Hirtenlehner, H. and Farrall, S. (2014) Is the ‘Shadow of Sexual Assault’ Responsible for Women’s Higher Fear of Burglary? British Journal of Criminology, 54 (6). pp. 1167-1185. ISSN 0007-0955
Abstract
This article examines the ‘shadow of sexual assault hypothesis’ which posits that women’s higher fear of crime, compared to males, can be attributed to their elevated fear of sexual victimization. We argue that the previous, overwhelmingly supportive, research on this issue is incomplete in three ways: (1) the thesis has not yet been extensively tested outside of North America, (2) competing, possibly overlaying, shadow effects of physical violence have widely been ignored and (3) perceptually contemporaneous offences have always been measured in an indirect manner. Drawing on the example of fear of burglary, this work tackles the afore-mentioned deficiencies. Results from a crime survey conducted in the United Kingdom indicate that, when relying on a rather traditional test strategy, the ‘shadow of sexual assault hypothesis’ is supported. However, the findings are highly contingent on the employed methodology. When utilizing direct measures of perceptually contemporaneous offences, only physical, not sexual, assault turns out to cast a shadow over fear of burglary. The impact of fear of rape would appear to be reduced considerably once fear of broader physical harm is taken into account. We conclude that much of the existing evidence for the shadow thesis can be challenged on the grounds of failing to control for the effects of non-sexual physical assault and drawing on an inadequate operationalization of perceptually contemporaneous offences.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | shadow of sexual assault; perceptually contemporaneous offences; fear of crime |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of Law (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 20 Apr 2016 10:47 |
Last Modified: | 20 Apr 2016 10:47 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azu054 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/bjc/azu054 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:98767 |