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This article explores the findings of the recent Audit Commission report. Crime and disorder reduction partnerships (CDRPs) need a sound understanding of what makes people safe in a particular area. The report identifies some positive achievements and ways in which agencies can improve further in the light of new policy developments in neighbourhood policing and community safety.

Using a case study from Delhi, India, this study aims to investigate why perceived safety endures despite crimes in the neighborhood. Local residents in Delhi feel considerably less fearful of crime in their neighborhoods, and a majority reported feeling safe in their neighborhoods, especially during the daytime.

This paper hypothesized that similar to the crime itself, perceptions of safety or the fear of crime, also tend to be concentrated in hotspots. Following a hotspot analysis based on the respondents’ perceptions of safety, the data gathered were applied to the perceived neighborhood structure. Using two perception-of-safety models, this paper could analyze the ripple effect of individual perception on the neighborhood by adding the calculated values of the perceived safety hotspot through hotspot analysis.

The results indicated that income, trust in others, attachment to the local neighborhood and police access can increase residents’ perceptions of safety. Additionally, the neighborhoods’ perception of safety was found to positively impact the individual’s perception of safety.

This study was limited in terms of generalizing the findings. Further studies could potentially include not only other cities in India but also, cities in developing countries in Africa and Latin America, where residents tend not to fear crime despite high crime rates.

Residents’ perceived safety does not necessarily reflect local crimes and security. Local policies to improve residents’ perceptions of safety have to often be separated from crime reduction because a reduction in some crimes would not necessarily improve residents’ perception of safety. Contrarily, if the crime rate is high, as in the case of Delhi, people may have a moderate fear of crime across the neighborhood.

Notably, this study found that, along with trust in others and attachment to the local neighborhood, individuals’ perception of safety is positively affected by neighborhoods’ perception of safety, which is assessed by the alternate analytic model.

The purpose of the present analysis is to test the relative impact of trust in police, social cohesion, and fear of crime on neighborhood‐level rates of concealed pistol license (CPL) holding. The dynamics of both formal and informal social control are hypothesized to affect neighborhood CPL concentrations.

Data were neighborhood‐level and came from a city survey and the state Department of Licensing. A path model was estimated.

Police service level had a negative indirect effect on neighborhood CPL concentrations through fear of crime, but had a strong positive direct effect. Social cohesion also had a strong positive direct effect on CPL rates.

The study suggests that lawful concealed hand‐gun carrying should be viewed as a way in which neighborhoods exercise informal social control. People in socially cohesive areas may carry concealed hand‐guns not only because they fear for their own safety, but also because they feel a sense of responsibility to their fellow neighborhood residents.

Police who encourage citizens to engage in private forms of self‐protection should be aware that citizens in cohesive areas may choose to do this via hand‐gun carrying. Police should be sure that citizens in these neighborhoods have ready access to safety training and devices. Most importantly, police should emphasize to citizens in these areas that hand‐gun carrying has not been shown conclusively to reduce crime, and that there are other private crime‐prevention techniques that carry more promise of keeping communities safer from crime.

There are few studies attempting to determine the precursors to concealed hand‐gun carrying. The paper seeks a better understanding of the reasons why some neighborhoods evince higher levels of CPLs than others. Additionally, most prior studies have used suboptimal levels of aggregation. The study uses neighborhood‐level data, which allows for an examination of ecological phenomena without the confounding effects of between‐jurisdiction heterogeneity that a higher level of aggregation would produce.

This chapter chronicles some of the early years of the author growing up in the racially segregated South Alabama and its influence on his thinking about race, environment, social equity, and government responsibility and his journey to becoming an environmental sociologist, scholar, and activist. Using an environmental justice paradigm, he uncovers the underlying assumptions that contribute to and produce unequal protection. The environmental justice paradigm provides a useful framework for examining and explaining the spatial relation between the health of marginalized populations and their built and natural environment, and government response to natural and man-made disasters in African American communities. Clearly, people of color communities have borne a disproportionate burden and have received differential treatment from government in its response to health threats such as childhood lead poisoning, toxic waste and contamination, industrial accidents, hurricanes, floods and related weather-related disasters, and a host of other man-made disasters. The chapter brings to the surface the ethical and political questions of “who gets what, why, and how much” and why some communities get left behind before and after disasters strike.

The purpose of this paper is to explore determining factors that account for variation in public satisfaction with the local police in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

An integrated method was used to gather the data for this study, including official survey data conducted by Insightrix, and interviews with citizens in Saskatoon.

This research found that demographic factors including age, race (in this study, Aboriginal status in particular), education, and income, perception of neighborhood safety, citizen-police interaction, and learning about crime from news media all have impact on public attitudes toward the police, to different degrees. The gap or distance between the police and the Aboriginal community was highlighted as a major factor.

Further research should be done to compare statistical patterns in other same-level cities in Canada.

This paper indicates that Saskatoon Police Service in the future should provide a more structured avenue for citizen participation in establishing safe neighborhoods, more structured cultural sensitivity training, and create a wider channel through which community residents with various social backgrounds can demand some measure of accountability for police work in their area.

The paper is of value to law enforcement policy-makers and academic researchers with interest in policing and police-community relationship.

The focus of this chapter is on the experience of safety by Dutch seniors in a multicultural neighbourhood and how this is shaped by their labelling of immigrant men in public space. I describe how meaning is given to immigrants in general, and more specifically, to immigrant men who hang around in public places. This research is based on ongoing interactions with 30 senior citizens (above 60 years of age) over a period of two years and shows that regular and fleeting interethnic contact has major but opposing influences on how the presence of ethnic men in public space is perceived. Those who have prolonged interethnic contact over years tend to normalize the behaviour of ‘immigrant men hanging around’; those who do not have these contacts tend to use the populist rhetoric in media and politics to criminalize this behaviour.

The contribution of neighbourhood structure to residents’ perceptions towards built environment is becoming recognised. Although considerable theoretical evidence exists to support the idea that natural surveillance is related to perceptions of safety, the empirical literature on examining the effect of neighbourhood structure and residents’ attitude towards their neighbourhood on perceptions of safety is limited, especially in developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to assess the relationships between natural surveillance, perceived disorder, social cohesion and perception of safety in a gated community.

A total of 250 households from Babolsar, Iran, participated in this study. The structural equation modelling technique was employed to examine the research model.

The results indicate that natural surveillance is negatively related to disorder and is positively related to social cohesion and perception of safety. The model also shows no significant relationship between social cohesion and perception of safety in the study area. Residents perceived relatively high levels of social cohesion, but their perceptions of safety were moderate.

Findings emphasise the importance of neighbourhood structure and active roles of local communities in enhancing neighbourly relations and perceptions of safety.

The purpose of this study is to examine the residents’ satisfaction level with their neighbourhood and which dominant attributes can predict the neighbourhood satisfaction levels of the residents in the green-accredited township.

In this survey, 300 self-administered questionnaires were distributed to respondents who have resided in the green-accredited township. Only 190 survey forms were returned and used in generating the analysis.

Integrated connectivity and accessibility and environmental quality have been shown to exert a significant influence on neighbourhood satisfaction. However, residents were not satisfied with the security level and community participation in the green-accredited neighbourhood.

Neighbourhood attributes are noteworthy determinants in assessing the significance of the green-accredited township in Malaysia.

The results of this study would assist policymaking in proposing actual improvements in a sustainable neighbourhood and help in prediction of satisfaction with the planned housing development project.

Going green has become trendy amongst communities. With the government’s move to promote green living, stakeholders, such as residents, local government or housing developers, have urged to contribute towards ensuring a more sustainable and green neighbourhood.

This article outlines the problem‐solving approach used by the Partnership Information Unit in Camden to direct and evaluate its local neighborhood policing initiatives. It demonstrates the methodology, strengths and benefits, as well as the implications for adopting the model. It also details an example of how this approach was used on a housing estate in Kentish Town, and the results. The Partnership Information Unit won a commendation in 2008/09 and a national award in 2009/10 from the Association of Crime Intelligence Analysts for its problem‐solving framework.

Examines the relationship between the observation of police use of force and the subsequent evaluation of police performance. The data in this study were obtained from a random sample of 992 Ohio citizens. Finds that the observation of police use of force that the respondents judged excessive had a significantly negative effect on their perception of police performance. The effect of this observation remained significant even after controlling for sociodemographic, experiential and neighborhood characteristics. Suggests that the police could substantially increase citizens’ satisfaction with their performance by reducing incidents and allegations of police misconduct.