Crime is both a factual and perceptual component of the urban landscape, seemingly both a societal
pathology and the consequence of economic disparity between social groups. Crime has a spatial
structure that can be revealed by mapping. Urban crime has a spatial multiplier effect that changes the
values and perceptions of how people see urban space, and which jeopardizes the quality of life of a city’s
inhabitants. In this research we examine the question of whether the geography of actual criminal acts is
echoed by peoples’ perceptions of crime, what might be termed their “spaces of fear”. We ask how the
fear of crime is associated with reported urban crime. Urban crime incidents have been increasing in
Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil.We assembled crime information about Viçosa from two sources: first, crime
as reported to the police and second, crime as perceived by city residents and measured by surveys and
interviews. Reported criminal acts reveal a clustered geography, focusing particularly on the Downtown
area, where there is a concentration of urban wealth and potential victims are more numerous. Offenses
against property were focused on Downtown, while offenses against the person were located mostly in
peripheral areas. The widespread feeling of insecurity in the city’s neighborhoods, reflecting the fear of
becoming a victim of violence and crime, was common throughout the city. Results confirmed the
conclusion of past studies showing that the fear of violence and crime are not directly related to
increasing numbers of criminal reports. Sites with higher incidence of crimes are not places with higher
levels of fear. Rather than being geographically explainable “spaces of fear”, the spatial distribution of the
fear of violence and crime appears to be unrelated in Viçosa, and neither is clustered or dispersed in any
measurable way