ABSTRACT

This chapter presents a stepping stone to a comprehensive understanding of fear, primarily through its work with children. Criminology tells us that men are the criminals, men and women are the victims, and women are the fearful. References to the irrationality of female fear, in lieu of women’s victimization potential, have been readily displaced by feminist criminologists. Women’s experiences of fear and crime may be different to men’s but women do not respond as a homogeneous whole. Sex role theory and social learning theory have directed gender-specific criminogenic explanations away from the confines of biological determinism. Gender emerges from the research as the common denominator of fear, with age also revealing difference within proportionally gendered confines. While inter-class and inter-racial conflict is important in forming one’s social identity, it is the acceptable limits of behavior within a class or a race that largely determines appropriate action and reaction to crime and fear.