Cutting Crime Impact – On the trail of citizens’ feelings of insecurity

Prof Dr Jan Üblacker will open the webinar with an urban sociological perspective: “Starting from a vacuum created by restructuring police authorities and their areas of responsibility, many major German cities established or expanded municipal public order services, which resemble the appearance of state police forces, but have different tasks, competences, and resources. As their practical orientation is influenced much more by local politics, public opinion and spatial distribution of disorder, questions arise on how these city-specific cultures of control are related to neighbourhood change.”

Afterwards Melanie Schlüter and Dr Anke Schröder will present INSIGHT, a tool which delves into subjective safety and security. Factors like public opinion or the spatial distribution of disorder in a neighborhood affect the perception of safety of citizens and create complex challenges for state and municipal actors. Subjective security in urban spaces requires knowledge about the emergence and effects of fear of crime and about the design and use of public space. Results are prepared for implementation in such a way that these can be used by crime prevention practitioners. Within the context of the international EU project Cutting Crime Impact (CCI), the INSIGHT tool was developed to enable these actors to measure and - if possible - mitigate citizens' feelings of insecurity and fear of crime. Following the human-centered design approach, the tool is intended to provide a holistic, spatial and systematic process for measuring perceptions of (in)security and focuses on the perspective and demands of the users.

Speakers:
Melanie Schlüter is a sociologist and educational scientist. She currently works as a research associate at the Criminological Research (KFS) of the State Office for Criminal Investigation of Lower Saxony in the Cutting Crime Impact project. Here she works on measuring and mitigating citizens' feelings of insecurity and fear of crime. Her original background is in radicalisation and extremism research. Until mid-2020, she worked at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence at Bielefeld University on several projects on the topics of radicalisation and extremism, as well as on youth and socialisation.

As an architectural sociologist Dr Anke Schröder is responsible for the Centre of Competence of Urban Security in the Criminological Research at the State Office for Criminal Investigation of Lower Saxony. She is involved in several international and national research projects in the field of crime prevention in urban design and planning. Her interest is to bring research approaches into daily practice of police and planning and abroad.

Prof Dr Jan Üblacker is Professor for Housing and Neighbourhood Development at the EBZ Business School, University of Applied Science in Bochum/Germany. His research focuses on urban sociology, social inequality, housing and gentrification.