Variation in Crime Prevention Participation: Evidence from the British Crime Survey

Past attempts to delineate who participates in crime prevention have focused primarily on the demographic characteristics of those involved in various programmes, and have ignored information on the neighbourhood environment and the respondents' perceptions about crime and fear. Using data from the 1994 British Crime Survey, this paper investigates the predictors of participation in varying forms of crime prevention. Examination of the data reveals that respondents take part in five clear groupings of preventive activity. Using these domains to probe whether different sets of demographic, areal and perceptual variables predict citizen participation reveals that predictors of participation vary across the crime prevention domains, particularly in terms of subjective perceptions and, to a lesser extent, demographic variables.