Patterns of Victimisation
All audits should include an analysis of victimisation. Analysis
of existing victims is undertaken so that partnerships are better
able to identify future victims and so can target resources more
effectively. The most reliable predictor of future victimisation is
past victimisation. Therefore it is particularly important that
partnerships seek to identify and analyse repeat victimisation.
Other Toolkits in the series provide information on victim
profile for individual areas of crime and criminality http://www.crimereduction.gov.uk/toolkits/index.htm
Information on victims
Partnerships should profile victims of different types of crime
using factors such as:
-
Gender
-
Age
-
Ethnicity
-
Occupation
Consideration could be given to identifying:
Identifying vulnerable groups
When profiling offenders and analysing patterns of victimisation
it is important to take account of vulnerable groups. These might
be:
-
Groups with relatively low rates of victimisation, but for
whom the impact of a crime is likely to be particularly
catastrophic.
-
Groups with high rates of victimisation
An example of the first group might be the elderly. The British
Crime Survey suggests that rates of crime victimisation among the
elderly are relatively low compared to the population as a whole.
Nevertheless, elderly people are disproportionately affected by the
fear of crime the impact of a crime might have more severe
consequences for an elderly person.
Some groups with high rates of victimisation will be relatively
easy to identify. For instance, young people and the socially
excluded tend to have high rates of victimisation. However, it is
also important to take account of virtual communities (see below).
Virtual communities
Much crime analysis tends to be driven primarily by geography and
often this makes sense because many types of crime (particularly
volume crimes such as burglary and vehicle crime) are unevenly
distributed geographically. However, recently the importance of
taking account of ‘virtual communities’ has become apparent. A
‘virtual community’ is a community that is defined in terms of
features other than a common geography. (Home Office 1999)
Much of our understanding of virtual communities has come from
the early findings of the Home Office Reducing Burglary Initiative
(RBI) (part of the Crime Reduction Programme). Early research
findings show that some socio-demographic groups were particularly
prone to burglary victimisation. These groups included students and
those living in multiple occupied dwellings. Such groups did not
necessarily occupy a spatially distinct area, but were often spread
across a number of wards or beats (Home Office 1999). The high rates
of victimisation that they experienced was not immediately apparent
from a spatially-driven analysis of burglary ‘hotspots’.
Visiting and working populations
Visiting and working populations are often overlooked when
undertaking victim analysis.
-
Many city centres will have small residential populations,
but large working populations during the day, and large leisure
populations during the evening and at weekends. It is important
that these populations are taken into account when undertaking
victim analysis because both will be subject to particular kinds
of victimisation that might be distinct from that experienced by
residential populations.
-
Tourists will be subject to particular types of victimisation
that might be distinct from that experienced by residential
populations.
Repeat victimisation
See Repeat Victimisation Toolkit.
The advantages of preventing repeat victimisation as a strategy
of crime control are as follows:
-
Focusing on repeats automatically concentrates effort on
areas of highest crime
-
Focusing on repeats automatically concentrates on individuals
at greatest risk of future victimisation.
-
Time analysis of repeat victimisation suggests that resources
can be focused temporally as well as spatially.
-
Insofar as repeated offences against the same target are the
work of the same perpetrator(s), clearance of a series of crimes
and linked property recovery is made more likely than was the
case when events were seen as independent.
-
Repeat crimes are disproportionately the work of prolific
offenders, so the prevention/detection of attempts at repetition
provides an effective way of targeting prolific offenders.
Based on ‘Repeat Victimisation: Taking Stock’, Crime
Detection and Prevention Series Paper 90 London: Home Office
1998 page v-vi
Full report: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/prgpdfs/fcdps90.pdf
Summary report: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/prgpdfs/cdp90bf.pdf
Click on the links below for further information on Repeat
Victimisation:
|
