The current study examined to what extent a valid instrument that predicts repeat victimization can be based on a victim's prior police contacts. Police records between 2010 and 2017 were retrieved for a sample of 68,229 victims. The data was split into a training set ( n = 34,224) and a test set ( n = 34,005). Using logistic regression analyses in the training set, three models were developed linking prior police contacts to repeat victimization. The predictive validity was assessed in the test set. Results indicated that (a) prior police contacts as victims, suspects and witnesses were associated with an elevated risk of repeat victimization and (b) the model correctly classified a majority of both repeat victims and non-repeat victims across various cut-off points. Findings demonstrated moderate to acceptable predictive validity, thereby suggesting that there is considerable room for improvement.

Following the EU Victim Directive, Dutch police officers are obliged to assess a victim’s vulnerability to repeat victimization. This study explored the utility of unstructured police information for the prediction of repeat victimization, as well as its incremental value over and above structured police information. Police records over a period of 6 years were retrieved for a sample of 116,680 victims. Unstructured information was transformed into numeric features using count-vector and TF/IDF methods. Classification models were built using decision tree and random forest models. AUC values indicate that a combination of structured and unstructured police information could be used to correctly classify a majority of repeat and non-repeat victims.

No abstract

This study explored associations between television exposure and public support for restrictive immigration policies in Europe, distinguishing general television exposure from exposure to television news. We explored explanations of generalized social distrust and perceived ethnic threat and, moreover, acknowledged cross-national variation in asylum applicants. Methods: We applied multi-level regression analyses using the European Social Survey (2014Survey ( -2015, covering 19 countries (n = 29.161). Results: General television exposure and support for restrictive immigration policies related positively, whereas exposure to television news related negatively to these policy preferences. Furthermore, both generalized social distrust and perceived ethnic threat mediated the links between both forms of exposure and these preferences. An increase in the number of asylum applicants strengthened the positive relationship between general television exposure and these policy preferences. Conclusions: This study provides new insights into the role of individual and national factors for support for restrictive immigration policies from a contemporary and cross-national perspective. KEYWORDS asylum inflow, cross-national comparison, news exposure, support for restrictive immigration policies, television exposureThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.