Abstract:
In Kenya, research on the prevalence and intensity of the fear of crime
among university students is limited, and the fear of crime in general is
not regarded as an objective of the Kenyan Police Service. Moreover,
past research on the fear of crime has been plagued by methodological
challenges regarding the conceptualisation and measurement of the
‘fear of crime’ concept. In addition, although fear of crime and perceived
risk are conceptually different, scholars often deploy risk-based
measures as a surrogate for the fear of crime, to the extent that
estimates of the fear of crime, could be misleading. The research
approach is quantitative and employed a survey research design. While
using emotional-based measures of fear of crime, this exploratory and
descriptive study reports on the prevalence and intensity of the fear of
crime amongst students enrolled at Masinde Muliro University of
Science and Technology (MMUST), a peri-urban university, located in
the west of Kenya. More significantly, the study also explores whether
the risk of crime and the fear of crime are empirically different.