Distribution of Household Property Crime Victimisation: Insights From the British Crime Survey (From Surveying Crime in the 21st Century, P 99-124, 2007, Mike Hough and Mike Maxfield, eds., -- See NCJ-220695)

• NCJ Number: 220699
• Author(s): Tim Hope
• Date Published: 2007
• Length: 26 pages
• Sale Source: Criminal Justice Press/Willow Tree Press
• Publication Format: Book Chapter
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter examines British Crime Survey (BCS) data regarding social distribution of crime victimization and community safety.

Abstract

This chapter reviews the discoveries made from BCS data about the social distribution of crime victimization risk and community safety and applies the insight to help interpret the trend in household property crime observed by the academic secondary analysis of the BCS. The discoveries include repeat victimization of individuals, the concentration of property crime victimization amongst neighborhoods, the distribution of private security activities amongst the population, and the role of social contextual attributes of neighborhoods in influencing individual crime victimization risk. The analysis highlights the importance that locality plays when analyzing crime victimization experiences of residents in both high crime (inner urban, poor) and low crime (suburban, affluent) areas; the reliability and validity of analysis are among the most vulnerable to changes in sample design that have incorporated a clustered selection method. Because applying different frameworks of meaning can both confirm and refute previously held conjectures about the interpretation of data, the BCS serves as an instrument of discovery and communications. The BCS provides observations used to discover new ways of conceptualizing crime and disorder issues including the discovery of crime victimization that has not been reported to the police, fear of crime, repeat victimization, and crime flux. However, like any social survey, the BCS is vulnerable to selectivity and bias. The BCS additionally communicates data in the form of information and analysis to the government about the general public which is then formulated into policy and implemented. The public looks to the BCS for information about problems in their society and community while determining the performance of the government in assessing these problems. Extracted insights suggest hypotheses about trends in household property crime observed from BCS data. Tables, figures, notes, and references