Andromachi Tseloni

Global Overview: International Trends in Victimization and Recorded Crime

In this opening chapter, the focus is on a descriptive analysis of trends in victimization rates of a selection of mainly Western countries with a special focus on Europe. Our main sources of data are the six rounds of the International Crime Victims Survey carried out between 1989 and 2010. For some countries, the ICVS data have been checked against results from large-scale independently run national surveys, such as the National Crime Victimization Surveys of the US and the Dutch and British Crime Surveys from the same period.

The modelling of threats: evidence from the British Crime Survey

Threats to kill, to injure, or to damage property stimulate fear and anxiety in the victim and his/her immediate human environment. Previous research has used sociodemographic attributes and lifestyle or routine activities measurements to predict crime victimisation rates. The purpose of this study is to examine how personal characteristics are associated with the probability of being threatened. Data from three sweeps of the British Crime Survey (1982, 1984, 1988) are employed. Logistic regression is the main analytic tool used, with some interaction terms entering the set of explanatory variables. Appropriate specification tests for logit models, which are usually neglected, are conducted. The results of the tests confirm the robustness of our models. The present study addresses two questions in particular: (a) which groups of people are most threatened?; and (b) do these groups change over time and, if so, how?

Conclusions — Understanding International Crime Trends: A Summing Up

In the first part of this book, crime trends between 1990 and 2010 in several countries of Europe, including Britain and France, and Australia were examined. For this exercise two independent measures of crime were harnessed: police-recorded crimes per 100,000 inhabitants and victimization prevalence rates based on survey research among the public. Both sources can, with some caveats, be used to determine trends in crime over time. The comparability of official statistics has been improved by two factors. First, many Western countries have computerized and otherwise upgraded their national systems of crime recording by the police and courts. Second, international organizations, such as the United Nations Organization on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Council of Europe and the European Commission (Eurostat), have improved their methodologies of collecting official statistics on crime for comparative purposes. Most importantly, these official statistics are now complemented by results from victimization surveys.