This study is planned as a 5-year project to promote public sentiment of safety. To serve its purpose, the study assessed numerous factors, which have effect on how people feel safe in their community and society, for example criminal justice policies, by developing the public safety sentiment index. With research outcomes, it presented future directions and measures to enhance the public’s safety sentiment overall.
In its first year, as a first step towards a broader goal of promoting safety sentiment, we conducted survey on how people felt safe and examined relevant factors which were likely to affect the public sentiment, aiming at understanding real conditions of people’s safety sentiment spirits. We also dis Big Data analytics so that we could get general ideas on the level of the public’s awareness and recognition of risk as well as the level of safety sentiment highly reflected on social media and other networks. We also assessed national disaster management by the government and its criminal justice polices on crime. Lastly, based on outcomes of survey and study, we suggested measures to promote people’s safety sentiment.
To figure out the factual level of people’s safety sentiment in society and find factors having effect on people, we conducted a survey on 6,000 individuals over 19, in 17 cities across the nation, from August 11 to September 23 in 2016. Questions of the survey were classified into numerous categories such as people’s awareness of risk as well as incidents and disasters, suggestions to respond to promote safety in society, the level of safety sentiment of people, and individual thought and sentiment on risks and safety. Follows are summary of outcomes. First, the respondents were asked about recognition of disasters and human caused incidents like crime. Both are very closely related to how people feel safe in society. Concerning crimes, the largest proportion of respondents said that the number of crime would increase next year compared to this year (2016) while there would be no much difference in the number of accidents caused by human or natural disaster. The second category of questions were about ways and measures that they thought to be helpful to prevent human caused accidents and crimes which were specified into types. In this summary, we provide only the first and second highest responses. About possible prevention measures against robbery and burglary, the largest number of questionnaires answered early involvement of police were crucial to reduce serious crimes, like swift dispatch of police to the crime scene, followed by rigorous punishment on offender. Regarding child abuse and sexual offences, respondents put severe punishment on the top as a way of prevention. Another ways to prevent those kind of crimes were regular home-visiting and assistance to famines with high risk and broadening education as well as recognition improvement on sexual violence. When it comes to preventing natural disasters and human-caused accidents, they said that it was required to increase precautious check-ups and crack-down-ons. Concerning public safety sentiment, around 40% of respondents answered that the society was not safe from crime and 30% of them said Korea was not safe from natural disasters and accidents caused by human. while the number of people who answered that the society was safe from crime and disasters was respectively 20% and 10%. Examined by types of risks, respondent were asked to rank on a five-point scale about how the society was safe from 14 crimes, the average rate was less than 3 points, which could be interpreted that people thought the society was not safe. We also found that people did not think the society was highly exposed to but did not provide enough protection such as leakage of personal information, new types of financial fraud and economic crimes, driving under influence, sexual violence against targeting the vulnerable or the disadvantaged, child abuse, hate crimes at random and so on, which frequently happened.
Next questions were about accidents caused by nature and human-beings and those kind of accidents were grouped into ten. Among those 10 types of accidents, public safety sentiment scored around 3 out of 5, on average, for fire or explosion on public facilities, collapse of buildings or ground, negligence accidents in work places or residential areas. The rest got less than 3 points. Fourth, regarding individual's safety sentiment, contrast to public safety sentiment, respondents rated under 3, on average, in terms of risk of crimes like serious crimes (physical assault or murder) and other types of crime including car accidents caused by driving under influence, leakage of personal information, financial crimes, hate crime at random. The rest was scored under 3. When respondents were asked what they thought about safety of the society, in general, they gave low rate on leakage of personal information and new types of financial crimes. The majority of respondents said that they felt the lest protected when it comes to street assault at random. Regardless of the society in general or individual themselves, the questionnaires showed less confidence in having feeling of being protected against personal information leakage and financial crimes. In other words, people’s safety sentiment was highly influenced by frequency of occurrence, unpredictability, unexpectedly huge size of not only human but also physical damages. When it comes to disasters caused by nature or human-beings, safety sentiment rates were less than 3 points, on average, on epidemic, air pollution, and car accident while the rest categories scored around 3 point. Comparing safety sentiment of individual and that of the society as a whole, respondents tended to gave higher rate on the former, regardless of types of risks. For this study, a survey on people’s predictability of crime and fear of victimization was conducted as those two factors were much related to safety sentiment. We asked people about their predictability of crime to happen them, they were less likely to think there were risks of falling into a victim of crime, which were reflected on rate. The average rate on this category was under 3 points. While respondents said they thought they were more exposed to leakage of personal information, new types of financial crimes, car accidents caused by drunken driving, or street assault at random than conventional serious crimes. Regarding accident by nature or human-being, air pollution and car accident were gotten higher score of 3 points on average while the rest types of accidents were rated less than 3 points. Respondents were asked about fear of victimization, the survey showed that people’s fear on street assault at random was 3.61 out of five, ranked at the top, followed by murder (3.47), car accident triggered by driving under influence (3.36), assault and injury (3.31), leakage of personal information and new types of financial fraud (3.22). Beside those crimes, rate on rubbery and burglary were averaged 3 point however the rest crimes scored under 3. Concerning fear on being a victim of accident by natural disaster or human, fear on car accident was at top with 3.45 point, followed by epidemic (3.37), air pollution (3.25), natural disasters (3.16), accident by train, airplane, or ferry (3.08), accident by leakage or spill of toxic and detrimental chemicals (3.01). Respondents’s fear on other types of accidents was rated less than 3 points. Outcomes of the survey could be interpreted that people tended to have much more fear on crimes or accidents triggered by natural disaster or human-being even though actual possibility of occurrence was low. The reason why people felt much fear on those kind of crime or accidents was they could predict how serious damages could be.
The study examined factors closely related to safety sentiment. First, the respondents, who thought the society as a whole was safe, perceived the society was much transparent and the level of corruption or illegality was low, it realized equality among people, the level of solidarity was high, law was enforced on an equal basis, the society developed high level of law and order. Put it simple, the more people have confidence in the society and the law system, the more they felt the society was safe. In other questions about confidence, those who thought the society was safe were had strong trustiness in families and others having relationship with them, law and order, institutions in charge of controling crime or responding to natural disasters. In addition, the more they predicted that the rate of crime or accident caused by nature or human would decline, the more they perceived the society was safe. In other words, respondent, who had confidence in society and safeness, gave high scores on safeness across all categories of questions; safeness of the society as a whole, protection from various types of crimes, safety sentiments of being protected from natural disasters or human caused accidents, and risks of falling in a victim of crime. The study also examined characteristics of respondents based on residence areas. In the areas where the degree of physical disorder was low while collective efficiency was high and people had a positive conception on institutions such as fire station or law enforcement agencies, respondent rated high on safeness. In particular, what closely related to safety sentiment were people’s awareness of crime, natural disaster or man-caused accidents and collective efficiency. The study found that those factors also had impact on safety sentiment, the general’s perception of risk of crime or disaster occurrence in society as a whole and citizens as individual. From the individual’s life perspective, those, who lived in an area where law and order was well maintained, crime or natural disasters and human-caused accidents were well managed, were confident in safeness of the society. At the same time, those, who had high awareness of risk of crime and accidents and had strong confidence in media they accessed to, scored high in safeness. There was one unexpected outcome of the survey. Ironically, the respondents, who were relatively exposed to higher risk, showed higher level of safety sentiment. However, the respondents showed little differences in safety sentiment regardless of their experience of crime, natural disasters or human caused accident. The study also looked into the differences in safety sentiments based on types of crime and natural disaster of accident by human. First, from the types of crime aspects, the more the society had higher risk of conventional crime or street assault at random the more people felt safe. When people thought they were safe from risk of crime and showed a tendency of engaging actively in social activities, in other words, they were more exposed to risk of crime. Some point out necessity of conducing a survey on how fear on crime affect behavior of people. Safety sentiment on crime, when the general had high confidence in media they usually access to, they scored high. Safety sentiment on natural disaster or human caused accident, respondent also rate good scores at the same time. Closely looking into outcomes of survey, individuals who never had been a crime victim thought the society was safe from crime. What is interesting was that those who had fallen victim of a crime but received assistance they need replied as the same as those with no experience. On contrary to safety sentiment of individual, when it comes to the society as a whole, questionnaires with experience of natural disaster or human-caused accident showed a tendency of less confidence in safeness of the society. Examining what influencing individual’s perception of safeness and safety sentiment based on crime types or the nature disaster or human caused accidents, at an individual level, those with less risk of personal data spill or financial fraud rate high score on safeness. The same was applied to natural disaster and accident; the less they had risk of being exposed to natural disaster, the more they believed that they would be protected. In addition, people’s perception on how much they could control risk of crime or natural disasters or accident affected on safety sentiment. When people thought they had enough capability to manage risk of crime respondents, they were likely to show confidence in personal safeness. Regarding risk of crime or natural disaster or human-caused accident, those with no experience of any type of those risk tended to have higher level of safety sentiment compared to those with that kind of experience. Next, according to the individual characteristics of the respondents, safety sentiment of society as a whole and that of individual were found to be higher as the age was higher. With outcomes of survey, the study found that level of safeness was slight different in female and male in categories of safeness of a society as a whole, crime against vulnerable, general crime, street assault at random and so on. Then moves to the next topic. The relationship between fear of damages, feeling of security and perceived safeness in society, respondents showed that the less perceived risk of suffering from any type of crime or natural disaster or human-caused accident, the lower the level of fear the respondents had and at the same time, they believed that they were safer from any type of crime or disaster accident. With results of this analysis, the study also found that the related variables, which were derived from the existing theoretical discussions, have a considerable influence on people’s perception on safety. Feeling of safety of people was also highly influenced by media they usually accessed to and had strong trustiness, fears of risk or followed damages of crime or natural disaster or human-caused accident. On the other hand, looking into the results of assessment and its findings of the relationship between the safety sentiment, the likelihood of occurrence of crime and natural disaster or human-caused accident, the perceived safety of people was more correlated with the probability of occurrence than fear. Also, people’s perception on safety from natural disaster or human-caused accident is more related with the frequency as well as possibilities rather than feat itself.
Beside the survey on safety sentiment and perception on risk of the general, the study analyzed crime and disaster or accidents that were socially being discussed and grabbed people’s attention in 2016, such as child abuse, street assault at random (including physical assault and injury, murder, etc.), leakage or spell of detrimental and toxic chemicals, and negligence accident at home and in work places. The purpose of analyzing data is to understand more about the risk perception and the perceived safety of the public as reflected in online media and social media. To this end, the data from January 1, 2015 to July 31, 2016 were collected and analyzed with news articles and social media that can be accessed online, focused on Twitter.
In summary, the results of the analysis showed that child abuse was grabbed most attention among people based on media buzz and comments to news articles and social media. In case of crimes, toxic chemical related accidents and negligence accidents at home and work places, media buzz and response between the media reports and social media showed discrepancy. In particular, it was a street assault at random that people’s response was much bigger than media buzz. In the case of toxic chemicals, media buzz in news articles was not large, but the percentage of articles users posted comments was high. While the number of articles related to safe negligence accident was similar to that of articles related to child abuse, buzz of people was the lowest level, and in social media, they did not draw much attention of people compared to other types of crime and natural disaster.
With Big Data analytics, the study found three main characteristics of accidents and crime in which the general showed great amount of interest in. The general paid the great amount of attention in child abuse by teachers of day care centers or kindergartens among child abuse cases, murder of a female by a man who had no personal relation at Gangnam Subway Station among street assault at random as the murder case occurred in a place large number of citizen use in their every day lives. The rest was cases related to everyday products including toxic chemicals in which the general paid substantial attention as those products were used everyday. Second, when there were suspicions and mistrust raised among people related to accidents or incidents, people reacted more harshly, in particular, the cases of products with toxic or detrimental chemicals or accidents caused by negligence. For example, concerning everyday products containing fatal toxic chemicals, people were upset on the manufacturer’s as well as related agencies attempt to conceal and manipulate the truth and the number of victim. Furthermore, when a negligence accident occurred at Guui Station which took a life of a young man in his 20, unreasonable working conditions were pointed out one of main reason behind the such accident, which led to get people to pay much more attention on fundamental problems such as preferential treatment.
Third, the response to the incident by the general was harsh and strong when the victim of a crime or accident was considered as the disadvantage of the society. In other words, putting those victims into the frame of the disadvanged group, people reacted more. People expressed their emotions of losing young lives and anger at the society and its system. In particular, when victims were the vulnerable of the society like women and non-regular workers, the general tended to mourn strongly and demand measures to prevent further accidents and protect citizens.
The study also looked into policies to respond to natural disaster or human-caused accident in foreign countries. In German, the act of federal disaster assistance defines “mission of protecting citizens” in the context of civil protection. Each state government enacted and implement its own disaster prevention act which specifies types of disasters in detail, super ordinate concepts of disaster clearly states about fundamentals of preventing disasters and related accidents including damages to properties which require specific protection, unified leadership to manage situation, usage of resources in hand and possibility or necessity of imput further resources. With disaster response act at the federal and state government level, Germany develop a countermeasure system under which the federal government, the state, and the disaster related civic groups and citizens are closely cooperate each other when a disaster occurs. One of a good example is Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) which was established in 2004. When it comes to policies on crime prevention and response, Germany has been actively criminalize new types of crime with specifying abstrakte Gefahrdungsdelikte (in english, abstract endangering offense), accelerating law proceedings, and expanding the proportion of risk management and prevention in criminal law which could be led to turning the criminal law into policy law. This is accompanied by problems of an increase in symbolic criminal law and expeditious criminal procedure. In particular, it is pointed out that the speeding up of the criminal procedure can significantly limit the procedural rights of the suspect or defendant guaranteed by the criminal procedure law. In Germany, "safety society" has been discussed as a new paradigm of social control including criminal policy. As part of the new paradigm of social control, the government is planning to introduce a strict and harsh exclusion policy. For example, German revised its residence law so that foreigners who have committed a crime can be expelled easily. In the case of sex offenses, German has strengthened its response by stepping up monitoring the sexual offenders through not only social surveillance, but also electronic surveillance system, and database of DNA information. Furthermore, it has tried to socially exclude offenders of sexual crime including chemical castration. Police is allowed to actively intervene in domestic violence and child abuse cases which are regarded as social problems. In addition, the German government has initiated a research project for citizens' safety since 2007 to enhance the understanding of the relationship between objective and subjective of strengthening safety of people and society as a whole, and this research project will be a good reference material in pushing ahead with policies on natural disaster or human caused accident and safety-related criminal policy.
In the United States, disaster response and management system contains urgent support activities to provide necessary resources, planning and recovery programs and emergency services in accordance with the principles of the formation, maintenance and utilization of core response capabilities in the event of a national emergency. The U.S has developed standardized risk response and management system which is used by the federal government, state and local governments and non-government organizations in order to establish unified and systematic system. At the federal government level, Department of Homeland Security plays a key role in responding and managing risks. To systematically respond to any risk or disaster, the department invests the state government with authority to respond primarily. When a disaster or accident occures on a large scale and state or local government ask the department to provide assistance, it furnishes them necessary resources. In the event of a serious disaster or accident, for example, large scale of natural disaster, accident, or terror attack, the President may declare a state of emergency. The United States has enforced a response model, so-called "All Hazards" in national emergency and disaster management. The U.S enacted Presidential Policy Order No. 8 which is a national guideline to all kinds of hazard like natural disasters and emergencies. With the major crime response policies in the United States, we could construe that the overall crime rate in the United States has declined since 1993, but the perceived safety of citizens has not improved at a similar rate. The reason why safety sentiment of people have not improved could be found in an old-fashioned response by the police. Police activities, which were identified as effective in the prevention of street crime, in fact, set the direction and intensity of input of police resources based on limited strategies that focused only on the objective reduction of specific crimes. However, in recent years, in order to improve citizen's safety sentiment, focus of police activities has been away from sole crime prevention. Police introduced so-called 'community policing strategies' which could be implemented in line with prevention efforts by ordinary citizens, related public and private companies on a voluntary basis. In addition, the United States has implemented various crime prevention programs to promote the reporting of crimes against the underprivileged, and a treatment improvement program with an aim to prevent a secondary damage by the criminal justice system.
In case of Japan, laws governing emergency and disaster management clearly defines authority and responsibility of central government as well as local government and entities in the event of disaster or emergency. It also provides that inter-related entities and agencies come together and come up with response measures. For the maintenance and implementation of comprehensive disaster and emergency management and response, laws and act on disaster management invest central government to organize a central disaster prevention meeting and emergency disaster countermeasures headquarters as administrative organizations while local governments have their own local disaster prevention councils and disaster countermeasures headquarters. Japan also streamlined the system of disaster management with an aim to promote efficiency of collecting and sharing of disaster and emergency information, to enhance response capability by effectively using manpower and other resources, and to administer effectively response activities for instance life saving, emergency medical treatment, and fire extinction. The main crime response policies in Japan are as follows. Since the 1990s, Japan experienced its worst security deterioration and from 2002 it started to mend its disaster/emergency response and management system. The way how Japan was able to recover from its worst situation in terms of disaster response, it is widely accepted that comprehensive countermeasures, which were developed and implemented by public and private sectors together, finally bore the fruits.
In the past, principal agent of dealing with safety issues in society including responding to disaster or emergency was the investigation agencies. However, in recent years, principal agents become diversified to public and private entities. Concerning prevention of crime, the paradigms of prevention moved from finding causes to providing second opportunity, from post-counteraction to precautious response, from treatment to prevention and from protecting rights of offenders to those of victims. As confirmed with '5-year plan of making society strong to crime', large number of criminal justice polices are based on various types of public safety, especially theory of crime prevention. With changes in direction of criminal justice policies, in Japan, public perception on police activities has changed. People think that police takes appropriate responses and action given the situation and characteristics of emergency in order to secure safety of society. Change in people's perception on police activities become a spring board for the police to expand from its conventional activities of arresting suspects and conducting investigation to prevention of crime. However, there is a fierce debate about the democratic control of the police along with the strengthening of the authority and power of investigation agencies such as police.
Next is about the United Kingdom. The U.K does not have any permanent administrative organization in charge of disaster and emergency management or response. In the event of disaster, agencies of central government and individual administrative institutes of local government takes necessary measures and actions at their level, based on types and characteristics of disaster and affected areas. In principle, the UK is based on local autonomy, for this reason, disaster response is principally governed by the local governments and their own administrative agencies. In the event of a disaster or emergency, law enforcement agencies like police and firefighting organizations such as the fire brigade respond to any disaster or emergency in the first place, and medical institutions such as hospitals are used during this process. However, if there is a national disaster, the Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CSS) of the Cabinet Office will be in charge of crisis management. The UK has set up the Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) in 2004 to respond effectively to any type of disaster or emergency. The law also provides for the establishment, operation and legal authority of the COBRA (Cabinet Office briefing room A) as well as the responsibility of the local government in the event of a national crisis. If a crisis of national emergency occurs and COBRA is activated, the National Emergency Management Office will provide support for the systematic cooperation and coordination of the respective entities, and COBRA will become a substantive decision-making body. Examining major response policies on crime prevention, the UK established crime prevention department under the Department of Interior and actively put into force its plan of 'making a safe city' in the late 1980's. The ultimate goal of the plan was to build a safe city where citizens as well as economic entities could prospect together and then help them have less fear on crime. Crime rate in the UK has been steadily declining since the 1990s, but there are some differences by type of crime. In the UK, attention is also being paid to active police action strategies such as hotspot patrolling using crime-related big data and information and resource-intensive police action strategies targeting at specific crimes. The UK also has implemented a community surveillance program, as a part of community police activities, for the purpose of preventing street crime. Concerning protection of the underprivileged victim, it came up with a comprehensive strategies with various inter-related agencies rather than solely covered by law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, the UK promotes information sharing and expanding education and training programs for practitioners to effectively and efficiently manage those strategies.
The study examined disaster related polices of Switzerland as the country is very well know for frequent natural disasters like earthquakes and at the same time an advanced nation in disaster prevention. As Switzerland is a federal state, there is a federal and state level authority and responsibility for disaster response respectively. Depending on the degree of emergency and disaster, responsibilities for emergency actions are given to local, regional and national political organizations in a systematic way. The very first stage of responding to a disaster in Switzerland is carried out by the local authorities and the state governments under the supervision of Federal Office for Civil Protection (FOCP). During natural disaster, National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC), under the FOCP, is invested with authority and takes the charge of responding to and managing disaster. Relating to the operational aspects of disaster communications, NEOC provides assistance to all members of the Federal Crisis Management Council in order to help the council convene swiftly and facilitate their work on an occasion of natural disaster or emergency. To swiftly respond to natural disaster or emergency, Switzerland developed a system to get support from and cooperate with the military. Switzerland now has evacuations for all residents in all small towns and villages, and it continues to provide education and training programs at ordinary citizens so as to reduce damages by natural disaster.
Lastly, the current system and structure or responding to natural disaster or emergency in Korea were examined. it has been discussed standardization of safety policy in Korea's disaster management law system. In the past, the disaster management law system in Korea faced a lot of limits in disaster management and response as the control tower was not specified clearly and responsibility to response was divided into numerous government agencies and local entities, which prevented efficient disaster or emergency response. Well recognized problems involving disaster responses, to improve the response system, Korea enacted Emergency Safety Management Act in 2004 which provides basis guidelines on an occasion of disaster. However, even after legislation of the act, the government was failed to systematically and efficiently respond to any national disaster or emergency, one the case in point was the tragic "Sewal Ferry Sinking" in 2014. Once again the government ability and system of managing disaster was severly criticized. Finally, the government reorganized its agencies and ministry and established the Ministry of Public Safety and Security. The Emergency Safety Management Act provides close cooperation between the public and private sector in the event of national disaster or emergency to facilitate disaster response among inter-related agencies and institutes. However, it was legislated in 2013, which means that the act is not well established in our society, the act is required supplement and revision from an aspect of appropriate operation. On the other hand, the study found that not only the disaster response policy but also the crime response one by the government prioritize securing objective safety like policy on responding to natural disaster. After revising the Criminal Law, Korea tends to continue toughening up punishment, traditionally aimed at the consolidation of society and the maintenance of public order.
Since the mid - 1990s, there has been more opportunities for the public to say their opinion and reflect it in the legislation, and at the same time the protection of the vulnerable groups has drawn much attention from people, the government has codified some types of offences which were not a crime in the past. With these changes, the criminal justice law provides not only social order maintenance function of the government but also protection of crime victims. The recent trend of the criminal policy could be summarized like maintenance of zero-tolerance and severe punishment, and introduction of harsh probation. However, there has been criticism for "Penal Populism" and law experts and scholars have raised their voice that we should be more cautious about tightening up punishment. Furthermore, even though criminal justice policy have been more sophisticated and improved to keep up with changes in trend in crime, the crime rate, which could be confirmed with official statistics, repeated increase and decrease. In fact, various factors have influence on fluctuation of crime rate, in general, the rate has been inched up. For this reasons, discussions on the paradigm shift of criminal policy such as democratic control of police administration are required.

The study presents suggestions to policy measures to improve safety sentiment based on outcomes of survey, Big data analytics, analysis of crime and disaster - related criminal policy trends at home and abroad. First, when it comes to social policy, the study suggested to eradicate corruption and illegalities, reinforce law enforcement, enhance local environment and strengthen unofficial relations among local governments, step up support for the vulnerable in society, establish a site-based response system in the event of national disaster or emergency, collect and accumulate more information related to disasters and use it in a more efficient way, enhance the support for victims of natural disaster or human-caused accident, promote participation of citizens in government's effort to respond to disasters or emergency, and lastly, provide accurate information on crime and disaster incidents. Regarding criminal policy, measures the study suggested include enhance the general public's confidence in law enforcement agencies such as the police and prosecutors, tough up punishment of criminals, strengthen support for victims of crime, provide education programs and treatment to offenders aimed at help them rehabilitate, and collaborate with related organizations for crime prevention.