“Crime Risk” versus “Feeling Safe” in Schools
True and False Risk Assessment in Schools
Paul van Soomeren CEO, DSP-groep (http://www.dsp-groep.eu/); director of the board, the International CPTED Association and the European Designing Out Crime Association
Introduction
The concept of “fear of crime” usually refers to two quite different components: a risk assessment and a feeling. In this chapter, we will focus on the concept of fear of crime and one specific group: young people in high schools in the Netherlands.
Risk Assessment
In this context, risk assessment refers to the fear of personally becoming a victim of particular types of crime, such as violence, vandalism, theft, or burglary. A person’s sense of risk can be measured by including a question in a victim survey that asks respondents how likely they think it is that they will be a victim of violence, vandalism, theft, or some other crime in the coming year. In short, the risk assessment of becoming a victim.
Feeling Safe
Another type of question often posed in a victim survey in order to measure feelings of insecurity is: “How safe do you feel walking alone in the area after dark? Do you feel very safe, fairly safe, a bit unsafe, or very unsafe?”1 This question paints a different picture of fear of crime. In response to the question of street safety, women, elderly, and disabled people emerge as more fearful. This may be because the prospect of being out after dark evokes anxiety about a greater and more serious range of mishaps for these groups.
A related question to look at fear of crime is “How safe do you feel when at home alone after dark.” The results of this question sketch a more optimistic picture: The better one knows an environment, the safer one feels. Hence, “at home” (even when you're alone) feels a lot safer compared to walking in an area after dark.
Why Do People Feel Insecure?
The degree of fear and the kind of crimes a person is afraid of differ depending on gender and age. The hypothesis is that women, the elderly, and disabled people are more likely to fear crime. They fear for their personal safety and are afraid of street violence and, in particular, sexual assaults. It is far more terrifying to be confronted with crimes like rape, which threaten a person’s integrity and dignity, than with the loss of material goods. For this reason, women are usually more affected by this feeling than men.
Though studies of public areas where sexual assaults have occurred show that the type and characteristics of fearful places—for example, poor lightning and the presence of hiding places—correlate with the occurrence of crime, fearful places are not necessarily places where actual crimes occur. Nevertheless, fear influences the way people behave with regard to public or semi-public spaces. In particular, women and the elderly are more likely to use avoidance strategies that keep them away from problematic areas and situations. They tend to restrict their own activities due to their fear of crime. This behavior has effects on neighborhoods, on routes chosen to visit places and on the popularity of schools. Right or wrong, if a school is seen as a high crime risk, people may act accordingly with very real consequences such as avoiding the school as much as possible until the community feels safe by both police presence and a reduction in crime.
Avoidance behavior may also have an effect on the victimization rate: avoiding risk may actually be quite an effective strategy. In that respect, one might also argue that men and youngsters are irrational risk seekers and consequently have a higher victimization risk.
But let's face the facts first. Who are more at risk? Young people or older people? Pupils or staff at school?
Quite Right to Fear Crime When You’re Young!
Flight and Rietveld2 (2003) showed for the Netherlands (17 million inhabitants) for the first time that young people are in fact more at risk of becoming a victim of crime compared to adults. Also, young people seemed to be a bit more fearful. These two researchers compared national victim surveys—containing questions on fear of crime as well as victimization rates—with research surveys done in schools in the 1990s (see also Van Soomeren and Boersma elsewhere in this volume). In this chapter, we have replicated this analysis based on the national victim survey and the school survey figures of 2012 for the Netherlands.
Sources: national and schools
Every year the National Bureau for Statistics in the Netherlands does a survey on crime and safety (Veiligheidsmonitor CBS, random effective sample of 80,000 participants age 15 +), which is a great source for all facts and figures on crime and fear of crime.
Separately, and specific for schools, every 2 years research is done on “social safety in and around schools” in schools for primary education as well as high schools (ITS/Regioplan3). We will focus on the outcomes for high schools where in the 2012 research sweep about 1,300 staff (teachers and school support officials) and 9,000 pupils have answered questions on crime, safety, and fear of crime.
The research in high schools is not easy to compare with the national crime survey because the questionnaires, the age of the respondents, the context, and the sampling differ. But from a bird’s eye view, the results may be more comparable than initially appears and are certainly interesting. We compare the total population, youth 15-25 and pupils (age 12-18) plus staff in high schools.
Crime Risks for Youngsters
As already mentioned, the results from the national victim survey and the schools survey are not easy to compare: the age groups studied differ (12-18 versus 15-25) and figures on cybercrime are not yet available for schools. Also, the two categories of property crimes (mainly theft) and vandalism in the national survey are only one category in the school survey. There are also differences in the definition of violence. Therefore, in Table 13.1 we will omit the categories of verbal, social, and light physical violence and only present figures on heavy physical violence.
Table 13.1
Victim Percent Nationally and in High Schools (2012, The Netherlands)
| Type of Crime | Victim % for the Total Populationa | Victim % Age 15-25b | Victim % Pupilsc | Victim % Staffd |
| Violence total | 2.6 | 5.3 | 16.5 | 3.9 |
| Sexual violencef | 0.1 | 0.2 | 11.6 | 5.3 |
| Property crimes/theft | 13.2 | 18.5 | 18.1e | 5.2e |
| Vandalism | 7.7 | 7.5 | ||
| Cybercrime | 12.1 | 19.5 | Not available | Not available |
| Cyber ragging/bullying | 3.1 | 8.0 |
a Veiligheidsmonitor CBS 2012, The Hague (National Crime Victim Survey with yearly sweeps and an effective sample of about 80,000 respondents aged 15 +).
b Veiligheidsmonitor CBS 2012, statline.
c Table B6.6 11 ITS/Regioplan 2012, page 134.
d Table B6.8 ITS/Regioplan 2012, page 130.
e For this category, property crimes/theft and vandalism were seen as one (no distinct figures available).
f Italics indicate the item is a subcategory of the preceding category.
Table 13.1 shows:
1. Students in age group 15-25 have a substantially higher risk of becoming a victim of violence, theft, and cybercrime compared to the Dutch population (age 15 +) as a whole.
2. For pupils in high schools the risks are even higher: Compared to the Dutch population as a whole, the risk of becoming a victim of violence is at least five times as high in schools. But also the risk of theft, property crimes, and vandalism is higher for school pupils.4
3. The victim percentages for staff in high schools are lower than the Dutch population as a whole for theft/vandalism, and only slightly higher for violence, but much higher for sexual violence. On the other hand, there is other research also showing that indeed violence—and sexual violence in particular—seems to be a rather high risk for high school staff.5
In sum: Being young obviously results in a higher risk of becoming a victim of crime and high schools are a rather risky environment for pupils (and to a lower degree also for staff).
But how well do people assess this risk and how safe do pupils and staff feel in high schools?
Crime Risk and Feeling Safe in Schools
In 2011, DSP-groep worked with a group of 40 schools to develop a joint safety organization and policy method for schools. We used the IRIS triple S tool (www.IRIStripleS.com) to do research on the feeling of safety and the actual crime risk within the school premises. The difference between the real crime risk and the feelings of safety were striking:
• The most mentioned location where staff felt unsafe was in the hallways (two times more than in the classroom);
• The number of incidents was more than six times higher in the classrooms than in the hallways.
Obviously, the sound risk assessment of staff in these schools was false. Does the same go for pupils?
Feeling Safe
Does the higher victim risk for young people in general and school pupils in particular (see Table 13.1) result in higher levels of fear? In fact it hardly does!
The school survey research (ITS/Regioplan) shows that in 2012 more than 90% of the school population felt safe in and around their high schools. This goes for pupils (93%) as well as staff (93%). It also goes for specific places in school and outside (parking, around the school): all percentages “feeling safe” rank 90% or more for pupils and staff.6 In the publicity around the school safety research, this item is bi-yearly publicized in the press: Schools are safe because pupils and staff feel safe!
However, that pupils and staff feel safe in schools is not that special. When asked “How safe do you feel at home?” pupils and staff also feel safe at home (97%); even a bit more safe at home than in and around school. Exactly the same figure is shown by the National Crime Victim survey: Only 2.6% of the whole Dutch population feels unsafe at home. The figure for the age group 15-25 is slightly higher (4.7%) but still that is not a very frightening figure. In fact, almost everyone feels safe at home and also in school. These are environments you know well. It would be strange if people would feel afraid there.
The risk assessment of people about the probability of becoming a victim of crime (in general/not specified) is also rather low in the Netherlands: 3.4% and the age group 15-25 perceives only a slightly higher risk (4.5%). When the question is specified for different environments, as shown in Table 13.2, the age group 15-25 shows also slightly higher levels of fear.
Table 13.2
Percent of People Feeling Unsafe Sometimes/Often (2012, The Netherlands)
| Total Population (%) | Age Group 15-25 (%) | |
| In around leisure spots | 25 | 36 |
| Spots where youngster hang out | 44 | 55 |
| City centers | 19 | 20 |
| Shopping centers | 15 | 15 |
| Public transport | 19 | 25 |
Source: National Crime Victim Survey, CBS, The Hague, The Netherlands.
In general, the Dutch population feels safe. The age group 15-25 still feels rather safe and pupils and staff at school feel safe too. The differences are extremely small. This might have to do with the fact that research into feelings of safety is still in its infancy. Still, the fact remains that for the three groups—population as a whole, youth 15-25 and high school pupils/staff—the levels of fear are comparable low.
Conclusion
The crime risk, especially for pupils in high schools in the Netherlands, is high when compared to the country’s population as a whole. It is even higher than the crime victim risk for the age group 15-25.
But when asked about how safe people feel, there is not that much difference in responses. Young people (15-25) feel slightly more fearful of crime, but when asked using a different questionnaire and different procedure, high schools pupils say they feel extremely safe.
In sum, these figures from the Netherlands show that the risk of becoming a crime victim is:
• Higher for young people (15-25)
• Even higher for pupils in high schools
but pupils feel very safe in and around school.
Hence, when looking at crime in schools it is better to focus on the risks of becoming a crime victim than asking pupils about how safe they feel. Though everyone may report to feel very safe, the real crime risks may actually be rather high in schools.