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Fear of crime is more pervasive and harder to address than crime itself and can cause physical and psychological health complications, particularly for women. Fear of crime is not always grounded in direct exposure to crime. Instead, it may be more directly linked to social cohesion and/or perceptions of neighborhood disorder, but little is known about these associations in informal settlements. This paper sought to explore these relationships in Mathare—a large informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya. Using responses from surveys with 550 women in Mathare, we conducted regression, mediation, and moderated mediation analyses to investigate relationships between neighborhood disorder, fear of crime, and neighborhood cohesion and explore how these associations vary across geographic spaces (villages). Findings suggest that women's perceptions of neighborhood disorder are associated with fear of crime; neighborhood cohesion partially mediates the relationship between perceptions of neighborhood disorder and fear of crime; women's fear of crime varies by village; and the mediating role of neighborhood cohesion also varies by village. Efforts to build and strengthen social cohesion in informal settlements may help to reduce women's fear of crime, but more research is needed to explore under what conditions and in what spaces interventions are the most effective. Highlights: Women's perceptions of neighborhood disorder are linked to fear of crime in informal settlementsCohesion partially mediates the relationship between perceptions of disorder and fear of crimeFear of crime and the role of neighborhood cohesion vary across geographic spaces in settlementsEfforts to build and strengthen cohesion in informal settlements may help to reduce fear of crimeBut, heterogeneity in spaces and women's perceptions, experiences, and fears should be considered [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need to illuminate and contextualize approaches to crime control and order maintenance in transitional societies has become increasingly necessary, thanks to the pervasiveness of social disorder and the elusive nature of crime in general. This study focuses on the functions of the Provincial Administration and the Administration Police in Kenya in order to reveal the little known but overarching powers of Chiefs and Sub-Chiefs as the official agents of crime control and order maintenance in the rural parts of the country. The study, which is a culmination of an in-depth review of Kenya's legal framework and other germane literature, uses the country to cast a thoughtful appraisal of the African experience and, as a result, to provide a strong and reliable data point that could be used in cross-cultural and comparative crime control studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]