Phenomena of Multiple Victimization: The Relationship Between Personal and Property Crime Risk

• NCJ Number: 191906
• Journal: British Journal of Criminology Volume: 41 Issue: 4 Dated: Autumn 2001 Pages: 595-617
• Author(s): Tim Hope; Jane Bryan; Alan Trickett; Denise R. Osborn
• Date Published: 2001
• Length: 23 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This British study examined factors in multiple crime-type victimization (MCV), which concerns the extent to which some households or persons are victims of more than one kind of offense over a given time period.

Abstract

The paper first discusses three features of the current understanding of multiple victimization: repetition over time, specificity, and risk transmission. The authors then fit an appropriate multivariate statistical model to data taken from the 1992 British Crime Survey (BCS) in an effort to identify antecedents and correlates of MCV. The explanatory variables for the model are prior victimization and selected characteristics of respondents, their households, and the area in which the household is located. "Prior victims" are those who had been a victim (in the 4 years preceding that of the reference period) of one or more of four types of incidents: vehicle theft, burglary, personal theft, or personal assault. The study resulted in two important findings. First, there was a significant and positive association between the chance of becoming a victim of property crime and that of becoming a victim of a personal crime. Although some of this association can be explained by risk factors shared by both types of crime, the chance of falling victim to one type of crime is not independent of the chance of falling victim to the other. Second, prior victimization experience seemed to affect current victimization risk, not only within crime-types but also across crime-types. The effect across crime types of prior victimization was stronger for current property crime than for personal crime victimization. Findings from this study offer some tentative support for a more complex life-course explanation of MCV than simply victim-proneness. The life-course explanation combines vulnerability with the risk-transmitting effects of prior victimizing experiences and misfortunes. 3 tables and 48 references