Characteristics of fear of crime in evacuation shelters after the Great East Japan Earthquake

ABSTRACT

After the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011, numerous evacuees had to stay in evacuation shelters such as school gymnasiums. In general, after a disaster, ensuring the safety and security of evacuees in evacuation shelters is a serious problem. Consequently, many of these evacuees feared that they would be victims of crime in the shelters or that their evacuated homes would be burgled. To examine what factors evoke a general fear of crime in shelters and burglary of evacuated homes, we conducted an online questionnaire on 300 evacuees in Miyagi Prefecture who had stayed at such shelters. From a factor analysis of fear of 16 specific kinds of crime in shelters, we extracted two factors representing fear of property and female-related crime. We then found that a general fear of crime in shelters was associated with being young and a fear of female-related crime, while a fear of burglary of evacuated homes was associated with being female, owning a detached house, and fear of property crime. Based on these results, we provide recommendations aiming to help reduce the fear of crime in shelters and burglary of evacuated homes.

KEYWORDS:

• Earthquake
• evacuation shelter
• evacuated home
• questionnaire
• female

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Kimihiro Hino http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1243-1329

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI grant number 24560765.