Near Misses in Research on Crime and Fear of Crime

# Near Misses in Research on Crime and Fear of Crime
### Réka Solymosi
### University of Manchester
### 10/05/2022

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# My research

- Fear of crime (place-based approach)
- New (?) / alternative (?) forms of data
- Under-reported crimes

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# App for reporting *fear* of crime

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background-image: url("img/foca_phone.gif")
background-size: contain

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.pull-left[
![](img/safebus_1.png)
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![](img/safebus_2.png)

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background-image: url("img/safebus_map.png")
background-size: contain

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.pull-left[
![](img/cincity_1.png)
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![](img/cincity_2.png)

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background-image: url("img/knife_foc_crime.png")
background-size: contain

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# Overall: learned about fear of crime as a context specific, place based experience.

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# Near Misses

- What is a near miss?

- Why is this interesting?

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### The safety pyramid has a long history dating back to 1931 and H.W. Heinrich with his pioneering book *Industrial Accident Prevention: A Scientific Approach*

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- Variations and discussions about the ratios
- All of these studies used large groups and expressed the results in triangles or pyramids

|Level           |Heinrich 1931 |Bird & Germain 1969 |Fletcher 1972 |Tye 1975 |
|:---------------|:-------------|:-------------------|:-------------|:--------|
|Fatal injury    |              |                    |              |1        |
|Major injury    |1             |1                   |1             |         |
|Minor injury    |29            |10                  |19            |3        |
|First aid only  |              |                    |              |50       |
|Property damage |              |30                  |              |80       |
|Noninjury       |300           |600                 |175           |400      |

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## General idea: paying attention to and understanding the near misses can possibly lead to understanding and preventing serious incidents.

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# Why is this important?

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# Reason 1:

## Even if near misses do not "predict" more serious incidents, they have consequences in themselves

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# Near misses and fear in cycling

![](img/cycling.jpg)
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background-image: url("img/collideoscope.png")
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background-image: url("img/cycling_near_miss.png")
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# Fear of crime also linked with 'near miss'

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## Example: FOCApp

> I was on my way into university in the morning, and I was coming into
Euston station and there was someone who looked like they were trying to
remove a bike from the railings that had been locked in, and they didn’t look
like the owners of the bike. And then I suspected they were trying to steal the
bike, so I reported my fear of crime because it was a specific incident of me
seeing what I thought was criminal activity.

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## Example: CinCity

![](img/reasons_for_worry_cincity.png)

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## Fear of crime affects:

- equal access to public space

- sustainable travel

- individual and community wellbeing

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# Reason 2:

## If near misses predict serious incidents, we can study spatial and temporal patterns of incidents on which we otherwise have sparse data

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background-image: url("img/knife_foc_crime.png")
background-size: contain

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background-image: url("img/incident_types_map.png")
background-size: contain

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background-image: url("img/inc_by_vol.png")
background-size: contain

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# Reason 3:

## By becoming interested in the near misses, we "lower the barrier" to reporting something, providing insight into crimes which are traditionally underreported

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background-image: url("img/Blackcap.JPG")
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background-image: url("img/black_cap_map.png")
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background-image: url("img/lgbt_foc.png")
background-size: contain

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![](img/is_hc.png)

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# Conclusions:

- Place/ context specific fear of crime events can be thought of as "near misses"
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- In any case, may be important in themselves as fear of crime events with real consequences
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- But if near miss may help identify areas of concern/ interest
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- And may help complement data sources on underreported incidents

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# Relevant Papers

- [Mapping fear of crime as a context-dependent everyday experience that varies in space and time](https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/lcrp.12076)
- [Towards a Place-based Measure of Fear of Crime: A Systematic Review of App-based and Crowdsourcing Approaches ](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0013916520947114)
- [Understanding Knife Crime and Trust in Police with Young People in East London ](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00111287211029873)
- [Thesis](https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1541235/1/PhDThesis_PostCorrectionsFinal.pdf)