Police Visibility and Fear of Crime in South Korea: Results from a National Telephone Survey

• In Event: Fear of Crime in an International Context II

Abstract

Reducing fear of crime among Korean communities is considered as one of the important crime prevention activities for Korean National Police Agency (KNPA). In general, police visibility is seen as means of facilitating intervention and engagement which would be expected to enhance quality of life and reduce fear of crime in communities. However, police visibility has rarely been studied as a potential predictor affecting the fear of crime among citizens. Moreover, most prior inquiries have been limited to Western societies including Germany (Winkel, 1986) and Finland (Salmi et al., 2004). Therefore, the primary purpose of this study is to increase our understanding of the relation between police visibility and fear of crime by examining a national telephone survey data in 2013.

Authors

• Wook Kang, Korean National Police University

• Julak Lee, Kyonggi University

• Dae-Hoon Kwak, Chungnam National University