ABSTRACT
Fear of crime has been a social and political problem independent of crime itself and its study has become a major topic in criminology since the 1960s. Scholars claim that a fear of crime can gradually change people's routine activities, mental and physical health, quality of life and satisfaction with the government. Generally speaking, studies on fear of crime in Chinese literature have been very sparse and the quality of such studies has yet to be significantly improved. The vulnerability model posits that real or perceived personal vulnerability to crime, to physical and social factors, promotes fear. There are some polling firms in China that have also conducted national surveys of public concern about safety and security. Females and low-income residents report higher levels of fear in China, same as in the West. Curran and Cook conducted research in 1993 using data produced by the Institute of Public Security Research of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security in 1988.
