younger men and their experience of violence highlights certain lifestyle choices which present criminal opportunities. In other words, a number of young men who are victims of crime are offenders too, getting injured in the act of crime.

One study in Britain interviewed 33 men to explore a male understanding of the gendered context of their responses to assault. It was quite apparent that their frame of masculinity, "being men", was at the heart of their emotional, physical and social responses to victimization. Some referred to the "John Wayne syndrome", "Macho Man", "cave man", "defender". Negotiating physical violence while growing up was a backdrop to their lives. These men acknowledged the complexities of race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability and geographical influences on this negotiation of violence. They thought violence was something one had to deal with, that danger and harm a physical challenge which many men accepted.

Fear was the emotional reaction most consistently reported. At the time of an attack, many feared for their lives. Fear was also clearly related to a particular venue or to situations which served as triggers to remind the victim of the stressful event. The British participants made the following comments: "I won't return to a football match"; "I won't casually talk to people like I used to"; "I'll never open the door to anybody, especially a knock on the door at night."

The men spoke of the trap they find themselves in, needing help but not wanting to burden their wives or mothers and sensing their response is "unmanly" and weak. Men are not a homogeneous group. Their experiences of victimization and any emotional fallout were mediated by their age, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, religion, employment and several other factors.

There has also been practically no research on how police and other services respond to men who are assaulted.

Sexual Offenders and their Families
Many sex offenders live their lives in fear, not only literal fear for their lives within prison because they are the "scum of the scum" in the prisoners' own caste system but fear that an unsympathetic public will stigmatize them forever. After Toronto police had warned residents that a convicted sex offender was planning to live with his mother in the same apartment building, Fran, one of the residents, told the press: "His mother is taking him back in, so everybody on the floor is looking to move. Everyone is petrified."

As well, sex offenders have their own fears about loved ones; they are concerned about public backlash or vigilantism hurting their families. A Washington State mother told a newspaper after her 16-year-old son was identified publically: "This is our prison. We live in constant fear."

Inmates in Prison
Very little research has been done on fear of danger or fear of crime for inmates in prison, although anecdotal evidence strongly corroborates fears related to physical or sexual assault. One of the few studies, conducted on 300 inmates in a maximum security prison in Nashville, Tennesee, discovered that fear of victimization was an extremely important predictor of inmate well-being. Older inmates and those with more education reported better mental health as well as less stress and fear levels.

Those reporting the highest levels of fear tended to be young, socially isolated and more frequent targets of victimization. Fears can impact negatively on longer sentences and family and social ties can deteriorate rapidly.

Elizabeth Stanko noted in her research that it is the rare man who mentions the threat of sexual violence, an exception being men in prison.

There were isolated references in the research to other fear groups, almost none of which have been studied in any depth. Those groups are: street and homeless kids, persons with disabilities e.g. the legally blind, store owners and refugees.

Who Are Canadians Afraid Of?

Tony Doob is convinced that the generic phrase, "fear of crime" is a polite, neutral, depoliticized term masking Canadians' real fears of very particular types of criminals. People don't fear crime. People fear criminals who do crime and, in Doob's view, there are specific kinds of offenders who people especially fear. Young offenders. Sex offenders. Those from another race or culture, for example the black community with Jamaican roots in Toronto. It is Doob's contention that we need to be honest about that in order to begin to unpack those layers of fear; perhaps in some instances, in certain locations, those fears are grounded in genuine risk of victimization but Doob knows well the statistics confirming that those fears often have less to do with crime rates than with prejudices, attitudes, ignorance and misinformation.

Fear of the Young Offender

"The way they (violent schoolchildren) express themselves is a lot more extreme. I don't think teachers walk around all day worrying about their safety. But there is a climate of concern which, in a lot of cases, is bordering on despair."

"Why are we so afraid of our kids? What about society being responsible for its crimes against youth? It is so much safer to depersonalize people and make them into these evil creatures. Then you can feel like you're crusading against something rather than realizing they could be just sad little boys."

There is a raging debate in this country about youth crime, who is responsible for it, and what should be done to young offenders. It has been an emotional debate not always grounded in reason, perhaps somewhat understandable in the wake of rare but shocking, high profile crimes which leave communities reeling and which echo across the land for months after the incident. In the words of Julian Roberts, criminology professor at University of Ottawa, there is no such thing as an overreaction for those who witness the murder of a family member. Their anger, their grief, their rage, are predictable and normal. But among other Canadians, the vast majority of whom have not suffered that horror, enough still feel threatened and afraid. They add their voice to a "law and order" chorus, supporting the current crackdown on young offenders. What is it that Canadians fear when they consider young offenders and their crimes? Do legitimate concerns give way to fear and why?

Consider recent developments:
More homes are being broken into and a good number of the offenders are youth.

While many schools offer safe environments, some teachers report in several urban centres disturbing increases in cruelty and violence, even at the elementary school level with accounts of bullying, penny-ante extortion and the occasional weapon in use.

Altruistic fear for our children is high because of some knowledge of the pressures they face. Bhim Rana, a Toronto social worker, said: "Guys are carrying guns because other guys are carrying guns". Fred Matthews, who authored Youth Gangs on Youth Gangs, said: "The research says students are scared. I have to go to board people and teachers and say: 'What part of "I'm scared" is it that you don't understand."

A 27-year-old, British-born engineer out for a stroll on a Sunday night in Ottawa is gunned down by young offenders. An Edmonton woman investigating a noise in her house is stabbed to death by a young offender. An elderly Montreal couple is clubbed to death by three young teenagers who, according to news reports, murdered "for the thrill of it". These high profile incidents hit too close to home for many Canadians who are visibly shaken by the pain of the victim's families and can well imagine the same crime happening to them. What is more normal than a Sunday walk or getting out of bed to check on the children because a parent had heard a noise in the house?

Ken Hatt believes that there is a moral panic surfacing against our youth - an escalating cycle of fear that is somewhat self-reproducing and exceeds the evidence for the concern which is expressed. Some politicians during election campaigns can mirror and feed that moral panic.

Julian Roberts is not sure that the anti-youth orientation in the country is fear based, in the sense that someone would fear a young offender in the same way that he would fear a bank robber. He calls the "fears" more of a moral outrage. "The public turn on the television and they see a young offender, maybe just one young offender, laughing at the law and saying it is a joke," he explained. " That makes people mad. They say these kids don't respect us and society's laws." The frustration and powerlessness some parents experience with their own children also can sustain the outrage about youth criminal behaviour.

Of course, adults today are not the first generation to be concerned about delinquency or youth rebellion. It is written in the daily struggles of every generation. As legitimate as the concern about youth violence is, Vince Sacco thinks the country is in need of this historical perspective too.

Indeed perspective is what is required in any measured response to youth crime. Lou Golding, social worker with the Scarborough Youth Link social agency, said "most schools are safe. Ninety per cent of the students in even a rough school are adept at steering around risky situations."

Fear is also a two-way street, according to youth. Jean-Paul Brodeur referred to the chronic feelings of insecurity among our young. Kids resent being hassled by store owners and waitresses. People fear them or at least react negatively. "People put all the blame on us. They don't understand what it's like for us.... There are reasons behind what we are doing" commented a youth in a substance abuse program with Portage at Elora, Ont.

Fred Matthews has identified vulnerability factors in the young person's family and developmental history that would either predispose the youth to involvement in gangs or aggressive violent or anti-social behaviour - previous history of physical or sexual abuse or neglect, substance-abusing parents, criminal or dysfunctional family, unemployment, difficulties in adjusting to a new life in Canada, child poverty, undiagnosed learning problems or difficulties in school, and the presence of current or chronic life stressors.

It is the "us" and "them" world that breeds fear, and can foster scapegoating. Urban cities are built without places for teenagers to hang out. "They want a place to go and not be hassled," a parent commented. "But people get fed up with skateboarders blocking customer traffic at the mall, or littering the parking lot, or breaking bottles." The vast majority of law-abiding teenagers hang around on street corners or at shopping malls, a typical socialization process that is often misunderstood as representing a threat to the community. These groups can become involved in nuisance behaviour and, less frequently, in violent or other criminal activity based on situational factors.

It seems logical that the fears, frustrations and moral outrage directed at young offenders are partly responsible, along with the youth behaviour, for the current staggering number of cases entering the youth justice system. Police sources speak of pressures from parents or school authorities to charge youth. For example, Ontario locks up more kids than any other province; the number of 16 and 17-year-olds held by police has tripled during the last five years from 311 a day to 1,000 a day. The minor cases of the school yard fights, threats and petty thefts, including the failure to pay Toronto Transit fares, are making their way into court in greater numbers. One downtown Toronto youth court judge said he hears about ten cases a month of young people failing to pay transit fares. According to Dick Barnhorst, director of the provincial government's Office of Youth Justice, "there is the myth that the justice system can solve the crime problem, that the answer is more police, more court appearances, more custody. So we've done that, but now we have so many cases, the system is clogged, and when it's clogged, as it is now with both serious and minor matters, it makes it difficult to deal effectively with either kind of case."

Fear of the Sex Offender
While some in the public are prepared to acknowledge the social causes underlying youth crime, there appears to be zero sympathy for the sex offender. "Monsters" - "Predators" - "Animals", scream the tabloid headlines. They are the criminals people seem to fear the most. Pedophiles who lurk near playgrounds. Violent offenders who prey on women.

Police forces in some instances are identifying sex offenders upon their release. Some released offenders like Wray Brudeo are hounded by neighbours until they flee for the anonymity of a strange town where there are few familial supports and where nobody knew enough to take security measures against them.

Altruistic fear is extraordinarily high among people fear sex offenders. Sexual crimes - sexual abuse of children and particularly horrific murders such as what Paul Bernardo is charged with - are so abhorrent and inconceivable to most people that it seems quite impossible to see the humanity of the offender. Some conclude that only a "monster" could do such a thing.

Yet those "monsters" we fear have almost all been abused themselves. It is next to impossible to hear that point in the current climate of fear when the public looks at a sex offender and sees only a deviant, scary, sexual problem instead of a human being.

"Sex offender" is a category for a wide range of offenders from high risk to non-violent, encompassing offences from rape or pedophilia to voyeurism or exhibitionism. Frank Proporino, Director General of the Research and Statistics Branch, Correctional Services Canada (CSC), acknowledged that the public is inclined to write sexual offenders off, especially when it hears that there is no procedure to cure them. "Sexual offenders are part of our world. We can manage them, with some success," he said.

A recent national CSC forum on intervention programs for sexual offenders heard that most of the statistical information on sex offenders lacks sufficient number of subjects or there has not been a long enough monitoring period to be able to identify and target those likely to re-offend. The numbers generally suggest a recidivism rate of 43 to 45 per cent for those untreated but only 16 to 18 per cent for those treated. The confusion comes in trying to establish an accurate profile of which offender committing what types of offences and under what circumstances is most likely to reoffend.

A few faith communities and support groups from Alcoholic Anonymous in southern Ontario are currently helping a handful of released sex offenders in their long struggle to reintegrate in society, holding them accountable for their behaviour but trying to set labels aside.

Fear of the Offender from Another Race or Culture

"When we have fear of the unknown, we kill the unknown. That is a natural instinct."

"Although we live together, it is not like we are living together. That is how I look at it."

In the wake of the celebrated Just Desserts murder in Toronto, as police searched for three black suspects of Jamaican origin, Art Lymer, president of the Metro Toronto Police Association, said: "Are we getting imported crime? If we are, let's export it as soon as possible."

Some people think controlling immigration is the answer to crime.

But Tony Doob believes otherwise.

"By saying fear of crime, we make it invisible," Doob said. " People will speak in codes here. In Toronto, it has become okay to blame crime on Jamaicans. People in their minds make a distinction between Jamaicans and blacks, legitimizing prejudice."

Is Canada importing crime? Derrick Thomas, a senior Immigration department researcher, is the author of a report indicating that people born outside Canada are actually far less likely than native-born Canadians to commit crimes that land them in a penitentiary. "This study suggests that, so long as care is taken, these levels of immigration will not contribute to any disproportionate increase in serious crime in Canada." Foreign-born people make up 20.2 per cent of the Canadian population but represented only 11.9 per cent of those incarcerated or on conditional release in 1991. Government figures indicate that 18 of every 10,000 Caribbean-born immigrants in Canada wind up in penitentiary. Yet, in an Angus Reid Southam news poll of 1,508 Canadians taken in 1994, 51 per cent supported the view that certain racial or ethnocultural groups are more likely to be involved in crime than others.

There may well be a crime problem within the Jamaican community in Toronto and in ethnic communities elsewhere. Many of those communities' leaders acknowledge it to some extent, asking, though, that its proportion be shrunk to its realistic size, stripped of the prejudices and fears that colour the fear of crime issue.

According to Michael Petrunik and Joseph Manyoni, there is the new concern about the criminal stereotyping of visible minorities. Among the factors influencing this was the influx of "non-whites" to Canada's major cities, along with a perceived increase in certain kinds of crime as well as several prominent incidents where there have been allegations of racism on the part of the criminal justice system. Even the term "visible minority" lumps together many racial, ethnic and varying cultural groups. There are many socio-economic and generational differences among members of any one particular group, blacks included. Petrunik and Manyoni note: "Different visible minority communities may differ significantly not only in terms of types and levels of crime, but also fear of crime, attitudes to the justice system and approaches to dealing with crime."

At the core of the fear of crime problem here is the relationship of several racial groups with the police. Tim Rees acknowledged in a 1985 study that Canadian social and political institutions have not been able to respond easily and quickly to the changing multi-racial community they are meant to serve. There have been numerous cases of police and community tensions caused by specific incidents.

The police would like to keep race-crime statistics, at least partly, no doubt, to demonstrate the prevalence of crime in certain areas and within certain communities. Tony Doob acknowledged the validity of keeping those statistics for other good reasons but never to label a particular race as criminogenic. For example, race-crime statistics can be used to uncover discrimination in the treatment of people, determine what kinds of programs and personnel would be most useful, and identify groups coming into the system and highlight the need for prevention work in specific communities. But police-based official statistics do not do an adequate job of describing most crime and would not give an accurate profile of crime by a certain race.

John Lea provided an excellent description of the vicious cycle in which minority youth can get caught up in, especially in their dealings with police:

" The labelling of an ethnic group as crime-prone or even a large section of it such as young males, facilitates the adoption of general policing strategies oriented towards stopping blacks in those areas of the city with a significant black concentration, or in central shopping areas where any black youth becomes suspected of theft. The culmination of this process is a situation in which the labelling of an ethnic group as crime-prone rapidly leads to a disproportionate number of members of that group being stopped or arrested. This amplifies the original involvement of the group in crime. This magnification process, reflected in police arrest statistics, serves to act as a confirmation of police stereotypes of criminality, leading to further concentration of policing resources deployed against the group and further artificial magnification of its arrest rates. It gets compounded when youth act along the lines suggested by the explanation and/or use racism as a justification for whatever wrongdoing they commit."

As well, these fears of difference intersect with fears of victimization so that someone who is assaulted by a person from another racial group can stereotype a whole race and become afraid of them all.

Criminal justice is a high priority issue for many Canadians who feel themselves marginalized or threatened as the composition of Canada changes towards more visible minorities. A report by Stan Lipinski of the Department of Justice noted: "Urban centres are facing considerable pressure with the movement of immigrants to major Canadian centres, increasing stress on community relations and services. As society becomes more complex, there is a growing diversity of cultural communities with differing values and beliefs that is playing a role in defining that vision."

Barry Thomas, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Police-Race Relations, referred to the disproportionate fears in the community compared to true risk and crime rates. What he worries about is the development of "sophisticated apartheid" in several major Canadian cities, what he defines as "apartheid without the signs". Thomas, himself an immigrant from South Africa, recognizes that some fears are quite normal; he referred to the normal consequences of a first attempt at integration for immigrants where those in Canada fear those who look and act differently. "This is a very old immigration story," he said. But where we fail as a country is in the second stage where true enculteration should happen. We haven't defined for immigrants what it is to be a Canadian. Some immigrants make it on this level. Some don't.... We have a choice. We can have a form of sophisticated apartheid as in New York, where blacks do their thing in one community and whites do theirs in another, with constant war at the border. Or we can negotiate peace now, before it's too late."

What is Influencing Fear of Crime in Canada?

The Media

"If it bleeds, it leads."

"No one has been arrested (a series of unsolved murders on the street)... raising fears that a killer could be sitting at the next table in the coffee shop."

There is an extraordinary temptation to jump on the bandwagon to denounce the media as the villains responsible for public fears about crime. The media does exert considerable influence, particularly with local media reporting local crime and the national and regional media providing a context and agenda for this issue. However, as with the rest of the fear of crime phenomenon reported in the literature, the connection between fears and what the media reports is more complex than many think.

(i) Some Helpful Background

Ruth Morris of Toronto is a Quaker and prison abolitionist who is interviewed by journalists periodically and happens also to be a media watcher. She reminds the public that there is no plot by the media to incite fears or a moral panic. "By presenting the mostly bad-news, unusual stories, they are doing their job," she said. "They are writing about the exceptional, for the usual is not news, and most people are interested in the unusual as news." We never see the headline: 99 of 100 planes landed safely today or All but One out on Prison Passes Return . Maybe we should have those stories but there are credible journalists whose experience tells them that "news" is the exceptional, the "out-of-ordinary" daily events. Yet, the reporting of the "out of the ordinary" certainly demands perspective and the occasional "reality check", surfacing now in more news and other media programs. "The Scandinavian press have been trained by their correctional system to include in every story about a parole violator committing an offence the fact that 75 per cent of parolees make it through parole without committing new offences," Mrs. Morris said. "They still cover the immediate story, but they include a corrective fact to balance it."

What is dangerous, though, is the mix of this thirst for news with the world of crime, great fodder for an insatiable pack of newshounds. Crime has more than its share of newsworthy items. Crime-reporting becomes susceptible to sensationalism and lazy journalism. It is not difficult to do crime stories; no more than a few phone calls or a film crew on assignment is needed for evening drama on the airwaves, sure to inform but to entertain as well.

(ii) The Media has a Significant But Not Overriding Influence

The media's influence is quite significant.

While there is some conflicting data, several studies reveal a clear connection between newspaper or other media coverage, and fear of crime. Homicide and other brutally violent crimes obviously illicit the most fear.

Fear also increases if crime appears to have been random and violent and if a local crime is given prominent coverage. The media can reduce complex matters to simple news accounts, with damaging results. According to Tony Doob, approximately 95 per cent of the public mentioned the media as a primary source of information (1987 study). Television is listed most often as a source of information about sentencing. "If the public is informed about something in a 37-second news story, it has to look to simple solutions for complex problems," he said.

Television puts the horror and pain of victims like Melanie Carpenter of Surrey into our living rooms on a daily basis.

Crime sells newspapers. So does fear. A 1991 study of the Toronto media determined that almost half of the news content pertained to deviance and crime-related topics.

The Media Monitor reported in the United States that in a single year, from 1992 to 1993, the number of crime/drug stories covered by the three major American networks doubled from 830 to 1,698. It is logical for people to conclude that there must be more crime if they see more crime reported on television.

In 1982, a series of attacks on women in Toronto led to a "moral panic" that was played out in the media. The media became the forum where interest groups, politicians, law enforcement agencies and others competed for publicity to articulate their own goals, positions and interests. Some would say the media manufactured the moral panic. Many more would agree at least that the media participated in it.

It is the media's influence on public perceptions of the extent of crime and violence that is noteworthy; there might be more break and enter crimes in higher income neighbourhoods but that is not the type of crime typically reported by the media, which prefers more violent crimes often in urban hot spots. Consequently, fears in the higher income neighbourhood may not be high or proportional to the actual crime rate in their own community but residents may fear travelling in those inner city areas and the residents from there may be more fearful, partly because of the news stories. A 1981 study revealed that newspapers may contribute to an unreasonably high fear of victimization from violent crimes as well as an unreasonably low concern with property crimes. Significantly, the authors of that report concluded that the media influence on public opinion of crime problems increases proportionately to the decrease of the individual's personal knowledge of the social conditions contributing to crime.

The media has an "anchoring effect" in its presentation of crime, according to Julian Roberts. By emphasizing the more serious crimes such as homicide, the news media appear to nudge up the perceived seriousness of other, actually less serious and unrelated offences. Roberts has done tests demonstrating that people will be more punitive of even a less serious case if they have read ten serious cases before turning to the other one. So the media helps to anchor the "ship of state" in the waters of violent crime which in fact are not the norm, detrimentally shaping perceptions of crime.

Studies of newspaper readership profile a high proportion of older people and those with occupations with higher income. Their fears of vulnerability are reinforced when they are given the message over and over again that people like themselves can and frequently do become victims of both property and personal crime.

The media influences setting the national agenda of crime, as well as affecting the public's concerns and knowledge of crime rates.

Having acknowledged all of the above, the media's influence is not overriding, and there are others who share the responsibility for what the media mirrors daily to a demanding public.

Julian Roberts said that studies that show direct links between coverage and fear of crime do not always reveal what the precise effect is. Attention has to be paid to the variables in each study. "The effect is not always a direct fear thing," he said. "It may increase concern or a desire for punishment but it is not certain to increase fear in every instance. Sometimes, people know the high profile case is exceptional." To that point, Tony Doob argued that coverage of the Bernardo case, once the suspect was arrested, likely does not further induce fear, not only because a suspect is behind bars but because people learn of the case's bizarre and exceptional nature. Most conclude they would not be at risk and that there are not many people out there doing what he and his wife were charged with doing. Much more likely to induce fear is front-page coverage of the recent Montreal murders of an elderly couple in their home by a trio of young