Chapter 6 - The nature of perceived safety inrural areas

• Imagine that some farmers declare they are worried about having their livestockstolen. Should this be enough to influence crime prevention efforts by the localpolice force? Or consider the case of a woman who is in fear because of constantthreats from her violent partner. Should her fear be taken seriously by workers insocial services or the police to avoid something more serious happening?Fear of crime is not typically considered a conventional policing matter andseems to be even less of an issue in rural communities. One reason for thisneglect is that the police, as well as those who devote their time to crime prevention,often work reactively, requiring an offense to be committed before anyaction can be taken. Another problem is that fear (of crime) may be triggered bythe trauma of victimization, though that is not its only source. Anxieties are fedby multi-scale factors. This chapter examines how the multifaceted nature of fearmakes perceived safety a difficult issue to tackle. Instead of denying such complexity,this chapter attempts to provide examples of how such anxieties formand are associated with the fear of crime in rural environments in Sweden. “Perceivedsafety” is a general concept used in this chapter to characterize both fearof crime and other overall anxieties, often measured by safety and crime victims’surveys.Lack of perceived safety – or, more specifically, fear of crime – has been thesubject of interdisciplinary research for many decades, but the results are farfrom unproblematic. Crime victims’ surveys and interviews are often the basisof this type of research, which has been criticized for offering a shallow pictureof what fear is actually is. This chapter examines fear as an informative resourcethat may improve quality of life for those living in rural communities. If fear is areflection of everyday life experiences, what are those experiences in ruralcommunities?

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