Lewis, Dan A., and Greta W. Salem: Incivilities and Fear

Randy LaGrange

In their 1986 work, Fear of Crime: Incivility and the Production of a Social Problem , Dan A. Lewis and Greta W. Salem made an important contribution to the field of criminology and to our understanding of fear of crime. Lewis and Salem formulated and tested what they call the social control perspective . The social control perspective blends aspects of the victimization perspective, a prominent theory in the 1970s and 1980s, with a body of sociological theory developed at the Chicago School during the 1920s and 1930s. Lewis and Salem were able to advance the field of criminology in two ways. First, they developed a valuable integrated theoretical framework to better understand fear of crime as a social problem. Second, they prescribed a treatment for the problem of crime and fear of crime brought about by rapid social change in the urban environment. Their remedy rests on improving social ...

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