On whom does the burden of crime fall now? Changes over time in counts and concentration

Abstract

A recent publication (Ignatans and Pease, 2015) sought to examine the changed distribution of crime across households in England and Wales over a period encompassing that of the crime drop common to Western countries . It was found that while crime against the most victimised households declined most in absolute terms, the proportion of all crime accounted for by those most victimised increased somewhat. The characteristics associated with highly victimised households were found to be consistent across survey sweeps. The pattern suggested the continued relevance to crime reduction generally of prioritising repeat crimes against the same target. The present paper analyses the changed distribution of crime by offence type. Data were extracted from a total of almost 600,000 respondents from all sweeps of the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) 1982-2012 to determine which types of victimisation became more or less concentrated across households during the overall crime drop. Methodological issues underlying the patterns observed are discussed. Cross-national and crime type extension of work of the kind undertaken here are advocated as both intrinsically important and likely to clarify the dynamics of the crime drop.

Equity, justice and the crime drop: the case of burglary in England and Wales

“…Public or social (or private according to results not presented here, see footnotes 9 and 10) housing tenants, lone parents and single adult households, ethnic minority households, households without a car, inner city residents and those leaving the house empty for any amount of time on a typical day were by comparison to others worse off in 2008/09 than in 1993. These findings corroborate with recent descriptive evidence (Ignatans and Pease 2016). By contrast, in disagreement with previous descriptive evidence the present study shows that more than two adult households 13 Similar relative burglary falls can be observed between households with three or more cars relative to the base (no car) households.…”

“…Private and social renters, households on less than £20,000 (especially those with incomes under £10,000), and three or more adults households or those with children experienced lower than average burglary drops between 1995 and 2009/10 ( Grove et al 2012). Overall the profile of the 10 % of households most affected by property crime, such as households in rented accommodation or with children, has by and large remained the same over time while their share in property crime incidence rates has increased (Ignatans and Pease 2016).…”

“…This offers a clearer picture of the kinds of households in need of crime prevention initiatives. 6 This study expands on the existing empirical literature on victimisation divide trends during the crime falls (Grove et al 2012;Ignatans and Pease 2016) via (a) focussing on the expected number of such incidents rather than burglary risks across socio-economic groups; and (b) using a methodology that controls for group composition. As a result it identifies the socio-economic groups in need of crime prevention interventions in order to deliver a more equitable distribution of harm.…”

The global crime drop and changes in the distribution of victimisation

“…This permits detailed comparison of ICVS sweeps and countries. As noted earlier, Ignatans and Pease (2015b) showed the basic patterns in England and Wales to be similar across crime types. The same approach was applied to ICVS where means and proportions of victimisations by percentile for each crime type.…”

“…The most victimised came to suffer fewer crimes, but these crimes represented a somewhat higher proportion of the total burden than before. Disaggregation by offence type (Ignatans and Pease 2015b) showed that the trends were for all practical purposes uniform across crime types.…”