Inventing Fear of Crime

'Murray Lee's work on the fear of crime is tremendously important; it cannot be ignored by anyone wishing to seriously pursue this most slippery and politically-charged of concepts. This book does a wonderful job of locating the fear of crime in the wider social and political contexts. In so doing, Lee touches on a number of important areas of contemporary criminological concerns (CCTV, private security and risk to mention but three of them). This book deserves to be widely read - I am sure that it will be.' − Stephen Farrall, University of Sheffield

'It was Thomas Hobbes that identified the potency of fear as a source of political motivation. Fear has once again returned to the centre of our public life and everyday experience in late modernity. 'Our citizens have the right to live without fear' intone political leaders. But supplying the knowledge, advice, services and products that support the fear industry - exploring, measuring, engendering, tempering, assuaging everyday fears - is now an endeavour joined by a range of agents from the market, voluntary, academic and government sectors. A sparkling intellectual genealogy of the relentlessly proliferating discourses around fear of crime, Lee's book provides a fresh way of viewing the concept that has spawned this industry and which in a short time has managed to become a staple of criminological knowledge and crime policy. He shows how fear has become a new object of knowledge and a new device of rule for governments, communities, households and individuals. Governed through fear, citizens as consumers are exhorted to the responsible self-management of their insecurities, communities are united on the back of little more than shared anxieties and states seek to renew their legitimacy in terms of security. Lee however also demonstrates the unruliness of this new object as new programmes for knowing and managing fear serve to foment the very thing which they seek to control. This book will be of particular interest to criminologists but should attract the attention of many others inside and outside the academy. It will change the way we think about fear of crime.' − Russell Hogg, University of New England