ABSTRACT
Criminology tells us that men are the criminals, men and women are the victims, and women are the fearful. Inverting this statement, victimological research proceeds to inform us that, firstly, most people are fearful, secondly, they are victims, and, thirdly, they are offenders. However, fear of crime and the fearful are still relegated near the bottom of a criminological hierarchy which perceives the offense, the offender and his place in the criminal justice system as being of most interest to academic researchers in the discipline. This stance fails to address the majoritive experience of crime, that of "fearful," and the process by which this position, quintessentially a gendered position cutting across race and class, is attained. It is this most unglamorous area of criminological research, fear, and its largely untapped population of informants, children, that this chapter will introduce. The centrality of childhood fear to a comprehensive understanding of its adult expression, and an understanding of childhood fear itself, is forwarded in the next few pages. Using evidence from the author's research with the aim (ultimately) of filling a theoretical void, the chapter examines the socialization of fear during childhood; its gender, class and racial connotations.
