Saying that the people most afraid of crime are those least likely to become victims, Professor Murray Lee, of the University of Sydney Law School tried to explain this paradox, why we fear crime and how that affects are daily routines.

(Learn Why We Fear Crime)

Lee has been a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and the University of Liverpool. He is the author of Inventing Fear of Crime: Criminology and the Politics of Anxiety, co-author of Policing and Media: Public Relations, Simulations and Communications, co-editor of Fear of Crime: Critical Voices in an Age of Anxiety, and editor of the scholarly journal Current Issues in Criminal Justice. Murray's research focuses broadly on representations and perceptions of crime and how these lead to processes of criminalisation. This includes the increasing mediatization of crime and crime control and the development of new forms of media and communication that both create new crime risks and new anxieties, but also new forms of surveillance, control and governance.

Dr. Murray most recently co-edited The Routledge International Handbook on Fear of Crime 2018.

The lecture, on January 25, 2018, was hosed by Sociology and Criminal Justice Professor Nickie Phillips.