MSc in Criminology and criminal Justice University of Edinburgh Dissertation

Feeling safe and being safe: A comparative approach to offline and online behaviours
Study on Risk assessment in tangible and intangible environments

Exam number: B011035 Words count: 9571 words (without bibliography and annex)

Abstract
What explains the gap between the perceptions of online and offline crimes? Which factors cause the flesh and blood connotation of the fear of crime? How significant is this association in the context of globalisation? An explanatory attempt to these questions leads to the construction of a speculative model that considers the psychological and institutional processes at play in the construction of personal risk assessment. By doing so, this paper aims to extend Sparks doubts on whether "risk can be domesticated, kept strictly within the bounds of probability calculations.1 It advances the major role of the context in the formulation of risk assessment by setting out a variety of individual features of risk perception and their interaction with institutional processes in the subjective definition of risks. Perception of security appears resulting from personal heuristics susceptible to bias risk assessment. However, these personal heuristics cannot be fully understood outside the sociopolitical context in which they find a resonant echo to serve collective interests. Institutional processes at play in amplification and attenuation of the social meaning of crime do not have to be underestimated to understand the divergence between online and offline behaviours towards criminal risks. This paper tries to combining psychological and cultural analysis of risk perception to offer a contextual approach of risk assessment that bridges both levels of analysis. It finishes by considering whether the divergence in the perceptions and responses to online and offline crime risks highlights the importance of symbolical constructions in the preservation of the tradition social order.

Acknowledgments

I simply wanted to express all my gratefulness to Bruce Schneier for his valuable advices regarding the perception of cybercrime. He had played a major role in my interest and understanding of the subject.

Sparks, R., (2001), 'Criminology, Social Theory and the Challenge of Our Times, in D. Garland and R. Spark eds Criminology and Social Theory, Oxford Clarendon, pp.68-69

Content
Introduction

Personal causes of biased perception of security online and offline

The subjective trade-off of security

The illusion of control

The overreliance on experience

Societal causes of biased perception of security online and offline

Globalisation, loss of contextual marks and trust in technology

Cultural deformation of crime representation

Political use of the feeling of security

Conclusion

Bibliography

Annex

Introduction
Security is both a feeling and a reality, and they are different. You can feel secure even though youre not, and you can be secure even though you dont feel it. The feeling and reality of security are certainly related to each other, but they are just as certainly not the same as each other.2 The most important factor when examining the impact of fear of crime, is determining whether the fear is proportionate to the actual incidence of crime.3 Fear of crime belongs to a vast concept of attitudes to crime that has been studied in depth since nearly three decades until being considered as an independent issue, as significant as crime itself in recent policy programs. Interest in the subject has to be narrowly related with the change in penal policy observed in the 1980s. Indeed, Anglo-Saxon criminologists started noticing that crime policy - prevention strategies, sentences, jail regulation - had moved away from a will to reform offenders toward a focus on crime prevention and management of predictive techniques to control criminal behaviours. Penal welfarism4 rehabilitative techniques have been increasingly discarded in most western countries in favour of policies that maximise control upon potential offenders and thus, minimise criminogenic situations5. Nowadays, reformative measures still exist in France and the UK, but they are mostly subordinated to other penal goals, such as risk management or incapacitation. Spain appears as a notable exception by maintaining a rehabilitative penal system i.e. permission for the majority of prisoners to go out for the week end, penitentiary job opportunities and formations, 'respect units' with open doors and so on. Historically, it can be explained as a liberal reaction post-dictatorship. However, it is also increasingly contested in favour of retributive policies.

2 3 4

Schneier, B., (2008), The feeling and Reality of Security, www.wired.com Irving, B., (2001), Fear of crime: theory, measurement and application, Police Foundation Garland, D., (2001), The Culture of Control: Crime and Social order in Contemporary Society, Oxford

University Press pp.28

5

Ibid., pp.16

This global shift from resocialising offenders to considering crime as an opportunistic fact has led to the reintroduction of harsher sentences, reaching its paroxysm with the zero-tolerance policy returned to the political agenda with recent riots in England6, as well as it involved a new interest in the victims. New focus on victimisation marks then the beginning of research on the fear of crime.

Fear of crime can be broadly understood as an emotional reaction to crime risks that are perceived as a personal threat. The vagueness of the precedent description is voluntary, as fear of crime does not seem to be perfectly locked into a precise definition. However, fear of crime usually conjures a classic representation of crime oriented toward violent offences and focuses on the impairment of the individuals physical and psychological integrity. Hence, the notion of crime fear apparently concerns mainly tangible behaviours with direct effects on the victim. Despite the exponential rise in cybercrime and the parallel diminution of offences against physical integrity during the last decade, this traditional perception of crime fear seems to subsist. A comparative analysis between online and offline behaviours might shed light on some of the causes of this biased image.

By doing so, this study does not intend to quantitatively compare fear of virtual and nonvirtual crimes. Having tried to measure the evolution of the fear of crime in Scotland in previous research, it seems that the extreme subjectivity of the concept makes it difficult, not to say impossible, its operationalisation. Indeed, fear of crime appears as a very unstable process and thus it is not easily quantifiable in a static representation. It relies on a myriad of changing emotions that cannot easily be captured outside their very specific context. For instance, when one asks about the fear of being mugged or the fear of online card fraud, the answer will testify to the representation that a respondent has of this specific crime. In sum, fear of crime is never observed directly, but only represented from cognitive and emotive elements. Therefore, quantitatively representing fear of crime appears to be an idiosyncratic process from which no stable conclusions can be drawn.

Interview of David Cameron, 13th of august 2011, It's time for a zero tolerance approach to street crime, Sunday Telegraph

Even large surveys, such as the annual Scottish Crime and Justice Survey, seem to indicate that the materialisation of this concept may easily be contested by showing that the overall measure of crime fear is increasing globally, whereas fear of specific crimes have tended to decrease.7 In order to analyse the sources of divergence between perceived and real security whether online or offline, and without necessarily abandoning the concept of crime fear, it seems relevant then to focus on the notion of risk assessment. As the expert in cybersecurity, Bruce Schneier wrote, 'most of the time, when the perception of security does not match the reality of security, it is because the perception of the risk does not match the reality of the risk'. 8 Understanding the nature of this divergence and the way it applies distinctly in tangible and intangible environments will be the main object of this research.

Before going further, it seems necessary to better understand the concept of risk in a criminological context as well as its relation with the fear of crime. Risk, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as 'the exposure to the possibility of loss, injury, or other adverse or unwelcome circumstance; a chance or situation involving such a possibility' has apparent pejorative connotations. Regarding attitude toward crime, risk is commonly perceived as a situation susceptible to severely alter the physical integrity of someone. Indeed, the word 'risk' derives from the French term risqu', which literally means run into danger'. Historically, this etymological link between danger and risk was already found in the physical risk to lose ships' cargos.9

If modern scientific aspects are applied to this conception, the notion of risk assessment in criminology could be defined as the probability for a potential danger to be realised, causing damageable consequences on goods or people. Although the subjectivity of this notion cannot be denied either, it appears less emotionally loaded than the concept of fear. In fact, results from the Special Eurobarometer - released from the European Commission in 2002, regarding 'Public Attitudes to Insecurity, Fear of Crime and Crime Prevention' - seem to empirically support this assumption.10

7 8

Cf. Findings of Criminological Research Project in Annex PowerPoint Schneier, B., (2008), The Psychology of Security, http://www.schneier .com/essay-155.html, pp.3 9 An illustration is given in the Shakespearian play The Merchant of Venice, wherein Shylock is heavily in debt due to a shipping loss. 10 http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_181_sum_en.pdf

In this survey, respondents were asked for their fear of becoming a victim, as well as their personal risk assessment of becoming a victim, concerning different kinds of crime. Findings show that while the risk assessment for mugging, assault and burglary correspond with general fear of crime rates in Germany, Greece (the highest rates for both) and Austria (lowest rates for both); risk assessment rates were contrary to fear of crime rates in France, Portugal (high risk but moderate fear rates), Finland, Sweden (low level of crime fear but moderate risk rates) and in the UK (moderate risk rates but high level of crime fear). These findings partially confirm that fear of crime and risk assessment are two different elements of the feeling of security. Indeed, fear and risk assessment appear to be distinct parts of a same 'continuum' 11 of the 'feeling of security', whereby the former refers to emotional components and the latter, to cognitive ones. They are inherently correlated, as fear is directly influenced by the perceptions of risk. Therefore, focusing on risk assessment is an interesting starting point to understand factors that distort the feeling of security.

Moreover, the concept of risk seems to find a rather coherent place within the actual penal policy, wherein crime is mainly perceived as an opportunistic phenomenon rather than inappropriate behaviours produced by disadvantaged backgrounds. Apparently, reducing the risk of crime by minimising criminal opportunities has become one of the most important drivers of modern penal policies in western countries. Indeed, most contemporary criminologists tend to consider that risk, as a preventive model, has played a key role in what Garland calls the emergence of a 'culture of control'
12

in which the reformist optimism of

'Penal Welfarism' has been submerged beneath a retributive perception of crime regulation.

Although this concept, as a model for penal policy, appears to be negatively related to liberal values, an individual based approach to its study could prove useful. The way that people assess risk on the internet and in a tangible environment might partially explain this frequent distortion between perceived and real risks. At another level, it could also contribute to clarify the influence of social factors in this distortion. Separate social and personal perspectives could then be useful in analysing online and actual risk assessment towards crime. Their distinct levels of abstraction and proximity involve specific approaches and reactions to risk that cause an apparent hiatus in the representativeness of a unique phenomenon.

11 12

Ferraro, K., LaGrange, R. (1987) The Measurement of Fear of Crime, Sociological Inquiry, 57 (1): p.88 Garland, D., (2001), The Culture of Control: Crime and Social order in Contemporary Society, Oxford University Press

In this perspective, cybercrime appears to be on the tangent between both representations of crime. Due to the intangible nature of the internet it is difficult to define geographical reach and correctly evaluate potential criminal risks. At the same time it offers a large range of personal opportunities within a global context; the online environment does not involve any spatial constraints for the user. Crime salience is thus less easily conceptualised. It would then be interesting to analyse the influence of structural and cultural changes in western societies on psychological and sociological perceptions of risk and its direct consequences in the divergence between feeling and reality of security. By doing so, this study aims then to explain the main factors that distort the feeling of security in virtual and real worlds.

Personal causes of biased perception of security online and offline

1. The subjective trade-off of security
There is no such thing as absolute security, and any gain in security always involves some sort of trade-off13. Whether money, time, freedom, convenience or capabilities, it is undeniable that any improvement in security always involves some kind of concession. This is what risk assessment is all about. The choice of a payment method, of a means of conveyance, of the way children go to school or browse online, in the acquisition or non acquisition and selection of a bike lock, of an antivirus program, of an insurance; each of these decisions involve a security trade-off. Consideration of the best compromise between security and conveniences has a preeminent role in everyones life. Even when it is impossible to implement the decision regarding governments security policy for instance people will often estimate if benefits are worth the inconveniences or costs in this specific security trade-off. According to the expert in cybersecurity Bruce Schneier, as people cannot examine the relative probabilities of different events in daily lifestyle, they make most trade-offs based on the feeling of security and not the reality of security.14 Therefore, when the latter is not in line with the former, risk assessment is biased which results in inappropriate security tradeoffs.

13 14

Schneier, B., (2008), The Psychology of Security, http://www.schneier .com/essay-155.html, pp.2 Schneier, B., (2008), The feeling and Reality of Security, www.wired.com

Scientists tried to partially explain this divergence between with the study of human brain. They came to the conclusion that people have two different cognitive systems: one that intuits the amygdale based on emotional and sensorial inputs, and one that reasons the neocortex based on knowledge and experience to make more nuanced risk assessment. Both systems react to risk differently and lead to divergent and even contradictory risk assessment. A salient illustration of this dilemma is given by Steven Johnsons description of his apprehension of being stood beside a window during a tempest after having one of them blow out in a previous storm: Part of my brain the part that feels most me-like, the part that has opinions about the world and decides how to act on those opinions in a rational way knows that the windows are safe. But another part of my brain wants to barricade myself in the bathroom all over again.15 Johnsons example highlights the permanent conflict between feeling and reality of security when security tradeoffs have to be made. It also reveals that being aware of a potential risk can often lead to a feeling of anxiety which may distort risk assessment. According to Bruce Schneier, five different features of security trade-off can be biased when people make risk assessment related to crime16: consequences of the risk, its probability of occurrence, the extent of inconveniences to prevent it, the efficiency of the countermeasure and the comparison between disparate risks; each of these aspects of a risk assessment are subject to a mistaken evaluation as well as they inherently underline the importance of the spatiotemporal framework in risk assessment towards security. Some economic theories can be helpful to clarify and illustrate this last assumption. In his research work rewarded by a Nobel Prise in Economics17, Daniel Kahneman enounced a prospect theory that demonstrates the subjectivity of gain and loss values. Based on one experience where two groups of respondents have to choose between two alternatives, he demonstrates that people generally conceived of a sure gain as more valuable as the chance of a greater gain. On the contrary, human beings seem to believe that a certain loss is worse than a possibility of a bigger loss. Applying this theory to risk assessment might help to understand the divergence between the feeling and the reality of security.

15 16 17

Johnson, S., (2004), Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life, Scribner Schneier B., (2003), Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World, Springler-Verlag Kahneman, D., (1979), Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk, Econometrica, vol 47, 263291

For instance, this could partially explain a case example of victims behaviour in online Nigerian advanced fee fraud. In this particular deception where victims are contacted by a stranger who claims to have inherited an important sum of money and require victims help to access it, victims are asked to pay some advanced fees in order to later theoretically receive their part in the inheritance. What is striking is the ways that new victims tend to become prisoners of the trap by paying more advanced fees every time they are asked to do so, although that may mean a potentially greater loss if promised funds never materialise in the future. They are willing to take the risk to lose more rather than accept a certain and smaller loss. In sum, it seems that risk assessment can be biased by the difficulty to correctly evaluate the reality of a distant and abstract risk in a spatiotemporal framework that does not correspond in the present and current situation. The more the complexity to conceptualise the risk increases, the more likely it will be that the feeling of security diverges from the reality of security. Analysing factors responsible of a lack of objectivity in the conceptualisation of risks is thus essential to understand the erroneous perception of risks.

2. The illusion of control

Keeping in mind Schneiers description of features of a security trade-off prone to potential biases, the relation between control and security appears to result from the conjunction of the personal perception of risk, the evaluation of its consequences and the level of acceptation of this risk. This risk assessment can be affected by what some psychologists call the illusion of control18 that may lead to the non perception of a potential danger, an underestimation of its possibility of occurrence or an erroneous trust in the personal capacity to face it. Commonly defined as an expectancy of a personal success probability inappropriately higher than the objective probability would warrant19, the illusion of control makes people feel more secure than they should be. For instance, this is why in dice games, most people play as if they were controlling the result of the toss, throwing the dice softly when they want to get low numbers and much harder if they wish a high number. This theory has demonstrated that some factors such as choice, involvement or familiarity lead to overestimate the feeling of control in a determinate situation.
18 19

Langer, E., (1975), The illusion of control, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 32, (2) 311-328 Ibid., pp. 312

10

Applying these findings to risk assessment lead to consider that people tend to underestimate risks when they feel in control whereas overestimate risks when they feel they are not. One of the most common examples given to illustrate this hypothesis is the choice of driving instead of flying although it is well known that flying is much more secure than driving given accidental rates. If it is necessary to take into consideration that lots of different factors can come into play in this security trade-off such as usability, cost or lack of knowledge the fact that one does not have to rely on skills of an unknown pilot to achieve security seems to constitute an essential though sometimes unconscious basis for driving preference.

Furthermore, the illusion of control implies that people tend to underestimate risks that they take willingly whereas the feeling of insecurity is to generally over emphasise when risk does not result from any choice. It could also be explained by the fact that voluntary risks are supposed to provide some derived benefits and thus provide some kind of self-justification.20 For instance, the convenience of purchasing online, in order to avoid a time-consuming trip, may facilitate the transfer of personal bank data despite the risk of card fraud. In sum, the illusion of control results from an erroneous perception that there is a direct causal link between behaviour and outcome whereas it actually relies on a myriad of circumstances unrelated to skill matters.

Finally, perception of control, as an important factor of security tradeoffs, has a subjective dimension largely influenced by a differential sensitivity to risk of victimisation. Therefore, in order to better understand the biases that can alter risk assessment towards crime whether online or offline, it seems essential to focus on both quantitative exposition to risks and qualitative feeling of vulnerability crime impact in individual behaviours.

3. The overreliance on experience

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.21

20

Gray G., Ropeik D., (2002), Risk: a practical Guide for deciding whats really safe and whats really dangerous in the world around you, Houghton Mifflin 21 Twain, M. (1885), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

11

Unlike the wisdom defended by Mark Twain, the feeling of security is highly influenced by previous experiences. As serious threats are relatively rare events in Western countries, risk assessment often relies on anticipation, without any reference to an actual danger. It is thus mainly based on earlier personal experiences of victimisation as well as indirect victimisation experiences of others. Indeed, it is well-recognised that victims of a specific crime consider themselves as more likely to become again a victim of this specific crime. In tangible environment, this interaction between experience and feeling of security often involves avoidance behaviours from previous victims. They adapt their lifestyle to their victimisation experience on the perception that what happened once is likely to happen again and it is better to be well prepared. In sum, experience of victimisation has a substantial impact on feeling of security by allowing its contextualisation. However, it seems that the contextualisation of the risk diverges between online and offline crimes. This latter assumption can be clarified by what Kahneman calls the availability heuristic. According to this empirically demonstrated theory, people "assess the frequency of a class or the probability of an event by the ease with which instances or occurrences can be brought to mind. In this perspective, the feeling of security depends on the memorial representation of crimes which strikingly differs between cybercrime and more physical forms of offences. Indeed, on the web, the representativeness of crime appears dissipated by its intangibility. By contrast, experience of victimisation gives tangible crimes a specific resonance by bringing a spatiotemporal framework into their representation. By personalising them, fleshing them out, bringing affect into the picture22, experience defines an identifiable structure to tangible risk which makes it more substantial and relevant. Sorely conceptualised, cybercrimes are thus less vivid than most of the crimes occurring in the tangible environment. As such, perceptions of online crime appear less emotionally influenced by previous victimisation experiences. The affective stimulus does not operate in the same way. On the web, risk cannot be easily personified and thus is considered as a latent phenomenon. Therefore, threats appear more abstract which often leads to an underestimation of its consequences. On the contrary, people are generally more worried with tangible crimes because those bring to mind a resonant and vivid image of previous victimisation experience and its unpleasant, not to say extreme direct consequences.

22

Farrall S., (2007), Experience and Expression in the Fear of Crime: Full Research Report, Swindon, ESRC

12

In sum, the contextualisation of tangible risk causes a stronger anticipation of its impact which tends to increase the emotional content in its perception. In consequence, the focus on consequences could partially explain the probability neglect23 this insensitivity to probability variations of crime rates and likelihood of victimisation. As Sunstein pertinently illustrates: the resulting probability neglect helps to explain excessive reactions to lowprobability risks of catastrophe (...) As a result of probability neglect, people often are far more concerned about the risks of terrorism than about statistically larger risks that they confront in ordinary life.24 The vividness of images resulting from victimisation experience produces a deep sense of vulnerability because it focuses on the spectacular consequences of this crime and not its likelihood. This association between consequences and experience is different in online environment because it does not come in mind with the same salience. In this connection, it seems that the way of information processing diverges between the perception of online and offline criminal risk illustrates some aspects of pertinent distinction made by Thompson and Dean between probabilistic and contextualist perceptions of risk. Risk of violent crimes may be appraised through affective elements because its severe consequences are easily contextualised by the vividness of a previous experience of victimisation and its frightening image.

By contrast, cybercrime appears to be appraised through more cognitive elements, because the difficult contextualisation of its impact by means of a concrete representation could lead to focus more on its perceived likelihood of occurrence. In sum, because of a divergence in the process of conceptualisation, it seems that people attach different weightings in the relation between consequences and likelihood to online and offline risks. With its salient representation and emotional content, violent risks may be more weighted by consequence whereas the global and intangible nature of cybercrime makes difficult the anticipation and evaluation of its impact which inhibits the development of many emotional factors in the perception of security.

Finally, the feeling of security carries an individual representation of the crime, its impact and causes. It appears to be shaped by the vividness of the image of previous victimisation resulting from the perceptions of the severity of the consequences in a previous context.

23 24

Sunstein, C.R., (2003), Terrorism and Probability Neglect, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 26, 121-136 Ibid., pp.132

13

The different nature of the representation of online and offline risks appears thus essential to understand the divergence of the feeling of security in these two environments. It is perfectly synthesised by Lowenstein: To the extent that anticipatory emotions are generated in response to mental imagery about the experience of decision outcomes, factors that influence the occurrence or vividness of mental images are likely to be important determinants of anticipatory emotions.25As illustrated by the overreliance in experience in the feeling of security, tangibility and spatiotemporal framework two elements that oppose online and most of the offline crimes seem to be two of these factors. Moreover, another aspect of the availability heuristic can also be taken into consideration to clarify some biases in the perception of security as well as their specific application in the online environment. Keeping in mind the main hypothesis of this theory that in any decision making-process, easily remembered information is given greater weight than forgettable, it also raises the inherent interaction between perception and the triad knowledge, commonness and familiarity. Applying this consideration to risk assessment, it seems unquestionable that experience of crime also brings a keener although often subjective perception of crime.

One consequence is that new risks usually tend to be overestimated while common risks are downplayed because people feel that they can deal with it by adapting their behaviours. For instance, the exponential development of spam is increasingly perceived as a nuisance to be coped with rather than a security threat. In so doing, internet users replicate patterns of personal risk assessment and avoidance behaviour grounded in experience, in ways not dissimilar to those found in their non virtual environment.

From a similar angle, familiarity appears to play a major role in the feeling of security and its divergence with the mathematical reality of security by minimising the potential impact of a risk. Indeed, familiarity allows the development of a reassuring set of references to face a problem. By doing so, it also produces some biases that can be maliciously exploited in order to give an illusion of control that conducts people to lower their guards. Working in a restaurant, a simplistic experience has given interesting though insignificant results. During two weeks, when someone asks for a glass of tap water, two glasses of the same size were placed side by side on the bar.

25

Lowenstein, G., (2001), Risk as feelings, Psychological Bulletin, 127, pp.279-280

14

One of these glasses was blank whereas the other had the label of a famous mark of mineral water. Among the sixty four people that were unconsciously tested, 16 people asked if they could take both glasses, 7 chose the unmarked glass while 41 opted for the Evian glass. Although customers knew that both glasses had exactly the same content, it appears that people felt more comfortable with a glass coming from a familiar source rather than an unknown source. Despite the extreme limitations of this experience, it could illustrate that trust caused by familiarity plays an important part in the underestimation of certain risks. Many techniques of deception are then used by social engineers to voluntarily distort the feeling of security.

Finally, to summarise all these biases perceptions caused by experience between feeling and reality of security, it appears that, as insightfully described by Scott Plous: the more available an event is, the more frequent or probable it will seem; the more vivid a piece of information is, the more easily recalled and convincing it will be; and the more salient something is, the more likely it will be to appear causal.26

Based on these conclusions, the findings of Farrall in a qualitative research about fear of crime appear very useful in order to understand the ways in which contextualisation can bias risk assessment: what has previously been identified as fear of crime can usefully be carved up into two phenomenon: everyday worry about crime (which is relatively rare and typically affects those who live in high crime areas and who have direct and indirect experience of crime) and anxiety about crime (which is more widespread and typically affects those who lead more protected lives).27 This theory reinforces the importance of contextualisation by presenting a double perspective in the formation of the sensitivity to crime. On the one hand, personal and affective reactions to specific situations correspond to the real-life dimension of the fear of crime. On the other hand, more global attitudes about crime correspond to the expressive dimension of the concept. Localisation, whether in time or in space, appears thus as a key factor in order to clarify why the divergence between fear of crime and crime itself applies differently offline and online. As such, the increasingly complexity to establish spatial and temporal boundaries in globalisation context appear conductive to misperceptions.
26 27

Plous, S., (1993), The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making, Mc Graw-Hill Farrall S., (2007), Experience and Expression in the Fear of Crime: Full Research Report, Swindon, ESRC

15

Societal causes of biased perception of security online and offline

1. Globalisation, loss of contextual marks and trust in technology
With globalisation, social order has become disembedded and distantiated, lifted out of local contexts of interaction and restructured across indefinite spans of time-space.28 Through the study of personal factors susceptible to influence the feeling of security, the importance of the way a security trade-off is framed has been largely underlined. Perception of security is conditioned by the contextualisation of the risk. Fear of crime is constructed by means of symbols associated with crime that enable individuals to allocate defined marks in the conception of its risk. In more salient worlds, perceptions of the likelihood of victimisation are shaped by individual evaluations of the social and physical environment.29 In this respect, processes of designation have been radically changed by the social restructuration brought about by globalisation. It becomes much harder to put a face to the danger, to identify responsible and ways of regulation. Risk is less rooted and situated in a specific context. In sum, context cannot easily soak the risk with practical meanings any more. Therefore, as the potential exposure to crime is not directly attributable to a specific entity, global crimes such as cybercrime raise issues of responsibility, blame and regulation methods.

With globalisation, crime loses its salience as a structural factor of social order. As it has been introduced in the study of the influence of experience over risk assessment, an essential process of crime perception is to link crime with identifiable causes hostile to the local social order and thus representative of a social breakdown. In this respect, the identification of risks could operate to establish "moral communities" by locating "immoral communities"30. Crime could reinforce the feeling of belonging to a community by identifying of common and enemy out-group. In sum, feeling of security used to disclose a host of subtle evaluations of and responses to the social world.31

28 29

Giddens A., (1991), Modernity and Self-Identity, Cambridge, Polity Press Farrall S., Bannister J., Ditton J., Gilchrist E., (1997), Questioning the Measurement of the Fear of Crime: Findings from A Major Methodological Study, British Journal of Criminology, (37) 657-678 30 Douglas, M. (1990), Risk as a forensic resource, Daedelus, 119: 1-16, pp.4-5 31 Douglas, M. (1992), Risk and Blame: Essay in Cultural Theory, London: Routledge, p.131

16

Devoid of social marks by its global extent, using crime as a lens of understanding deviance and diversity becomes less pertinent. Framing labels of distinction on the perception of crime to establish individual normative borders of social conduct, to strengthen one's own social identity appears more difficult. Indeed, malaise produced by the intangible nature of global crimes challenges the authority and appropriateness of the traditional social structure by weakening its cohesion. Global crimes create a feeling that transgression goes unpunished and thus erode the stability and organisation of the social order that brings identity. The lack of regulation of global crimes at the national level gives the impression that the social order is in flux, that there has been a loss of authority over space. This concern has direct repercussions on the loss of control perceived by individuals within this new global, unpredictable and disorderly environment.32 Finally, the deconstruction of all sets of contextualised references to crime appears to strongly influence the feeling of security because the impossibility of framing the risk emphasises a feeling of helplessness to prevent non localisable danger with undefined impact. In consequence, it leads individuals to increasingly rely on technical and thus conceptualised elements rather than personal and societal regulations in order to ensure their security. However, technologies appear to play a very ambiguous role regarding security. In spite of this it is undeniable that they often largely increase the real level of security, they also bring new risks and approaches to risk into individuals life without necessarily raising substantial concerns. Though, anyone who thinks that security products alone offer true security is settling for the illusion of security.33 Trust in technology can create mindsets in which the only way to combat non tangible crimes is thought to be an increase in stringent technological countermeasures. In this respect, the concept of password is symbolic of this misperception. In order to connect everywhere, individuals render password preventative technology less useful, not to say dangerous as they are completely unaware of potential threats to sensitive information. As Schneier says, the whole notion of passwords is based on an oxymoron. The idea is to have a random string that is easy to remember. Unfortunately, if its easy to remember, its something non-random like Susan. And if its random, like r7U2*Qnp, then its not easy to remember.34

32 33

Bottoms A., (2006), Incivilities, Offence, Social Order in Residential Communities, Oxford Hart Mitnick, K.D. and Simon, W.L. (2002), The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security, Wiley, p.4 34 Schneier, B. (2000), Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World, Wiley

17

This example illustrates that confidence in technology to guarantee security can easily accentuate the divergence between perceived and real security. It also highlights that security trade-offs are can be bias by the users instinctive preference for ease of use. If security measures appear too complicated, users tend to remove them. Therefore, because the human factor is truly securitys weakest link35, education and understanding between all the actors in the security chain is essential to avoid candy cybersecurity.36 Moreover, another paradox caused by the reliance on technology could partially explain the specificity of online behaviours regarding risk assessment. The base on which relies cybercrime facilitates a confusion in its potential of impact. Indeed, internet has accentuated the discontinuity that characterises modern societies. It collapses traditional geographies of distance to the point that in networked world, no island is an island.37 In this respect, although equidistance has immense benefits, it can also bring risk that much closer without necessarily enabling to identified, not to say personified it. In this perspective, it has been explained earlier that crime mapping is much more difficult online because its intangible nature impedes its localisation which creates a distance in the appreciation of its consequences. Without any marks of references, dangers are not immediately evident to potential victims. The combination of both conclusions implies thus that there is an inherent spatial paradox with internet, blending homely familiar tangible contexts with unknown global intangible environments. Such assumptions could be also called spatial illusion because they juxtapose two distinct dimensions of space being an essential factor to the misperception of online risks. In this perspective, several analyses have demonstrated that personal risk assessment is strongly correlated with the direct perception of incivility38. Online environments procure a comfortable and illusory distance between a potential victim and an offender which can easily distort the feeling of security.

Furthermore, in extending the reach of criminal opportunities beyond traditional cultures and geographical boundaries, the internet has spread both the globalisation and impact of risks. It has created specific criminogenic scenarios that tend to downplay risk assessment.
35

Mitnick, K.D. and Simon, W.L. (2002), The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security, Wiley, p.4 36 Term coined by Bellovin and Cheswick to describe a security where the outer perimeter (firewall) is strong but the infrastructure behind is weak. 37 Schneier, B. (2008), Schneier on Security, Wiley 38 Ferraro, (1992), Perceived risk and fear of crime: The role of social and physical incivilities, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 229: 311-334, pp. 322-323

18

Indeed, cybercrime seems mainly to be characterised by low impact, mass victimisation that cause large aggregated losses which are spread across jurisdictions. As illustrated by David Walls: We have now entered the world of low impact, multiple victim crimes where bank robbers no longer have to plan meticulously thefts of millions of dollars,; new technological capabilities mean that one person can now commit millions of robberies of 1$ each.39 This de minimism40 nature of online crimes creates a number of important challenges for law enforcement. It facilitates low but multiple victimisations that constitute a significant criminal activity and yet does not individually justify the expenditure of resources in prosecution. Therefore, cybercrime falls outside the traditional paradigm of policing dangerousness. In this respect, the under-reporting problem of cybercrimes could then be interpreted as an evidence of low public expectations in the ability of the national police to regulate global crimes. Networked and globalised features of cybercrimes contrast with the physical and local qualities of more traditional and routine patterns of offending that enable national regulation.

Furthermore, cyberspace is a virtual environment in which value is attached to ideas and their virtual expression rather than physical property. This shift in values from more tangible to less tangible forms of wealth could tend to downplay the perception of online threats. Cyberspace then challenges our conventional understanding of ownership and control by blurring the traditional boundaries between criminal and civil activities along with some of the theories upon which conventional perceptions of criminal risk are based. Modification of the social structure may thus play a key role in reinforcing the feeling of insecurity. The social control theory developed by Shaw and McKay41 that causes of crime fear essentially lie in social disorganisation processes and loss of social control, could be applied to clarify the divergence between online and offline risk behaviours. Social disorganisation reveals that feeling of security is not only related to crime but to a wider context of sociocultural changes. In this respect, internet shows that a major part of the role attached to individual perceptions of security is actually informed and influenced by broader social and cultural references.

39 40

Wall, D. (2007), Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age, Polity Crime and Society Ibid., pp.14 41 Shaw, C.R., McKay, H.D., (1942), Juvenile Delinquency in Urban Areas, University of Chicago Press

19

Indeed, despite globalisation and the instantaneous flows of mass information that link apparently disparate parts of the world, our insecurities and sense of social order remain refracted and framed through local structures and cultural sensibilities.

2. Cultural, Media and deformation of crime representation

It is ironic that quests for security tend to increase subjective insecurity by alerting citizens to risk and scattering the world with visible reminders of the threat of crime42. Paradoxically, the level of awareness about risks tends to increase the feeling of insecurity as it results in increased anxiety and uncertainty. To face the erosion of social marks, modern societies are increasingly characterised by a constant research of scientific rationalisation of everyday events: "to live in the universe of high modernity is to live in an environment of chance and risk, the inevitable concomitants of a system geared to the domination of nature and the reflexive making of history. Fate and destiny have no formal part to play in such a system."43 In sum, the process of rationalisation intensifies the inherent relation between fear and knowledge: "The advance of science increases human understanding of the natural world. By opening up new realms of knowledge, however, science simultaneously can increase the gap between what is known and what it is desirable to know."44 As modern society attributes rational causes to every phenomenon, every risk can be avoided or, at least, reduced. Therefore, with this permanent research of causes, risk tends to be perceived as a failure of regulatory system which also implies an incessant attribution of responsibility and blame. It is well described by what Mary Douglas named the forensic functions of risk45 where society tends to treat every death as chargeable to someones account, every accident as caused by someone criminals negligence, every sickness as threatened prosecution.46

This quest of rationalisation and attribution of responsibilities involves categorisations and constructions of cultural set of references. In this respect, the media plays an essential role. They select the pieces of information given to the public, bringing information about all kinds of risks within a very specific context. They define and constrain the meaning of a risk. They help to re-localise crimes against the erosion of structural marks produced by globalisation.

42

Crawford A., (2007), Crime prevention and community safety in The Oxford Handbook of criminology, Oxford University Press, pp.899 43 OMalley, P., (2010), Crime and Risk, Compact Criminology, pp. 50 44 Douglas, M. (1990), Risk as a forensic resource, Daedelus, 119: 1-16, pp.12 45 Douglas, M. (1992) Risk and Blame. London: Routledge pp.15 46 Ibid., pp.16

20

In this sense, the signal crimes perspective47 appears very useful to clarify the cultural role in the distortion between online and offline risk assessments. This theory is concerns the way on which crime and disorder explain the perception of security. According to its model, some crimes and disorder incidents matter more than others to people in terms of shaping their risk perceptions.48 Innes calls them signal crimes and signal disorders because their sensorial properties facilitate their communication. The category of signal crimes thus contains a physical dimension, which excludes cybercrimes.

In doing so, signal crimes perspective suggests that signals are contextually situated. Although it has been already observed that the feeling of security is mainly shaped by context, this theory reinforces the understanding of the relation with the introduction of the concept of dissonance. The dissonance value determines the impact of a crime on perceptions of insecurity within a specific frame. It enables an understanding of the way perceptions of insecurity are formed and shaped through exposure to signals. Indeed, signals work as symbols that reproduce the social meanings attached to specific risks. With a partial intensification of these symbols, the media institutionalise49 a collective dimension to risk perception, a consensus between the public about whom or what is driving insecurity. The intensity allocated to a crime by the media reinforces thus the vividness and salience of its public representation. In short, signal crimes perspective highlights the role of social representations as processes of symbolic communication in the perception of security. The identification of their dangerousness and the appraisal of its consequences would also depend on its cultural resonance.

In this respect, consequences of online and offline risks do not refer to the same set of values regarding the nature of harm, victim and culpable (unknown/identifiable, global/local). Indeed, cybercrime strikes upon the existing public concern about social cohesion. It highlights the deconstruction of the traditional social order of a community and then damages its cultural marks. It signals the weakening of national forms of regulation as well as the diversity of norms and values.

47

Innes M., (2004), Signal Crimes and Signal Disorders: Notes on Deviance as Communicative Action, British Journal of Sociology, 55 (3), pp.335-355. 48 Ibid., pp.336 49 Garland, D., (2001), The Culture of Control, Crime and Social order in Contemporary Society, Oxford University Press, pp.158

21

Ultimately, the cultural representation of risk creates an ability to act according to identifiable principles, responsibility and accountabilities. The importance of cultural standards in the distortion of security perceptions can then be summarised with the words of Kasperson: "As a key part of the communication process, risk, risks events, and the characteristics of both become portrayed through various risk signals (images, signs, and symbols), which in turn interact with a wide range of psychological, social, institutional, or cultural processes in ways that intensify or attenuate perceptions of risk and its manageability."50 In this way, the media, as main amplifiers of signals, conceptualise not to say structure individual biases. Driven by profit and concerned with the representation of information, they modify the intensity of signals as well as transform their cultural content. In doing so, they structure the biases in the perception of security and cybersecurity of the public.

In sum, cultural marks provide symbols and representations that frame existing public concerns and misperceptions. The media thus seem to be moreover a support to biases than a proper factor to biases in the divergence between feeling and reality of security. They select information to answer to the publics need to frame its insecurities within a limited and understandable context. Therefore, the underrepresentation of cybercrime in the media could partially result from the challenge raised by its global nature and intangibility to individual understanding of rapid changes. It could also clarify the political focus on material crimes because in doing so, national governments reinforce the established social relations within the culture in which they are located.

3. Political use of the feeling of security

"Risk becomes politicised not simply because it is a threat to life but because it is a threat to ways of life. (...) At whom is the finger of blame being pointed? Who is being held accountable? What is being rejected and what is being defended in a particular collective social action?51 In that respect, it has been explained the ways that cybercrime crystallises social malaise about the competence, trustworthiness and legitimacy of national authorities.

50

Kasperson, JX, (2003), The social amplification of risk: assessing fifteen years of research and theory, in Pidgeon, The Social Amplification of Risk, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.15 51 Tansey, J., (2004), Risk as politics, culture as power, Journal of Risk Research, 7 (1): 17-32, pp.29

22

In consequence of the conflictive nature of cybercrime with values and definitions of traditional social order, it becomes some sort of political taboo in order to maintain the spatiotemporal framework that binds citizens of a country. Therefore, to face the increased malaise caused by the extreme difficulty to regulate cybercrimes at the national level, national policies seek to directly impact on public perceptions of security. For instance, in the UK52 and in France53, there has been a shift towards fear reduction as an object of policy in its own right. Tackling the perceived reassurance gap has become a central goal of modern penal policies.

Feeling of security appears to be increasingly connected with the confidence in national governments to deal with new global crimes. In this perspective, levels of public perception of crime are considered as indicators of the trust in authorities. This realignment of traditional organisational priorities towards public perceptions gives a new national confidence target54, an increasing focus on policing signs of crime, its communicative and visual properties rather than its causes.

In that extent, security analyst Bruce Schneier considers that the two ways to make people feel more secure are to make people actually more secure and hope they notice or to make people feel more secure without making them actually more secure and hope they dont notice. It would thus means that feeling and reality of security tend to converge when people notice when they tend diverge when people do not. Schneier introduces then the concept of "Security Theater55" to describe political measures that serve to make people feel safer without significantly improving security in any real sense. According to Schneier, Security Theatre implies an idea of fraud and deception theatre diverges as reality because it is used by politicians or corporations in their own interests. However, it seems that the pejorative vision of this concept should be nuanced because helping people feel safer can be one important step in making people truly safer.

52 53

Hale C., (1996), Fear of Crime: A Review of the Literature, International Review of Victimology, 4, 79-105 Roch S., (2003), En qute de scurit. Causes de la dlinquance et nouvelles rponses, Paris, Armand Colin 54 Crawford A., (2007), Reassurance Policing: Feeling is Believing, in Transformations Of Policing, Aldershot, pp.143-168 55 Schneier B., (2008), In praise of Security Theater, in Schneier on Security, Wiley

23

For instance, if security theater helps to reduce the high risk reputation of a district, the increasing presence of people coming in this area perceived as safe will probably cause a real diminution of the local criminality. As financial arbitrage helps the convergence of market prices, security theatre can also be perceived as some kind of arbitrage between real and felt risk that helps to narrow the gap between both concepts. When people feel less secure than they actually are, security theatre measure could work as a palliative countermeasure that brought peoples feeling more in line with the actual risk degree. Although it is undeniable that security theatre cannot be a substitute for the management of real security problems, it could have beneficial consequences by reducing the biased distance between feeling and reality of security.

In this context of politisation of public perception of security, the key question is thus to evaluate the extent in which, in the name of reassurance, public policing should be drawn into the management of crimes signals and their effects on public perceptions and hence being moved away from the regulation of real crimes causes. Should security professionals focus on real solutions to security problems, or just on making people feel better about security? Governments need to take careful steps to ensure that policies, initiatives and laws reduce, rather than inflate or replicate, the errors to which fearful people are prone.56

Whatever the subjective value of this latter assumption, it highlights the key role of crime perception in modern systems of regulation. Perceptions are real in that their consequences are real.57 Feeling of security matters, regardless of its rational basis, because it directly influences and shapes behaviour.

In that respect, biased feeling of insecurity prompts the allocation of responsibility for decisions taken, insinuates a better management of danger and hence raises expectations about its governance. Fear of crime concept appears then as a politically popular construction that provides modern governments a moral target that reinforces their legitimacy. It places the management of public perception of security in a process of governing through crime58, where crime becomes an organising concept central to the exercise of contemporary authority.

56

Sunstein C., (2005), Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp.226 57 Merton, R.K., (1995), The Thomas Theorem and The Matthew Effect, Social Forces, 74(2): 379-424, pp.401 58 Simon, J., (2007), Governing Through Crime, Study in Crime and Public Policy, Oxford University Press

24

In this way, the politisation of the feeling of security gives an echo to Foucaults idea that responses to risk operate as part of the apparatus by which power is exerted and society is regulated.59 Public policies goals at addressing perceptions of security may thus be essentially concerned with quests for state legitimacy.

Finally, divergences in the perceptions of online and offline crimes could underline the attachment to traditional social and political values. In sum, risk is not only the probability of an event but also the probable magnitude of its outcome; and everything depends on the value that is set on the outcome. The evaluation is a political, aesthetic and moral matter."60 In this respect, the weak echo given to cybercrime by institutions could be partially explained by the refusal to do shed more light to the erosion of sense of traditional socio-political structures within globalisation.

59 60

Foucault, M., (1977), The Birth of the Prison Douglas, M. (1990), Risk as a forensic resource, Daedelus, 119: 1-16, pp.10

25

Conclusion
Like a squirrel whose predator-evasion techniques fail when confronted with a car, or a passage pigeon who finds that evolution prepared him to survive the hawk but not the shotgun, our innate capabilities to deal with risk can fail when confronted with such things as modern human society, technology, and the media. And, even worse, they can be made to fail by others politicians, marketers, and so on who exploit our natural failures for their gain.61 As illustrated in this imaginative and dramatic example, it seems hard to analyse such a complex phenomenon as the subjective reaction to crime risks with a mono-causal focus. A holistic perspective permits a better understanding of the reactions that trigger risk assessment. Far from being a construction exclusively personal, the feeling of security is largely embedded in a social context where culture and political discourse play an essential role. Indeed, personal biases that distort risk assessment are largely echoed, not to say materialised, at the societal level. Difficulty to efficiently prospect risks resulting from intangible threats such as cybercrime is reinforced by the focus of the media on spectacular and rare crimes which favours the institutionalisation of a subjective conceptualisation of crime. Moreover, the exponential development of crime television shows and violent crime news contributes to localising crime in a specific and reassuring spatiotemporal framework where criminal risks can be identified and threats personified. On the contrary, cybercrimes introduce a new global dimension to the relationship between technology, institutions and the public because they fall outside the traditional localised operational competence of the police. With this in mind, cybercrime appears as an important witness of the failure to efficiently regulate global threats at a national level and thus highlights the necessity of international systems of crime regulation to the detriment of States sovereignty. Consequentially, the unequal representativeness of online and offline crimes on the public stage amplifies personal biases by framing crime representation in a subjective set of references. Overall, it often leads to the underestimation of common, pedestrian, diffuse and non personified risks while rare, spectacular, sudden and identifiable risks are largely are overestimated.

61

Schneier B., (2008), In praise of Security Theater, in Schneier on Security, Wiley

26

It seems then important to highlight that non virtual risks may also have the same intangible structure than online threats and suffer similar negative consequences on personal perceptions and societal representations. For instance, climate change constitutes a global threat whose potential harms cannot easily be concretely visualised from an individualist perspective. The diffused nature of this risk inhibits its symbolic representation as well as its regulation at the level of the State. Unlike cybercrime, the danger of climate change does not involve any targeted criminal responsibility but illustrates that the divergence between online and offline behaviours is narrowly related with the changes of perceptions caused by globalisation. Indeed, within the process of globalisation, western societies seem increasingly characterised by a feeling of anxiety, due to risk awareness and difficulty to mark oneself among permanent changes. Described as a feeling of insecurity, of loss of substance, and of uncertainty, a surge, a chaos and a fear to fall62, this malaise provokes a weakening of social links of proximity, in favour of an individualism expressed in an introspective concern for care, self development and self control. Development of individualism involves then a form of spatial fallback, a shift from social inclusion towards social exclusion hallowed by the substitution of penal welfarism techniques with harsher policies regarding deviant behaviours. In this perspective, the feeling of security quickly appears in the public sphere, until being considered as a major feature of what Garland called culture of control63 where the public are governed by the crime and the fear of crime64. According to this point of view, the political salience of the crime problem influences personal risk assessments with biased representations of the real occurrence of crime and thus justifies retributive and preventive penal policies. With this obsession for rules, this insistence on the rigidity of demarcation lines against normal and deviant behaviours, people appear to be caught in the vice-like of an invading concern for insecurity, fear of crime, and threats against security.65

62 63

Farrall S., (2007), Experience and Expression in the Fear of Crime: Full Research Report, Swindon, ESRC Garland, D., (2001), The Culture of Control: Crime and Social order in Contemporary Society, Oxford University Press 64 Simon, J., (2007), Governing Through Crime, Study in Crime and Public Policy, Oxford University Press 65 Boutellier, H., (2000), Crime and Morality; the Significance of Criminal Justice in Post Modern Culture, London Academic Publishers

27

Originally, however, the level of the publics sense of security aims to be an indicator of the importance that policy makers should attribute to crime rates. Within the globalisation context, it increasingly became a political construction that provides national governments a moral target in order to compensate their loss of legitimacy in several fields of socioeconomic regulation. Therefore, the divergence between felt and real security is interpreted nowadays as the expression of a public malaise that has to be politically solved in its own right. Intrinsically, this political construction testifies of a profound change in political ends. It appears that the significance of the politic has evolved to become less focused on ideological theories in favour of a crescent interest in individual behaviours and vulnerabilities. Confronted by a major crisis of their legitimacy, national governments refocus their means on the management of public manifestations of individual behaviour and the governance of local disorders. As States capacity to control problems of international scope such as cybercrimes is increasingly contested and limited, political perspectives are reduced to considering that individual behaviours constitute the source of social problems. In sum, macro-management tends to be substituted by micro-management of risks which involves that biographical solutions66 are paradoxically seeking to fix systemic problems.67 Public matters appear to be redefined as the reflection of personal difficulties. Within a new social structure spatially and temporally redefined by globalisation, the management of public perceptions, including the feeling of security, appears increasingly to be the essential purpose of national governments. Individual perceptions of risk thus play a central role in understanding and shaping crime regulation and local social order. Cultural and political dimensions of the feeling of security do not imply that the pivotal role played by individual biases has to be underestimated. Voluntarily or not, they work together at the contextualisation of risks and the creation of standards. This functionality is well described by Warner when she considered that: Fears trace a maps societys values; we need fear to know who we are and what we do not want to be.68 In sum, personal and societal misrepresentations of crime risks are both narrowly related with the fast breakdown of traditional ways of regulation. In this moving social order, the internet appears then as a symbol of the deconstruction of spatiotemporal marks on which sensorial inputs and national competences are based.

66 67

Beck, U., (2000), The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory, London: Sage. Ibid. pp.59 68 Warner, M., (1998), No Go the Bogeyman, Chatto and Windus

28

Bibliography
Bauman Z., (2002), Violence in the age of uncertainty, in Crawford, Crime and Insecurity: The Governance of Safety in Europe, Cullompton, Willan, Baumer T. L., (1985), Testing a General Model of Fear of Crime: Data from a National Sample, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 22 (3) 239-255

Beck, U., (2000), The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory, London: Sage Blinkert, B. (2010), Fear of crime and perceptions of security and insecurity in Europe, Monatsschrift fr Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform, Volume 93 (2), pp.106-125

Bottoms A., (2006), Incivilities, Offence, Social Order in Residential Communities, Oxford Hart

Boutellier, H., (2000), Crime and Morality; the Significance of Criminal Justice in Post Modern Culture, London Academic Publishers Crawford A., (2007), Reassurance Policing: Feeling is Believing, in Transformations Of Policing, Aldershot, pp.143-168 Crawford A., (2007), Crime prevention and community safety in The Oxford Handbook of criminology, Oxford University Press Crawford A., (2007), Reassurance Policing: Feeling is Believing in Transformations Of Policing, Aldershot, Ashgate, 143-168 Ditton J., Innes M., (2005), The Role of the Perceptual Intervention in the Management of Crime Fear in The Handbook of Crime Prevention and Community, Safety Cullompton, Willan,

29

Douglas, M. (1990), Risk as a forensic resource, Daedelus, 119: 1-16

Douglas, M. (1992), Risk and Blame: Essay in Cultural Theory, London: Routledge Enders M., Jennett C., Tulloch M., (2008), Revisiting Fear of Crime in Bondi and Marrickville: Sense of Community and Perceptions of Safety, in Fear of Crime: Critical Voices in an Age of Anxiety, Abingdon, Routledge European Commission, (2003), Analysis of Public Attitudes to Insecurity, Fear of Crime and Crime Prevention, Results of Eurobarometer 58.0, Brussels, European Commission,. Farrall S., Bannister J., Ditton J., Gilchrist E., (1997), Questioning the Measurement of the Fear of Crime: Findings from A Major Methodological Study, British Journal of Criminology, (37) 657-678

Farrall S., (2007), Experience and Expression in the Fear of Crime: Full Research Report, Swindon, ESRC Ferraro, K., LaGrange, R. (1987) The Measurement of Fear of Crime, Sociological Inquiry, 57 (1): 70101 Ferraro, (1992), Perceived risk and fear of crime: The role of social and physical incivilities, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 229: 311-334

Foucault, M., (1977), The Birth of the Prison Furnell, S. (2009), Securing the next generation: enhancing e-safety awareness among young people, Computer Fraud and Security, 7 13-19

Garland, D., (2001), The Culture of Control: Crime and Social order in Contemporary Society, Oxford University Press

Giddens A., (1991), Modernity and Self-Identity, Cambridge, Polity Press

30

Gold, S. (2010), Social engineering today: psychology, strategy and tricks, Network Security, (11), 11-14 Gray G., Ropeik D., (2002), Risk: a practical Guide for deciding whats really safe and whats really dangerous in the world around you, Houghton Mifflin Hale C., (1996), Fear of Crime: A Review of the Literature, International Review of Victimology, (4), pp.79-105 Hipp, JR, (2010), Resident perceptions of crime and disorder: How much is bias and how much is social environment differences, Criminology, Vol 48 (2), pp.475-508 Hirtenlehner, H. (2010), Social Order and the Fear of Crime in Contemporary Times, Monatsschrift fr Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform, Vol 93 (5), pp.405-407 Innes M. (2004), Signal Crimes and Signal Disorders: Notes on Deviance as Communicative Action, British Journal of Sociology, 55, 3, 335-355 Interview of David Cameron, 13th of august 2011, It's time for a zero tolerance approach to street crime, Sunday Telegraph Irving, B. (2001), Fear of crime: theory, measurement and application, http://www.policefoundation.org.uk/files/POLICE0001/publications/FEAR%20OF%02CRIME2.pdf

Johnson, S., (2004), Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life, Scribner

Kahneman, D., (1974) "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases", Science, 185: 11241131

Kahneman, D., (1979), Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk, Econometrica, vol 47, 263291

31

Kahneman, D. (1982), Evidential Impact of Base Rates, in Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, Cambridge University Press, pp. 153160 Kasperson, JX, (2003), The social amplification of risk: assessing fifteen years of research and theory, in Pidgeon, The Social Amplification of Risk, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Langer, E., (1975), The illusion of control, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 32, (2) 311-328 Louis, C. (1983), Fear of crime: myths and realities, Criminology, Vol 16 (1), pp.69-83 Lowenstein, G., (2001), Risk as feelings, Psychological Bulletin, 127, pp.279-280 Mastrofski, SD. (2010), Police organisation continuity to change: into the twenty-first century, Crime and Justice, A review of research, Vol 39, pp.55-144 Merton, R.K., (1995), The Thomas Theorem and The Matthew Effect, Social Forces, 74(2): pp.379-424

Mitnick, K.D. and Simon, W.L. (2002), The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security, Wiley OMalley, P., (2010), Crime and Risk, Compact Criminology, Sage publication

Plous, S., (1993), The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making, Mc Graw-Hill

Roch S., (2003), En qute de scurit. Causes de la dlinquance et nouvelles rponses, Paris, Armand Colin Rogerson M., (2007), Burglars and Wardrobe Monsters: Practical and Ethical Problems in the Reduction of Crime Fear, British Journal of Community Justice, 5, 1, 79-94

Schneier, B. (2000), Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World, Wiley
32

Schneier B., (2003), Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World, Springler-Verlag Schneier, B., (2008), The feeling and Reality of Security, www.wired.com

Schneier, B., (2008), The Psychology of Security, http://www.schneier .com/essay-155.html

Schneier, B. (2008), Schneier on Security, Wiley

Shaw, C.R., McKay, H.D., (1942), Juvenile Delinquency in Urban Areas, University of Chicago Press

Simon, J., (2007), Governing Through Crime, Study in Crime and Public Policy, Oxford University Press Sessar, K. (2010), Perceptions of crime and social change with a discussion about studies on fear of crime and punitiveness, Monatsschrift fr Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform Vol 93 (5), pp.361-381 Sloan, K. (2009), Security in a virtualised world, Network Security, 8 15-18

Slovic, P. (2000), The Perception of Risk, Earthscan Publications Ltd Sparks, R., (2001), 'Criminology, Social Theory and the Challenge of Our Times, in Criminology and Social Theory, Oxford Clarendon Sunstein, R.C., (2003), Terrorism and Probability Neglect, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 26:121-136

Sunstein C., (2005), Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press Tansey, J., (2004), Risk as politics, culture as power, Journal of Risk Research, 7, pp.17-32

33

Twain, M. (1885), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Wall, D. (2007), Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age, Polity Crime and Society

Warner, M., (1998), No Go the Bogeyman, Chatto and Windus

Annexes
1. Cf PowerPoint Model of the perception of security in virtual and real environments 2. An actual illustration of the political use of crime to reinforce traditional structure of regulation
34

British rioters named and shamed

Saturday, August 13, 2011 London has perhaps the highest concentration of security surveillance cameras in the world 12,000 in the subway alone and 7,000 government cameras above ground, and thats in addition to private closed-circuit TV cameras. The shorthand for those systems is CCTV, and they are not without controversy because of their perceived intrusiveness. Because of those cameras, the three days of rioting in major British cities is surely the most photographed outbreak of civic mayhem ever. Police are now using footage from the surveillance cameras to track down looters and violent rioters.

Perhaps because the cameras are so ubiquitous, many of the rioters seemed to forget they were there. Others took elementary precautions. But Martin Lazell, chairman of the Public CCTV Managers Association, told the Christian Science Monitor: A lot of these youths are wearing scarves to hide their faces, but were not just reliant on that. We can identify people on how they walk, their height, their clothes, shoes all manner of things. People recognize people by what they wear, and often, despite having full wardrobes, we tend to wear the same clothes most of the time. The police are also counting on the public to report to shop, in the common phrase anyone they recognize. In this effort, they have the support of Britains robust, oftenrambunctious press. The Sun ran a rogues gallery of wanted rioters with the headline, Shop Another Moron. Help Police Catch More Riot Yobs. The Evening Standard urged Londoners to respond to a CCTV hunt for suspect who left community hero in coma. The Mirror ran galleries of photos from London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, each time asking, Can you identify these people? In contrast to the usual aftermath of civil disturbances, where there is hand-wringing over root socioeconomic causes, social alienation, scant job opportunities, racism and other failings of the larger society all these factors are in play, to be sure the British public seems to have settled on greed, alcohol and a yen for violence as the cause. If this name and shame campaign proves at all effective, it will go a long way in Britain to tipping the debate in favour of security over privacy.

Dale McFeatters, Scripps Howard News Service.

35

3. A poignant illustration of the divergence between feeling and reality of security

The past is a foreign country

A few days ago, before the bombing here and the shootings on Utoya Island, a friend and I were talking about how the joy of being alive always seems to go hand in hand with the sorrow that things change. Not even the brightest future can make up for the fact that no roads lead back to what came before - to the innocence of childhood or the first time we fell in love. There is no road back to the scent of the Julys when I was young and leapt from a boulder into the ice-cold meltwater of a Norwegian fjord. No road back to when I stood, 17 years old with 10 francs in my pocket, by the harbor in Cannes, France, and watched two grown men in idiotic white uniforms row a woman and her poodle ashore from a yacht. I realized then for the first time that the egalitarian society I came from was the exception and not the rule. No road back to the first time I looked, wide-eyed, at the guards with automatic weapons surrounding another countrys parliament building - a sight that made me shake my head with a mixture of resignation and self-satisfaction, thinking, we dont need that sort of thing where I come from. For many years, it seemed as if nothing changed in Norway. You could leave the country for three months, travel the world, through coups dtat, assassinations, famines, massacres and tsunamis, and come home to find that the only new thing in the newspapers was the crossword puzzle. It was a country where everyones material needs were provided for. Political consensus was overwhelming, the debates focused primarily on how to achieve the goals that everyone had already agreed on. Ideological disagreements arose only when the reality of the rest of the world began to encroach, when a nation that until the 1970s had consisted largely of people of the same ethnic and cultural background had to decide whether its new citizens should be allowed to wear the hijab and build mosques. Still, until Friday, we thought of our country as a virgin unsullied by the ills of society. An exaggeration, of course. And yet. In June I was bicycling with the Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, and a mutual friend through Oslo, setting out for a hike on a forested mountain slope in this big yet little city. Two bodyguards followed us, also on bicycles.

36

As we stopped at an intersection for a red light, a car drove up beside the prime minister. The driver called out through the open window: Jens! Theres a little boy here who thinks it would be cool to say hello to you. The prime minister smiled and shook hands with the little boy in the passenger seat. Hi, Im Jens. The prime minister wearing his bike helmet; the boy wearing his seat belt; both of them stopped for a red light. The bodyguards had stopped a discreet distance behind. Smiling. Its an image of safety and mutual trust. Of the ordinary, idyllic society that we all took for granted. How could anything go wrong? We had bike helmets and seat belts, and we were obeying the traffic rules. Of course something could go wrong. Something can always go wrong. On Monday night, more than 100,000 citizens gathered in the streets to mourn the victims of the attack. The image was striking. In Norway, keeping a cool head is a national virtue, but keeping a warm heart is not. Even for those of us who have an automatic aversion to national self-glorification, flags, grandiose words and large and expressive crowds, it makes an indelible impression when people demonstrate that they do mean something, these ideas and values of the society we have inherited and more or less take for granted. The gathering said that Norwegians refuse to let anyone take away our sense of security and trust. That we refuse to lose this battle against fear. And yet there is no road back to the way it was before. Yesterday, on the train, I heard a man shouting in fury. Before Friday, my automatic response would have been to turn around, maybe even move a little closer. After all, this could be an interesting disagreement that might entice me to take one side or the other. But now my automatic reaction was to look at my 11-year-old daughter to see whether she was safe, to look for an escape route in case the man was dangerous. I would like to believe that this new response will become tempered over time. But I already know that it will never disappear entirely. After the bomb went off an explosion I felt in my home over a mile away and reports of the shootings out on the island of Utoya began to come in, I asked my daughter whether she was scared. She replied by quoting something I had once said to her: Yes, but if youre not scared, you cant be brave.

37

So if there is no road back to how things used to be, to the nave fearlessness of what was untouched, there is a road forward. To be brave. To keep on as before. To turn the other cheek as we ask: Is that all youve got? To refuse to let fear change the way we build our society. Jo Nesb This article was translated from the Norwegian by Tiina Nunnally. Published in the New York Times the 27th of July 2011

38