ABSTRACT
This chapter has a very specific aim. It seeks to identify a range of obscured dimensions of knowledge and power in relation to the representation of data concerning public anxieties about crime. It argues that the intensely political dimensions of fear of crime data, and the socio-cultural implications of this, is often ignored by government or ‘administrative’ criminologists who tend to reduce debates about ‘fear of crime’ to technical arguments. Three specific examples of the power effects of enumerating fear of crime are identified. The chapter concludes by stressing that in the context of a range of contemporary neo-liberal political rationalities, the way we conceptualise and measure fear of crime has implications at both the macro and micro level.
