First Step Towards Victimological Risk Analysis - A Conceptual Model for the Prevention of 'Petty' Crime (From Crime Prevention, P 55-85, 1981, Eckart Kuhlhorn and Bo Svensson, ed. - See NCJ-86454)

• NCJ Number: 86457
• Author(s): C H D Steinmetz
• Date Published: 1981
• Length: 31 pages
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; Liber Distribution Foerlagsorder
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: Sweden
• Note: Available on microfiche as NCJ-86454

Annotation

In the Netherlands, crime prevention is becoming accepted as a significant component of crime control policy. Effective preventive programming, however, requires reliable methods of victimological risk analysis.

Abstract

The model presented here is based on victim surveys conducted in the Netherlands between 1974 and 1979 and analyzed to determine factors which relate to the objective risk of victimization from petty crime. The factors considered were both geographic and social proximity (including risk-taking behavior), attractiveness to offenders (possession of valuables, sexual characteristics), and exposure to potential victimization situations. The model makes it possible to systematically determine the socioeconomic, physical, and social components in the structure of society which generate crime, and to see at which points barriers might be placed between potential offenders and potential victims. Such barriers include technopreventive and sociopreventive measures and environmental design strategies used in combination with each other. Adaptations in these areas should be made for crime prevention as an intrinsic part of a broader general welfare policy to reorient the urban way of life. Crime prevention will have to become the concern of many different parties, requiring above all the cooperation and interaction between the criminal justice community and the public at large. Charts, footnotes, and 33 references are given.