This study is related to Cornaglia et al. on the impact of crime rates in Australia. However, Dustmann et al. provide a much more detailed explanation of how mental health affects the indirect victims of crime in the UK. Their focus is on examining the intangible costs of crime, paying the majority of their attention to explicitly the damaging and harmful effects of local area crime on an individual’s mental health. This paper is also associated with what occurs in the residential area’s immediate environment and how it influences the residents’ mental health. The migration of residents living in an area of high crime rates to an area with lower crime rates proves to be beneficial for mental health. The National Institute for...
This study is related to Cornaglia et al. on the impact of crime rates in Australia. However, Dustmann et al. provide a much more detailed explanation of how mental health affects the indirect victims of crime in the UK. Their focus is on examining the intangible costs of crime, paying the majority of their attention to explicitly the damaging and harmful effects of local area crime on an individual’s mental health. This paper is also associated with what occurs in the residential area’s immediate environment and how it influences the residents’ mental health. The migration of residents living in an area of high crime rates to an area with lower crime rates proves to be beneficial for mental health. The National Institute for Mental Health believes that once the British citizens stop being afraid of crime, it will naturally begin to show as an improvement in their mental health.
Dustmann et al. measure the causal effect of crime in the local area and on the mental health of the people living in that area. The causal effect, in this case, is the impact on mental health due to the local area crime. In this case, it relates to crime, which then leads to mental distress. The causal effect can arise due to three reasons. Firstly, individuals living in areas where there is an increasing level of crime fear that they will become the prey to the crime. Secondly, individuals restrict themselves from doing certain things that may attract crime. This means not taking any expensive items outside the house, avoiding going out at night and ensuring that they use busier and safer roads. Besides that, people do not purchase expensive cars in the fear that their cars will get stolen or vandalized in the estate. Thirdly, people increase the security in and around their house by installing alarms and double checking if their doors are closed. Ferraro, 1995; Smith and Torstensson, 1997; Chadee et al., 2007 believe that a large number of the population have a perception that there is more risk of them easily being victimized if they are living in areas with high crime. Mawby reports this usually includes elderly people who can easily be intimidated and harassed.
