The literature on the effects of fear of crime has investigated a number of the nuances of this phenomenon; however, how the fear of different types of crime influences communities has yet to be investigated. We hypothesize that the fear–decline model, which argues fear leads to a decrease in solidarity, applies to ‘routine’ street crimes; however, fearing crimes that attack the collective, such as school shootings, will increase community solidarity. Using two datasets collected in Finnish communities after they experienced tragic school shootings, our results indicate that the fear–decline model receives strong support but the fear–solidarity model does not.
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