Urban Studies, Vol.
38, Nos 5– 6, 899 – 913, 2001
Gender, Race, Age and Fear in the City
Rachel Pain
[Paper Ž rst received in Ž nal form, December 2000]
1. Introduction
Early on in the discovery of fear of crime as
a phenomenon shaping the life of cities,
signiŽ cant social differences in its experience
were recognised. Today, the empirical and
theoretical development around the issue of
social identity and fear is the subject of a
sizeable literature in its own right, as well as
being a focus of some policies which aim to
make cities safer and better peopled places.
However, an appraisal of both academic
literature and policy approaches suggests that
there are changing ideas about the patterning
of social identities in the fear of crime; very
different accounts of their role and import-
ance in the construction and experience of
fear; and little consensus over the sorts of
policy intervention which are likely to be
helpful in ameliorating fear. This paper aims
to review debates on race, age, gender and
fear in the city, as these are the social identi-
ties which have received most attention.
Much thinking about social identity and
fear of crime has tended to be dichotomised.
The sub-headings used in the paper re ect
some of these dualisms. For example, differ-
ent groups of young people are widely con-
structed either as threatening, or threatened;
there are powerful discourses which position
people of colour as offenders or victims; and
in much of the literature men are viewed as
fearless but fear-provoking, and women as
fearful and passive. Such dualisms re ect a
wider criminological fallacy that certain
Rachel Pain is in the Department of Geography, University of Durham, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK. Fax: 0191 374 2456.
E-mail: Rachel.Pain@durham.ac.uk .
0042-098 0 Print/1360-063 X On-line/01/05/60899-15 Ó
DOI: 10.1080/0042098012004659 0
groups commit crime and other are victims
of it (except for people in low-income areas
who are widely viewed as involved in both).
Recent research is pointing to the diversity
and complexity of issues around social ident-
ity and fear; so that although theoretical
frameworks can and should be developed
(one which emphasises social exclusion is
applied in this paper), the currency of stereo-
types and even the usefulness of gender, race
and age as social categories need to be criti-
cally appraised and the intersections between
different identities in their relationships to
crime and fear require further exploration.
Another set of dualisms which the geo-
graphical literature has begun to problema-
tise is around the spaces and places in which
fear is situated—for example, public versus
private, safe versus dangerous, low-income
estates versus suburbs—and the ways in
which people negotiate them. In fact, most
discussions of fear in the city deal only with
public spaces which are shared with
strangers. As recent research has shown,
crimes such as domestic violence, acquain-
tance violence and elder abuse also have a
role to play in the construction of fear. This
paper includes in its scope homes,
workspaces and other private and semi-
private places, which are as much a part of
‘the urban’ as streets, shopping malls and
parks. While many people strongly associate
fear with speciŽ c places, re ecting wider
2001 The Editors of Urban Studies
900 RACHEL PAIN
ideologies of public space as dangerous and
private space as safe, fear and safety in dif-
ferent spaces are interconnected—for exam-
ple, experiences of danger in private space
affect feelings of security in public at an
individual and societal level.
The rest of this introduction summarises
some of the key themes in research on social
identity and fear of crime, after which the
deŽ nition and approach to the fear of crime
employed in this paper are outlined. The
paper then goes on to examine how these
themes have in uenced our understanding of
the ways in which race, gender and age
in uence fear of crime and its effects on use
of urban spaces. The aim is to structure and
make some sense of the different ideas which
are in currency.
1.1 Social Identity and Fear of Crime
A distinction can be drawn between dis-
courses which have employed ‘gender’, ‘age’
and ‘race’ as taken-for-granted categories in
analysis of who fears, how much and where;
and later writings which have begun to ques-
tion and unpack why and how these social
identiŽ ers have been employed in fear dis-
courses. For example, in the earliest studies
of fear of crime, gender and age were used
uncritically in analysis of the social differen-
tiation of victimisation and fear. Race has
now joined them in the major crime surveys,
but also continues to be employed in broader
popular discourses in which people of colour
are constructed as a threat to be feared. Ulti-
mately, of course, the uses of social cate-
gories in popular and research discourses are
not separable. As well as involving a host of
methodological and epistemological  aws
which have since been widely criticised,
much early research on the fear of crime has
been accused of making uncritical and some-
times unjustiŽ ed assertions about the impact
of social identity on fear.
In Britain, early accounts of fear of crime
emphasised the importance of gender and
age in structuring social experience of fear
(Hough and Mayhew, 1983). In the Ž rst
British Crime Survey (BCS), older people
(aged 60 years and over) and women were
found to be more worried about crime, de-
spite having lower chances of victimisation
than men and young people. This led to the
conclusion, now notorious, that much fear of
crime was irrational, especially among these
two groups, and to the pronouncement that
fear of crime is more of a problem than crime
itself (Bennett, 1990; Hough and Mayhew,
1983).
Since the early 1980s, debates and differ-
ences have developed within research. These
can be summarised by the Ž ve broad themes
or positions outlined below—although this is
not an exhaustive list and each position
should not be read as having developed in
isolation from the others.
(1) The conclusion that the concerns about
crime of these two social groups are
irrational was challenged, swiftly in the
case of women (Stanko, 1987) and later
in the case of older people (Ferraro,
1995; Midwinter, 1990).
(2) Related to these critiques, the fear of
crime of women, older people and ethnic
minority groups has been linked to their
subordinate social, economic and politi-
cal status—from the late 1980s, differ-
ences in fear of crime and its effects
were discussed in the context of broader
social inequality (Pain, 1991; Smith,
1987; Valentine, 1989). Part of this argu-
ment involved highlighting speciŽ c and
discriminatory hate crimes of which
women, older people and people of
colour are at higher risk, including sex-
ual and domestic violence, elder abuse,
racist violence and harassment. These
have not always featured in the main
data sources on which mainstream analy-
ses of fear have been based, such as the
BCS and ofŽ cial crime statistics. That
many of these crimes occur in private
space has also been important, both in
the subordination of these social groups
and in explaining the absence of these
particular forms of risk from criminolo-
gists’ equations (Stanko, 1987, 1988).
(3) More recently, the categorisation of
 GENDER, RACE, AGE AND FEAR
these groups and the ways in which they
have labelled ‘fearful’ have been chal-
lenged (Koskela, 1997). For example,
common images of women and older
people as particularly fearful are damag-
ing as well as inaccurate and may have
the effect of increasing concern (Pain,
1995; Stanko, 1990b, 1996). Of course,
both groups are large and extremely di-
verse, raising questions over generalis-
ation, and fear of crime is also
profoundly affected by a range of factors
including income, class, area of resi-
dence, housing status, sexual orientation,
disability, experiences of victimisation
and many other life experiences. Re-
cently, researchers have pointed to some
of this complexity and have begun to
highlight the multiple and shifting nature
of social identities and to draw out impli-
cations for understanding the fear of
crime.
(4) Such critiques have been paralleled by
questioning where the construction of
‘fearful’ and ‘feared’ groups origi-
nated—as a social problem, fear of crime
has been widely used for political ends
(Ditton and Farrall, 2000; Garland, 1996;
Sasson, 1995). For example, why the
sudden discovery of fear of crime in the
late 1970s and early 1980s, and why the
quick association with certain social
identities? Why were women and older
people uncritically identiŽ ed as irra-
tionally fearful, and people of colour
assumed to be the object, rather than
subject, of fear?
(5) Following broader trends in the soci-
ology of gender, researchers have re-
cently focused on the role of masculinity
in the fear of crime (Goodey, 1997).
Methodological critiques of much pre-
vious research have raised and begun to
explore some of the issues around men’s
fear (Gilchrist et al., 1998). There has
also been a discernible shift away from a
concern with older people’s fear towards
examining young people’s concerns
about crime (Brown, 1995; Loader et al.,
1998). Men and young people (and es-
901
pecially young men) are commonly con-
structed as provoking fear in others, yet
when research is approached in new
ways, allowing for the possibility that
men’s and young people’s fear may
manifest differently, both have been
found to be signiŽ cant problems. Such
reappraisal is made more pressing by the
gradual recognition that those groups
who are most excluded (in terms of past
research, policy-making and the impacts
of urban planning) may be most at risk
from victimisation and even most affec-
ted by fear.
Add to these different developments and in-
terests in theorisation the knotty problems of
deŽ ning and measuring fear of crime (see
Farrall et al., 1997), and it is clear that there
exist very different notions about the role of
age, gender and race. The relationship be-
tween fear and social identity is a complex
one, which belies many simplistic beliefs
underlying certain aspects of community
safety and crime prevention policy.
1.2 DeŽ ning Fear of Crime
To approach this task and, indeed, to support
some of the points made above, a clear
deŽ nition of the fear of crime is needed. This
too has been subject of much discussion in
recent years and it is very likely that the ‘fear
of crime’ is framed in slightly different ways
in each of the papers in this review issue. For
the purposes of this paper, it is deŽ ned as the
wide range of emotional and practical re-
sponses to crime and disorder made by indi-
viduals and communities. This deŽ nition
emphasises that it is the impact of people’s
concerns about crime on everyday social life
which make it important, rather than ‘levels’
or ‘rates’ of fear which continue to be
gauged in different ways by surveys, despite
widespread critiques. The effects which peo-
ple’s concerns about crime have are both
measurable (although it may take quite sensi-
tive, and even then imperfect, methodologies
to draw them out) and signiŽ cant in terms of
quality of life and social inequality. They
902 RACHEL PAIN
provide some means of establishing whether,
when and for whom fear of crime is a tan-
gible social problem.
1.3 A Framework for Approaching the Fear
of Crime
Following from this deŽ nition, and arising
from the second theme listed above, fear is
understood here within a theoretical frame-
work which emphasises social exclusion
(Pain, 2000). Fear of crime can be considered
to create and reinforce exclusion from social
life and from particular urban spaces in a
number of ways:
(1) Exclusion through the experience of
crime itself. Property crime makes poor
people poorer, while violence increases
the subordination of marginalised groups
(Young, 1990). For example, feminists
have suggested that sexual violence
against women is the “structural under-
pinning of hierarchical relations; the ulti-
mate sanction buttressing other forms of
social control” (Hanmer, 1978, p. 229).
In this reading, fear of crime reinforces
the social control effected by crime.
Both crime and fear of crime may be
used to resist social oppression too.
(2) Exclusion through sub-criminal acts.
These include abuses such as racist, sex-
ist, homophobic or ageist harassment,
and incivilities common in high-crime
urban areas such as grafŽ ti, all of which
may affect social and spatial behaviour
patterns (Painter, 1992). Clearly, experi-
ence and interpretation of these acts vary
between social groups, areas of residence
and, in the case of grafŽ ti, distance from
the cultures in which it is an accepted
activity. However, sub-criminal acts re-
mind some people of their vulnerability
to crime and increase fear (Junger,
1987).
(3) Exclusion through fear of crime and pre-
cautionary behaviour. The effects of the
behavioural precautions and spatial re-
strictions which are imposed in response
to fear on social and leisure activities,
employment opportunities and freedom
of expression are well documented (Pain,
1997; Painter, 1992; von Schulthess,
1992; Stanko, 1990a). Frequently, it is
those already socially or economically
disadvantaged who are affected most by
fear of crime, which has the effect of
reinforcing their marginalisation.
(4) Exclusion through being constructed as
a threat. Many people tend to fear
stereotypical ‘others’ whose presence ap-
pears to threaten disorder to mainstream
life and values (Sibley, 1995). In reality,
the groups and places frequently
demonised as a threat to law and order
may themselves be at highest risk of
violence and abuse of all, and so social
‘others’ such as children, young men,
some ethnic minority groups, people
who are homeless or have mental health
problems may be simultaneously feared
and fearful.
(5) Exclusion through criminal justice and
community safety policies. Policies
which aim to improve the safety of some
groups may do so at the expense of
others. As Garland (1996, p. 461) has
outlined, the association of danger with
“the threatening outcast, the fearsome
stranger, the excluded and the embit-
tered” is often invoked at the level of
governance in order to excite fear and
promote support for punitive strategies.
Equally, Davis (1992) has argued that
planning tactics to create ‘safe spaces’
lead to greater fear, isolation and social
exclusion, rather than less, and that the
disbeneŽ ts of planning urban space in
this way are fewest for the rich and
greatest for those already marginalised
from urban life.
Much of the literature on the fear of crime
has been criticised for being atheoretical. The
framework outlined here is one which much
recent empirical evidence Ž ts. However,
overgeneralisation about social identity and
fear of crime is unwise; fear of crime in-
cludes a wide range of disparate phenomena
and this framework does not apply to all the
 GENDER, RACE, AGE AND FEAR
fears found among members of all social
groups. Although it emphasises unequal
power relations, we should not read from it
either that ‘fearful’ members of certain social
groups are passive in the face of fear. In
contrast, as the discussion later in the paper
will highlight, this is one more commonly
reinforced stereotype which needs to be dis-
pelled.
2. Femininity, Masculinity: Fear and
Boldness
Almost every survey of fear of crime Ž nds
that women report being more fearful of
crime than men. Whether in the home, the
workplace or the city, it is fear of sexual
violence and harassment from men which
underpins women’s higher fear (Gordon and
Riger, 1989; Valentine, 1989). Feminists
have viewed women’s higher fear of crime as
a manifestation of gender oppression and a
damaging form of control of women’s lives,
reproducing traditional notions about
women’s ‘place’ in society (Hanmer and
Saunders, 1984; Pain, 1991; Valentine,
1989). Sexual harassment in masculinist, het-
erosexual environments, whether they are
public places or workplaces, has also been
implicated in contributing to fear (Gardner,
1995; Junger, 1987). There is plenty empiri-
cal evidence about the spatial outcomes
of this control, particularly the well-
documented effects of coping strategies
which many women employ to avoid harass-
ment and violence in public spaces (Pain,
1997; Painter, 1992; Valentine, 1989).
However, there are some con icts between
theoretical development and empirical evi-
dence around women’s fear of urban spaces.
The most recent suggestion, that men’s fear
may be considerably higher than previously
thought, is dealt with later (in itself this does
not challenge the fact that women experience
high levels of fear of crime). Much relevant
research on women’s fear has revolved
around two key paradoxes.
The Ž rst and earliest is the paradox be-
tween levels of fear and violence discussed
in the introduction—when women’s high
903
fear of crime was Ž rst discovered, it ap-
peared far greater than their actual risks of
victimisation (Balkin, 1979; Hough and
Mayhew, 1983). In crime surveys in Britain
and North America, reported rates of viol-
ence against women in the earlier sweeps
were extremely low, leading to the assump-
tion that women’s fear must be irrational.
This ‘vulnerability’ perspective has since
been heavily criticised for implying that
women are inherently weak and passive
‘born victims’ and for ignoring structural
explanations of violence which focus upon
men (Stanko, 1985). This paradox has since
been shown to be misleading, produced by
the unrepresentative way that criminologists
have deŽ ned and measured crime against
women (Stanko, 1988). More sensitive and
intensive research continues to show that
levels of violence against women are far
higher (Crawford et al., 1990; Hall, 1985;
Mirrlees-Black et al., 1998) and easily justify
women’s high levels of fear of attack.
A second paradox has been identiŽ ed and
explored by geographers—most research
shows a mismatch between the types of loca-
tion in which physical and sexual violence
usually occur (private space) and the loca-
tions in which most women fear (public
spaces), calling into question the idea that
levels of victimisation can explain fear alone.
To resolve this spatial paradox, feminists
have argued that women are misinformed
about the main location of danger, through
the institutions of the family, the education
system and the media (Hanmer and Saun-
ders, 1984; Valentine, 1989). More recent
research has indicated that misinformation
does underlie fear in public space; most
women are aware that domestic violence is
more common than stranger attacks, but this
knowledge has little effect on their fear of
crime unless they have personal experience
of domestic violence (Pawson and Banks,
1993; Pain, 1997).
The fact that urban public spaces are rela-
tively safe compared with the home has pro-
voked attempts to reduce women’s fear
through changing the physical fabric of city
centres and housing estates. Earlier feminist
904 RACHEL PAIN
contributions to the literature on women’s
experiences of public spaces tended to focus
on negative aspects, including poor access to
public transport, long distances between resi-
dential and shopping areas, and poor design
which can make movement around the city
difŽ cult for mothers out with prams or young
children as well as contributing to women’s
fear of assault (Little, 1993; Matrix, 1984;
Valentine, 1990; Whitzman, 1992). While
raising important issues which had previ-
ously been neglected by planners and archi-
tects, some of this literature has been
criticised for taking an unintentionally essen-
tialist perspective on women and urban de-
sign. Where the arguments have been
extended to women’s fear of crime, the
overemphasis in policy on design solutions,
as well as having little chance of success,
ignores the wider social causation of
women’s fear outlined above (Koskela and
Pain, 2000). Meanwhile, feminist writers
such as Wilson (1991) have emphasised that
the city is frequently a place of excitement
and opportunity for women, not just a place
to be feared. City centre spaces at once have
varying meanings to different people (Pain
and Townshend, forthcoming).
Different notions of femininity are also
entwined with different constructions of the
fear of crime. For example, some have sug-
gested that the emphasis on ‘fear’ and its
negative consequences in writing about
women and crime reproduces notions about
feminine weakness (Segal, 1990). It has also
been suggested that responses to the newly
identiŽ ed problem of women’s fear from po-
lice forces and government departments tend
to entrench stereotypes further, rather than
challenge them (Stanko, 1990b). Koskela’s
(1997) analysis of women’s fear of attack in
Finland emphasises that women respond to
the threat of crime with ‘boldness’ as well as
fear and ‘spatial conŽ dence’ as well as spa-
tial avoidance. She highlights the in uence
on women’s fear of the particular cultural
and geographical context of Finland, which
has a better record on gender equality than
many other European or North American
countries. She presents the stories of those
women who are not afraid but respond to the
threat of violence with boldness and deŽ ance
rather than fear and the fact that, just as some
women become fearful at certain times, oth-
ers lose the ‘space of fearfulness’ through
certain life experiences. In so doing, she
challenges the unintentional portrayal of pre-
vious research of fearfulness as an essentially
female quality:
It has been pointed out in this study that
women do not passively experience space
but actively produce, deŽ ne and reclaim it.
Many women in Finland reclaim space for
themselves through consciously routinised
use, and are able to ‘tame’ space by vari-
ous expressions of courage. They have
several ways of negotiating danger, read-
ing the signs of danger, taking possession
of space, and using power on urban space:
women show ‘spatial expertise’. This
demonstrates that women’s everyday spa-
tial practices can be practices of resist-
ance. By their presence in urban space
women produce space that is more avail-
able not only for themselves but also for
other women. Women’s spatial conŽ dence
can be interpreted as a manifestation of
power. Hence, at the level of the whole
society, women’s safety in public is ar-
guably improved more by women going
out than by them staying inside (Koskela,
1999, Epilogue p. 3; original emphasis).
Clearly, there are changes over time as well
as differences across space in the opportuni-
ties and freedoms women experience. Fear of
male violence was identiŽ ed in the 1970s as
a key plank of patriarchal oppression
(Brownmiller, 1975; Walby, 1989) and yet
massive social changes have taken place
since, for some women in the domestic
sphere and for many in the workplace. De-
spite these changes, my own study of women
in Edinburgh in the early 1990s showed that
middle-class, professional women still ex-
perienced high levels of social and spatial
restriction due to fear of violence (Pain,
1997). However, for younger women, the
city may increasingly be a site of risk-taking
 GENDER, RACE, AGE AND FEAR
and adventure as well as of fear (Walklate,
1997).
In direct contrast to women, men’s low
reported fear of crime appeared anomalous
from the earliest crime surveys because they
experienced relatively high rates of violence.
Aggregate data suggest that men are largely
at risk from strangers and acquaintances in
public places including streets, pubs and
clubs, but there is also a risk from partners in
the home. In the 1998 British Crime Survey,
23 per cent of women and 15 per cent of men
reported having been assaulted by a partner
at some time in their lives, with women more
likely to be seriously injured and to suffer
repeat victimisation than men (Mirrlees-
Black et al., 1998). Why, then, the relatively
low fear of crime? Part of the problem is
methodological, as male respondents seem
reluctant to give answers to surveys where
this might challenge the image of male invul-
nerability (Crawford et al., 1990). Where
men have been the subject of qualitative
research, this has suggested that, at least for
some, the effects of fear may be just as great
as for women (Gilchrist et al., 1998; Stanko
and Hobdell, 1993). Gilchrist et al. (1998)
examine the cases of fearful men and fearless
women in order to demonstrate that fear and
boldness, although they may be gendered,
are not essentially female or male qualities.
Their interviews suggest, as do those carried
out by Stanko and Hobdell, that men who are
fearful of crime tend to worry about similar
factors in similar ways to women. They con-
clude that
We now know that some women are not
fearful, and that some men are fearful: yet
we are some way from knowing why this
should be (Gilchrist et al., 1998, p. 296).
Goodey’s (1997) research gives some clues
to this last question, as it highlights the im-
portance of other social identities in structur-
ing men’s fear, especially age, race, sexuality
and class. While young boys may admit to
concern about crime, as they grow up male
fearfulness “is progressively downplayed as
normative adult identities are adopted”
(Goodey, 1997, p. 402). The dominant cul-
905
ture of heterosexual masculinity makes ‘fear’
a less acceptable response for men, but at the
same time means that those perceived as
being outside it—for example gay men—are
more at risk from violence.
A recent study of fear of crime in the city
centre of Newcastle upon Tyne, England,
suggested that young men took more precau-
tions against crime while using the city cen-
tre than other social groups such as women
and older people (Pain and Townshend,
forthcoming). As they had most Ž rst- and
second-hand knowledge of crime and hassle,
and were far more likely to be in the city
centre at ‘dangerous’ times, young men were
the most aware of danger and the most care-
ful. However, they perceived and dealt with
‘risk’ with different types of coping strate-
gies and constraints (Walklate, 1995). This
conception of risk arises from a masculinity
which values excitement, adventure,
power and control as what men do. This is
a masculinity to which all men relate to a
greater or lesser degree (Walklate, 1997,
p. 41).
Risk-taking behaviour is part of the attraction
of the city centre at night for some young
men (and, increasingly, some young
women).
However, the differences between young
men in the study were as important as the
commonalities. For example, respondents
identiŽ ed the risks associated with being a
football fan, of student bashing and of having
an accent from other parts of Britain.
They get absolutely tanked up [drunk] and
then it’s like, ‘Oh, there’s a bunch of
students, we’ll go an’ harass them for a
laugh!’
I think it’s your accent as well, like, em,
when you’ve got a foreign accent it’s al-
right, but em variations of the English
accent. People who are, like, from down
south are getting picked on.
Some of the young men had experience of
being viewed as potentially dangerous or
criminal themselves because of their age and
906 RACHEL PAIN
gender. Some had been harassed by the po-
lice, and others were aware of how they
might be perceived by older people.
If you’re in a group of, like, eight lads, the
police always come over and ask what
you’re doin’. And, like, yer, just goin’ for
a drink—but they automatically assume
that you’re killin’ somebody!
I think with old people it’s what they read
in the papers as well. I mean, they seem to
think that everybody that’s young’s
got … a drug habit.
They think that we all go to nightclubs and
take ten ‘Es’ [ecstasy] every night (quotes
from discussion groups with young men;
Pain and Townshend forthcoming).
Despite the usual stereotypes about young
men as offenders rather than victims, there
are many ways in which young men may be
positioned in relation to crime, risk and fear.
They also have varying perceptions of and
means of negotiating urban spaces. The
Ž ndings in this study have some transfer-
ability to other urban areas, but constructions
of risk and fear were affected by particular
aspects of the city of Newcastle—the fact
that it has a compact city centre and so
different groups are in close proximity; the
fact that there is a strong local tradition of
masculinity associated with drinking, sport
and sometimes Ž ghting; the fact that the city
centre has transformed from the hub of a
local economy dominated by heavy industry
to a popular party and student city. Fear of
crime and its relation to social identity are
profoundly affected by locality (Evans et al.,
1996; Loader et al., 1998; Taylor, 1995).
3. Fear of Race and Fear of Racism
Young men and strangers are not the only
‘others’ to be linked with crime and fear in
the public imagination. Race is also a strong
predictor of fear of crime. Research has
shown that white people’s fears frequently
focus on other ethnic groups (Chiricos et al.,
1997; Merry, 1981; Smith, 1986; Taub et al.,
1984); in British and US studies, the most
fearful white people have been identiŽ ed as
those living in mixed-race neighbourhoods .
These fears are based upon powerful stereo-
types existing around race and crime (Lea
and Young, 1984; Smith, 1982). Media
coverage disproportionately re ects images
of people of colour as criminals (Smith,
1984a) and just as women focus their fears of
male violence onto stranger danger, targeting
people of colour provides one way of manag-
ing and negotiating danger (Smith, 1984b).
The association of race and crime does,
however, have different manifestations in
different places. In the US, it is the black
population which is most strongly imagined
as prone to crime. Ditton and Farrall (2000)
suggest that the emergence of fear of crime
as an issue in the 1970s was related to a
backlash against the civil rights movement.
Equally, in Britain, concerns about race and
crime have re ected strained race relations
for several decades (Lea and Young, 1984).
Racial stereotypes about crime are also
gendered and sexualised. Many studies have
shown that white women living in ethnically
mixed areas tend to view rape in racialised
terms. Valentine (1989) relates her inter-
viewees’ fear of black men to the historical
racist image of black men having an uncon-
trolled and violent sexuality. Day’s (1999)
research on women’s fear investigates
women’s ‘race prejudice and race fear’ in
public spaces in an urban area of California.
White women’s perceptions of their vulner-
ability were constructed partly in relation to
the perceived threat of rape from men of
colour. The fears of women of colour were
also structured by race but, in addition to
concerns about sexual assault, they saw
themselves at risk from racist harassment and
violence. Day demonstrates how women’s
racialised fears map onto a range of public
spaces. For example, women avoided places
which they associated with people of colour
and hence risk, ranging from certain neigh-
bourhoods to particular shops:
I wouldn’t go spend a day in the middle of
downtown Santa Ana if I knew that it was,
again, for example, a Hispanic area, that
 GENDER, RACE, AGE AND FEAR
they’re not happy to have Caucasians in
their area. And I understand that, that’s
just life itself. But I wouldn’t put myself in
that situation (p. 320).
I actually haven’t ever been inside. I went
to the restaurant next door, but I’ve been
afraid to go inside because I don’t know
what to expect, and it’s gonna be different,
because it’s an Asian market … the people
might be Ž ne, the place might be Ž ne, but
it’s a fear of the unknown, and of the fact
that it’s gonna be different (pp. 316– 317)
(white women; quoted in Day, 1999).
Day makes the point that neither a person’s
gender, race nor class can explain fear of
crime alone. Rather, different aspects of so-
cial identity work together in different ways
to impact on the nature and geography of
fear of crime.
The interlocking systems of race, class and
gender generate experiences that differ
materially for each combination of
traits … each such experience is situated
differently in public space, where encoun-
ters shape and reveal one’s ideas about
race (Day, 1999, p. 307).
In reality, white women are more at risk from
the white men they live with or are ac-
quainted with than the men of colour whom
their fear of crime may be associated with.
However, studies in most Western countries
show that people of colour themselves have
signiŽ cantly higher risks of victimisation
than white people (Mayhew, 1989). Some of
this risk is explained by social and demo-
graphic factors, but much is experienced be-
cause of racial or ethnic background,
particularly racist assault and harassment
(Commission for Racial Equality, 1987).
Women of colour may experience extra
vulnerability to sexual violence and harass-
ment (MacKinnon, 1979). In Hall’s (1985)
London study of sexual violence, she found
that many black and immigrant women had
been targets of abuse because of their race or
nationality: half had been verbally abused
and over one-quarter physically assaulted be-
cause of this reason. Seven per cent of the
907
black and immigrant respondents reported
that they had been sexually assaulted because
of their race or nationality. These higher
risks stem from stereotypes about the sexual
availability of women of colour and men’s
(particularly white men’s) rights to their bod-
ies—black women’s oppression lies within
an imperial as well as a patriarchal context
(Mama, 1989). As a consequence of this
compounded oppression, women of colour
tend to report higher levels of fear of rape
(Gordon and Riger, 1989).
Many surveys show that people of colour
have higher fear of crime than white people,
which has impacts on use of space and qual-
ity of life (Day, 1999; Hough, 1995; St John,
1995; Stanko, 1990a; Walker, 1994). Where
racial violence is an ongoing feature of local
neighbourhoods , danger is less random, risk
appears less controllable and fear has more
severe effects (Commission for Racial Equal-
ity, 1987). In some localities where levels of
racism are high and manifested in violence, it
provides another dimension of fear which
consolidates spatial boundaries and control.
Webster (1996) describes an ethnic apartheid
in young people’s use of space in a West
Yorkshire town, where racist attacks re ect
the defence of local territories. Constructions
of criminality and race vary according to
locality, re ecting local demographics and
histories of race relations (Smith, 1986). In a
smaller town in south-east England, Watt and
Stenson (1998) describe problems of racist
violence and white fears of ‘other’ areas, but
suggest that these are less marked than in
Webster’s work because of more ethnically
mixed neighbourhood s and the commonness
of school friendships between young people
of different ethnic backgrounds.
4. Fearing Youth and Fearing for Youth
Issues of age have been the most contested
area in the literature on social identity, fear
of crime and use of public space. There has
been a shift from focusing on older people’s
fear of crime, to more recent recognition that
young people are more at risk from and more
908 RACHEL PAIN
affected by victimisation and fear. However,
the two groups should not be studied in
isolation, either from other social identities
(as gender, class, race, sexual orientation and
so on, structure differences in fear within
each group) or each other. Age relations
underlie many issues pertaining to both older
and young people’s fear; it is not possible to
understand children’s experiences of fear and
space without reference to their parents and
other carers, and older people’s use of space
is in uenced by discourses around youth
and the behaviour and attitudes of younger
people.
One of the most long-standing of these
concerns is young people’s use and apparent
domination of many urban public spaces.
The presence of children and young people
‘hanging around’ in public places such as
streets, parks and shopping malls is a wide-
spread and recurrent moral panic in Western
societies (Loader et al., 1998). It relates to
the common association of youth with crime,
and crises over rare but highly publicised
incidents where children are involved in very
serious violent crimes. But it also re ects
deeper concerns about an apparent lack of
social control over young people in contem-
porary society (Brown, 1995).
Such concerns feed into older people’s
fear of crime, which was ‘discovered’ as a
public issue by national crime surveys in
Britain and North America. The crime sur-
veys appeared to show that older people were
more afraid of crime than younger people,
despite being signiŽ cantly less at risk. For
example, people aged 16– 24 are four times
more likely to be burgled than people aged
over 65, and three times more likely to be
victims of vehicle-related theft (Mirrlees-
Black et al., 1998). The differences in rates
of violence are far greater still. OfŽ cial crime
statistics for Britain based on incidents
recorded by the police show that people over
60 make up just 2 per cent of victims of
violence against the person, 1 per cent of
victims of rape and indecent assault, and 23
per cent of female victims and 7 per cent of
male victims of robbery and theft from the
person (Watson, 1996).
More recently, the orthodoxy that older
people experience high fear of crime (Clarke
and Lewis, 1982; Hough and Mayhew, 1983)
has also been challenged. There is now wide-
spread agreement that the issue has been
misrepresented and that older people are not
in general more fearful than anyone else
(Ferraro, 1995; McCoy et al., 1996; Midwin-
ter, 1990). As in other areas of fear of crime
research, survey methodologies are partly
held to blame for these mixed conclusions
(see Farrall et al., 1997); they have failed to
investigate the meaning of crime for older
people in any depth, or the various ways in
which they identify or situate themselves in
relation to crime (Ferraro, 1995; Midwinter,
1990; Pain, 1995). With more careful ques-
tioning, the British Crime Survey has shown
that older people of both sexes worry less
than younger people about most crimes.
As with stereotypes around race and fear,
it is interesting to re ect on where the dis-
course of older people as particularly vulner-
able and fearful comes from. Cook and
Skogan (1990) have charted the rise and fall
of the victimisation of older people as a
policy issue in the US in the 1970s, arguing
that once empirical evidence began to appear
which showed that older people were actu-
ally at lower risk of crime than younger
people, the idea that they had higher fear of
crime and were more likely to be adversely
affected by fear took over as a prominent
concern in research and in Congressional
debates. Others have been more explicit
about the basis of the common connection of
fear of crime and older people in societal
ageism; it re ects wider images of older
people as weak, dependent and at the mercy
of the young (Midwinter, 1990; Pain, 1995).
However, given the diversity of older peo-
ple, who make up 20– 25 per cent of most
Western societies, differences in exposure to
victimisation and fear are to be expected and
aggregate evidence should not be interpreted
as meaning that there are not speciŽ c risks
for some older people in certain places. Frail
older people living alone in high-crime, low-
income areas have higher risks of street viol-
ence, as well as community harassment—“a
 GENDER, RACE, AGE AND FEAR
growing problem in which older people are
scapegoated and victimized in community
settings” (Biggs, 1996, p. 78). Moreover, evi-
dence is growing about the extent of elder
abuse, the physical, sexual, psychological
and Ž nancial abuse of older people taking
place in domestic or institutional contexts
(McCreadie, 1996). As is the case for young
people and women, older people are statisti-
cally more at risk in private rather than in
public space, and those who suffer social
exclusion because of low income, ill health
or area of residence are most at risk of all.
For the majority of older people, however,
lower fear re ects their lower victimisation,
as well as the fact that they are less likely to
use the public spaces perceived as risky at
the times considered most dangerous.
Young people, on the other hand, not only
face higher risks of victimisation but also
greater socialisation into fear, having grown
up in a era when crime has become a major
reason behind parental controls on children’s
spatial and social experiences. A number of
studies have highlighted high levels of child
victimisation, both from adults and other
children and young people, most of which is
not reported to the police (see, for example,
Anderson et al., 1990; Hartless et al., 1995).
It has become clear too that the impacts of
fear of crime are greater on children and
young people.
In childhood, the main way fear impacts
on use of space is through parental control. A
sizeable body of work has focused on the
restrictions which are increasingly placed on
children’s access to public space because of
parents’ worries about strangers and trafŽ c.
Along with the growth in domestic-based
popular culture and the erosion of outdoor
playspaces for children, this means that chil-
dren explore the outside world far less and
many do not have freedom to do so at all
until a signiŽ cantly later age than in the past.
A number of implications have been noted
(for example, see Hart, 1979; Hillman et
al., 1990; Moore, 1986; Valentine and
McKendrick, 1997). Children are considered
to have less environmental knowledge, com-
petence and conŽ dence as a result. Their
909
movements are becoming increasingly re-
stricted, with consequences for physical de-
velopment and health as fewer walk or cycle,
and for their social and emotional progress as
it is argued that they are losing the chance to
develop coping skills, a sense of responsi-
bility for themselves, and to use their minds
creatively.
By the time they are allowed autonomous
mobility, adolescents have learned powerful
lessons about safe places and spaces and safe
times to be outside the home. Anderson et al.
(1990) found that many of the children in
their study had taken on their parents’ ideas
about danger and that girls in particular
would comply with their parents’ rules after
a certain age and begin to regulate their own
exposure to the places they had learned were
dangerous. In the past, girls have been con-
sidered more at risk in public space than
boys, and have been more heavily restricted,
but awareness of bullying, paedophilia and
other types of violence means that boys are
increasingly subject to parental restrictions
and fearful of crime in their own right
(Goodey, 1994, 1997). Ironically, most acci-
dents and most of the violence which chil-
dren suffer take place in the home, so
warnings about danger which revolve around
public space are spatially inappropriate. Me-
dia reports of crimes against children and
advice from formal agencies such as police
forces and governments tend to legitimate
the location of these concerns (Walklate,
1989).
Not all responses to fear of crime involve
avoiding or carefully negotiating places per-
ceived as dangerous, however. Young people
in particular may respond to risk in other
ways. Many resist the rules which govern
their use of space referred to above, instead
choosing to go out in groups with other
young people, because they feel in danger
themselves either from other young people or
from adults (Loader et al., 1998; Pain and
Williams, 2000). Ironically, this response
creates suspicion and fear among other
young people, as well as among other social
groups. The following quotes taken from dis-
cussion groups carried out in North
910 RACHEL PAIN
Tyneside in north-east England emphasise
the mutual lack of understanding of the be-
haviour and concerns of those in different
age-groups relating to con icts over space.
Adults’ Views of Teenagers
Q: Do you think people around here are
worried to approach teenagers?
GENERAL AGREEMENT
—In case they get their windows broke
or something like that you know.
—You don’t know if they’re full of drink
(Mothers).
Teenagers’ Views of Teenagers
I mean all of us have probably done it as
well, hang around on, because there was
nowhere to go and nowhere to do, and so
you just hung around (Young Women).
The people who are standing round in
groups are just as scared of getting
mugged by the other groups as anyone else
is (Young Men).
Teenagers’ Views of Adults
Everybody up on Finton Park who lived
there used to phone the police, even if you
were just sitting on the wall. And they’d
be like “Will you move them, they make
the place look bad.”. … Just the fact that
you’re sitting there, everybody feels like
“Oh God what are they going to do, break
the windows and stuff”. It’s stupid. No-
body understands (Young Women).
—I think the older ones need more aware-
ness that it’s going on, because it never
happened in their generation so they don’t
understand. And maybe if they did, then
they’d get something sorted out.
—I think people should have awareness to be
able to do something about it.
—My Grandma’s like “Why don’t you go
down Spanish City [local amusement
park]. You and your friends go down”.
And I’m thinking “I wouldn’t dare do
that”. That’s where they used to go when
they were little (Young Women) (taken
from Pain and Williams, 2000).
The experiences of different age-groups of
particular public places, then, are interrelated
and contingent.
5. Conclusion
This paper has attempted to show something
of the complexity of the relationships be-
tween fear of crime in the city and the social
identities of age, race and gender. It provides
no easy answers to the question of who is
most likely to fear public urban spaces.
Many people fear different spaces at differ-
ent times and these fears are expressed in
different behaviour patterns. This includes
men as well as women, young people as well
as older people and people of colour as well
as white people. The research agenda is cur-
rently changing. Women are still acknowl-
edged as experiencing a high level of fear of
crime, largely because of fear of sexual viol-
ence, but men’s low fear and the nature of
the relation of different masculinities to fear
of crime are being questioned. With the ex-
ception of very excluded groups, older peo-
ple suffer the consequences of fear less than
was once thought and younger people are
increasingly recognised as more at risk from
victimisation and fear. The fears of white
people are increasingly recognised as being
racialised, while the fear of crime of people
of colour is partly structured by racism, racist
violence and harassment.
Thus it is inappropriate to deal with race,
gender, age and other social identities simply
as descriptive categories in analysis of the
fear of crime. Rather, in each case, fear of
crime (and the crimes feared) are often struc-
tured by age, race and gender, as this paper
has outlined. When gender, age and race are
viewed as social relations which are based
upon unequal distributions of power, they
begin to explain who is most affected by
fear, and where. Central to this argument is
the consideration of ways in which these and
 GENDER, RACE, AGE AND FEAR
other social identities intersect, so that male–
female, black– white, old– young are not
enough alone to predict people’s position in
relation to fear. Some of these intersections
have been illustrated: for example, in the
racialisation of women’s fear of rape; the
differences in responses to fear between
young men and young women; and the
heightened risks of victimisation for frail and
excluded older people. This framework helps
to get beyond some of the dichotomised
thinking around ‘victims– offenders’ and
‘feared– fearful’ which has in uenced so
much literature on the fear of crime. Some of
those groups traditionally labelled as
‘feared’, such as young men, homeless peo-
ple and those with mental illness, may also
be ‘fearful’, and these fears are in many
cases justiŽ ed by the risks of personal crime
against them.
Equally, the particularities of place are a
further axis of differentiation and are helpful
in constructing a more diverse and realistic
account of the fear of crime of certain social
groups. Place affects fear in the city at a
number of scales: for example, in micro-
scale environmental features; the avoidance
of neighbourhood s or city centres perceived
as dangerous at certain times; and the
in uence of local constructions of identities
such as masculinity, femininity and race. In
the Newcastle study, young men’s safety de-
pended not only on their social positioning,
but also on their area of origin, while differ-
ent studies of racist violence have empha-
sised the importance of local historical and
contemporary race relations, patterns of seg-
regation and con ict.
This paper has hinted at the social con-
struction of different discourses of fear and
the fact that these discourses have been
widely employed for political ends. How-
ever, it has also shown that fear of crime has
tangible and serious effects on social inter-
action, use of space and quality of life—
especially among those who experience some
level of exclusion from mainstream social
spaces, amongst whom fear is often a reac-
tion to signiŽ cant risks of violence and
crime.
911
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