Conway, Julia (2002) A Geography of Fear of Crime in Maynooth. Masters thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.

Preview

Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

Geography of crime is not a new addition to the discipline of geography, many studies, mostly empirical in nature and carried out by male geographers, have been conducted in the past. Fear of crime is however regarded as a newcomer, especially in feminist studies. Geography has tended to ignore the plight of women with regard to fear of crime preferring to map areas of high crime levels and infer relationships with women’s fear. Public space is regarded by many as being patriarchal ruled and is therefore of great interest to feminist geography where they try to understand women’s use of space when fear is a contributing factor to their decision making. Division of space is of great importance when trying to understand fear of crime. As I have already stated public space is regarded as being patriarchal, under male rule thus women often feel under threat, fearing crime, especially that of a sexual nature being perpetrated by a stranger in public areas. More often than not it is the area itself that is blamed for generating the fear while the nature of the fear itself is ignored. What is most important to note here is that people feel more unsafe in a public area than at home when it is in the home that most crime is perpetrated and by a known assailant. As Rachel Pain states “an accurate map of would highlight more bedrooms than alleyways and parks. It is with this in mind that I present my own study. I will be dealing specifically with public space in the university town of Maynooth, Co. Kildare. In the four years I have attended the college there have been numerous reports of attacks on female students on college grounds and in the town. At the time these reports had the effect of curtailing the movements of female students around the campus, especially after daylight hours for fear of further attacks. There have not been any reports o f such instances in the past few months as far as I am aware and I wish to investigate if the curtailments on students’ movements, both male and female, still exist or were they just of a temporary nature. By surveying both male and female students I hope to be able to see if a strong gender-bias occurs or if the fear is universal. I also hope to gain some insight into the temporal nature of fear by asking the participants for examples for both day and night. Their sources on crime will also be looked at a previous study0 has blamed a media bias for covering crime in public space as opposed to domestic violence as producing the reversal of fear levels to areas o f risk. I intend to produce a set of maps indicating the areas of high levels o f fear, the temporal disparities and any gender-bias that may also be evident. I will also be including a section on methodology used in the survey and how analysis was carried out on one hundred and twenty structured/semi-structured questionnaires using the computer package SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences).

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Keywords:	Geograph; Crime; Maynooth;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography
Item ID:	5136
Depositing User:	IR eTheses
Date Deposited:	10 Jul 2014 10:50
URI:
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

Repository Staff Only(login required)

Item control page

Downloads

Origin of downloads