Why crime fears of our youth linger into middle age

‘Such problems were emphasised’

THE type of crime we fear most depends on the era we grew up in, scientists have found.

Amid a general rise crime after the past few decades, academics say the kind of crime we most fear will depend on the government of the day when we were reaching adulthood– and this fear will remain with you for the rest of your life.

The generation who grew up in the era of Labour’s Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan – the late 60s and 70s – are most concerned about being robbed or mugged, crimes that most worried politicians and the media at the time.

People coming of age when Margaret Thatcher or John Major were prime ministers – between 1979 and 1997 – are most likely to fear domestic burglary. This is because the era marked ‘a dramatic rise in property crime’ that occupied politicians and the news agenda.

The researchers said the ‘new Labour generation’ who reached maturity during the era of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from the late 1990s to 2010 are most concerned with antisocial behaviour. ‘Such problems were heavily emphasised and legislated against during this political period,’ the researchers said.

Teams from the universities of Southampton, Sheffield and Sciences Po, Paris analysed data on the fear of crime and anti-social behaviour from the British Crime Survey – looking at the ages of the respondents and tracking their responses to which crime they feared most. They found we become imprinted with a fear of a particular crime between the ages of 15 and 25, when we are most sensitive to social events.

Stephen Farrall, deputy head of law at Sheffield university said: ‘The pronouncements leading politicians make about crime can have a lasting impact on the crime fears of young adults. Political and popular debates about crime that are prevalent in one’s youth appear to impact the fears those individuals report through adulthood and into middle age.’