International Crime Victims Survey Research Articles

Using Targeted Publicity to Reduce Opportunities for Bicycle Theft

Throughout Europe various policy targets have recently been proposed to encourage cycling as a sustainable transport alternative. From a criminological perspective, if successful, increases in the population of cyclists may generate increases in the number of opportunities for cycle theft. Although there is little research into bicycle theft compared with other volume crimes, analyses of data from the International Crime Victim Survey indicate that cyclists are around three times more likely to have their bike stolen than car owners their car or motorcyclists their motorbike. In relation to the described policy aims, theft and the fear of bicycle theft are found to discourage cycle use. Consequently, neglecting the crime risks associated with increased cycle usage might impede the achievement of otherwise commendable policy targets. Here we report the findings of two observational studies conducted in different areas to better understand how cyclists park their bicycles in public spaces and whether a simple communication strategy might encourage them to lock in a more secure manner. The results of the first study, conducted across five sites in central London (England) indicated a statistically significant reduction in `bad' locking practices and increases in both `good' and `ok' locking practices at those sites receiving intervention. No changes were observed at the control site. Study 2 was conducted in Brighton, England, and constituted a replication of Study 1. A similar pattern of results was observed. The implications of the findings for preventing bicycle theft, the importance of implementability and maintainability in crime prevention initiatives, and the use of publicity in the prevention of crime are discussed.

A Comparative Study of Public Support for the Police

I use the data from the International Crime Victimization Survey and the World Values Survey to study the determinants of public support for the police in 28 countries. I find that the respondents' views of the police, both general confidence and specific ability to control crime, are affected by who the respondents are (gender, age) and by the quality of governance in the country in which they live. Their general views of the police also are related very strongly to what they think about other parts of the government (the armed forces, parliament, and the legal system). Their evaluations of the police ability to control crime are strongly colored by their individual experiences and contacts with the police (crime victimization, fear of crime, being asked to pay a bribe, frequency of seeing police patrols). In addition, police-related characteristics (police size, percentage of women as a measure of heterogeneity of the police, police structure) shape their opinions as well.

CRIMINOLOGY AND ITS DISCONTENTS: THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CRIMINOLOGY 2007 SUTHERLAND ADDRESS*

CriminologyVolume 46, Issue 2 p. 255-266 Free Access CRIMINOLOGY AND ITS DISCONTENTS: THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CRIMINOLOGY 2007 SUTHERLAND ADDRESS* FRANKLIN E. ZIMRING, FRANKLIN E. ZIMRING School of Law University of California, Berkeley I thank Richard Chiang, Jeffrey Fagan, and David T. Johnson for comments on an earlier draft. Direct correspondence to Professor Franklin E. Zimring, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, 383 Boalt Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-0001 (e-mail: [email protected]).Search for more papers by this author FRANKLIN E. ZIMRING, FRANKLIN E. ZIMRING School of Law University of California, Berkeley I thank Richard Chiang, Jeffrey Fagan, and David T. Johnson for comments on an earlier draft. Direct correspondence to Professor Franklin E. Zimring, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, 383 Boalt Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-0001 (e-mail: [email protected]).Search for more papers by this author First published: 09 July 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2008.00109.xCitations: 13 AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL REFERENCES Blumstein, Alfred, and Joel Wallman. 2000. The Crime Drop in America New York : Cambridge University Press. Bowers, William J., and Glenn Pierce. 1980. Deterrence or brutalization: What is the effect of executions Crime and Delinquency 26: 453– 84. Coase, Ronald. 1978. Economics and contiguous disciplines. Journal of Legal Studies 7: 201– 11. Elliott, Delbert S., David Huizinga, and Scott Menard. 1989. Multiple Problem Youth: Delinquency, Substance Use and Mental Health Problems New York : Springer-Verlag. Garland, David. 2001. The Culture of Control Chicago , IL : University of Chicago Press. Graves, William F. 1964. The deterrent effect of the death penalty in California. In The Death Penalty in America, ed. Hugo Bedau. Chicago , IL : Aldine. Karstedt, Suzanne, and Gary LaFree, eds. 2006. Democracy, crime and justice. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 605: 6– 23. Kessler, Daniel, and Steven Levitt. 1999. Using sentence enhancement to distinguish between deterrence and incapacitation. Journal of Law and Economics 42: 343– 63. Lynch, James. 2002. Effects of design differences on rate comparisons in the ICVG. In Crime Victimization in Comparative Perspective: Results from the International Crime Victims Survey, 1989-2000, ed. Paul Nieuwbeerta. The Hague , The Netherlands : Boom Juridische Uitgevers. Shepherd, Joanna. 2005. Deterrence versus brutalization: Capital punishment's differing impacts among states. Michigan Law Review 104: 203– 55. Sherman, Lawrence W., Denise Gottfredson, Doris L. MacKenzie, John Eck, Peter Reuter, and Shawn D. Bushway. 1997. Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising: A Report to the United States Congress Washington , DC : U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs. Simon, Jonathan. 2007. Governing Through Crime: How The War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear New York : Oxford University Press. Webster, Cheryl Marie, Anthony N. Doob, and Franklin E. Zimring. 2006. Proposition 8 and crime rates in California: The case of the disappearing deterrent. Criminology & Public Policy 5: 417– 48. Zimring, Franklin E. 2006a. The Great American Crime Decline New York : Oxford University Press. Zimring, Franklin E. 2006b. The necessity and value of transnational comparative study: Some preaching from a recent convert. Criminology & Public Policy 5: 615– 21. Zimring, Franklin E., and Gordon Hawkins. 1991. The Scale of Imprisonment Chicago , IL : University of Chicago Press. Citing Literature Volume46, Issue2May 2008Pages 255-266 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Some Main Results on International Comparison and Trends. Results from the International Crime Victims Survey and the European Survey on Crime and Safety

This chapter discusses some of the main findings on international comparison and trends from the 5 rounds of International Crime Victims Surveys (ICVS) and the 2005 EU Survey on Crime and Safety (EU ICS). The first round of ICVS surveys was in 1989, followed by surveys in 1992, 1996 and 2000. The last rounds of surveys were done in 2004 and 2005. For the first time, there was an oversampling of inhabitants of the capital (or main) cities in most of the countries that participated. This allows not only for comparison of countries but of main cities as well. In a few countries, a survey was done in a main city only. This chapter first presents the overall victimisation rates at country and at main city level as well as trends in crime for the countries that participated at least three times. Some results that explain crime levels and explain the trends for few of the crimes are discussed further on in the chapter. Some of the other theories that explain the drop in crime over the last 10 years are commented on at the end of this chapter.

International Crime Victim Survey ‘04/05: Polska na tle wybranych krajów Unii Europejskiej

The purpose of this article is to examine the phenomenon of victimization in Poland between 2004 and 2005 in comparison with other countries participating in the International Crime Victim Survey (IVCS) project, whose main objective is to report the results of an international crime survey. The basis of the author’s claims is a comparison of three aspects of attitudes towards crime from selected countries, consisting of an assessment of police work, penalisation, and the fear of crime. The author points out the weaknesses of the ICVS research,which prevent an effective comparison of the results. Among them he mentions the different quantitative composition of the countries which joined the project in a particular year, and the fact that the same countries did not participate in two consecutive editions. The author then compares the Polish results against 18 selected EU countries, explaining his decision by the desire to maintain territorial homogeneity. Andrzej Siemaszko uses graphs to illustrate the findings in relation to theft from cars and personal property, burglary, the threat of robbery, corruption, and the visibility of drug addiction. The text also discusses the causes of crime reporting. It compares the assessment of police work in the countries under study and the fear of crime in their inhabitants. Siemaszko also analyses the level of punitiveness of the inhabitants of selected EU countries, emphasising that it is highly varied, but unlike the fear of crime, strongly correlated with breaking the law. In conclusion, the author indicates the safest and the most dangerous countries according to the IVCS.

Explaining Differences in Comparative Criminological Research: An Empirical Exhibition1

This manuscript examines the correspondence between unofficial and official measures of cross‐national crime for two violent and two non‐violent offenses. More specifically, we report on the convergence of two official measures of cross‐national crime, derived from the European Sourcebook and Interpol, and one unofficial measure of cross‐national crime, provided by the International Crime (Victim) Survey, in terms of their depiction of sexual assault, robbery, domestic burglary, and motor vehicle theft. We evidence strong correlations between the official measures of crime with an expanded sample, but the official data and victimization data were not consistently associated with one another regardless of sample size. This intriguing pattern may be explained by sample size and sample composition. A small number of countries exerted a considerable influence on our findings when we used an expanded sample of countries. We conclude that future researchers using cross‐ national data must attend to the contextual features of the specific countries that they include in their research.

Researching Transnational Crime: The Australian Institute of Criminology

The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC), an independent national agency established in 1972, reports to the Australian minister for justice and customs as well as to an independent board of management. It was created by the Australian government to (1) undertake research on crime and justice that seeks to inform government policy; and (2) actively disseminate information across a broad range of key stakeholders, ranging from the minister to the general public. It is a highly focused agency with some forty staff, of which about twenty-two are active researchers. Another twelve people are engaged in information and dissemination activities. The AIC also provides secretariat services to the Criminology Research Council, which funds a wide range of research in crime and justice areas conducted by academics and consultants throughout Australia. Because the AIC has a key role in dissemination to policymakers and practitioners, it draws on the research work funded by the council and other work undertaken by academics that is deemed to be of policy relevance to its key stakeholders. Transnational Crime Research The changing trends in organized criminal activity in Australia during the past two decades have typically mirrored the patterns of development seen in Europe and North America. Globalization of the world economy has had many positive effects on nation-states, but it is also evident that globalization has enhanced, unintentionally, the capacity of individuals to organize themselves to conduct crimes across borders--that is, transnational crime--on a scale not seen before. The AIC has been attentive to transnational crime for over three decades. In more recent times, it has coordinated its focus on this issue with the establishment of a specific research program--the Global, Economic and Electronic Crime program--in response to the growing demands from the Australian government and law enforcement for a greater understanding of transnational crime and possible policy and practitioner responses. The main focus of the program is to provide information on and analysis of the causes, extent, prevention, and control of transnational criminal activity. It has a strong focus on economic crime, high-tech crime, and sophisticated criminal activity. (1) An important aspect of the work is the identification of emerging criminal threats and response strategies. In the late 1990s, the AIC began to systematically publish on the impact of globalization on crime--how globalization would provide new opportunities for crime, pose new challenges for law enforcement agencies, and have implications for policing Australia's border. (2) Although forms of transnational crime existed before globalization, what is new is the scale and sophistication of organized criminal networks. (3) The study of transnational crime presents particular challenges for criminologists. Comparable ongoing statistical collections as exist for conventional crime, such as property and violence, are not available for transnational crimes; nor is there an extensive academic research base upon which to draw. Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of human trafficking. Despite significant media interest, pressure from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and anecdotal stories of large-scale trafficking, the reliability and validity of the evidence base has been questioned by the AIC and others. (4) As a result, the US State Department has been steadily revising its estimates of the number of women and children being trafficked into the United States downward, from a high of 45,000-50,000 in 2001 to 14,500-17,500 in 2004. (5) In addition, the lack of statistical databases from administrative sources such as police, courts, and corrections or large-scale surveys like the International Crime Victims Surveys, which have been conducted since the 1980s in a range of countries, requires both innovation in methods and comparative research skills by transnational crime researchers. …

Problems and Promise of Victimization Surveys for Cross‐National Research

Abstract In the late 1960s self‐report surveys of criminal victimization were controversial and new. Now, they are common, a mainstay of statistical systems and a familiar research tool. More complex questions have arisen concerning the validity and reliability of victim survey data, including whether they can be used in cross‐national comparisons of crime and criminal justice issues. Victim survey data are sufficiently valid and reliable for use in cross‐national comparisons. Victim surveys can tell us a great deal about crime cross‐nationally that police administrative data cannot. While surveys in principle should be more comparable across nations than police administrative data, in practice this comparability cannot be assumed. Self‐consciously comparative surveys, such as the International Crime Victimization Survey (ICVS) produce more comparable data across nations than nation‐specific surveys do. Nation‐specific surveys produce higher‐quality data on their specific nation than the ICVS does. Steps ...

Crime in Enlarged Europe: Comparison of Crime Rates and Victimization Risks

The paper presents an attempt to compare the International Crime Victim Survey (ICVS) data and the police statistics for a sample of industrialized and post-socialist countries in Europe. The information base consists of the ICVS results from two sweeps and the crime data collected by the European Sourcebook and the Home Office. The method of comparison is based on the regression between ICVS and police crime rates. Police data between countries differ because of dissimilarities in penal systems, registration systems, definition of statistical units, etc. The ICVS responses are based on the description of criminal acts, unified across countries and independent of the legal definitions and legal consequences. Therefore, ICVS data is less biased than police data. The main result of the paper is the proposal of a method for contrasting ICVS and police data on crime in Europe. It gives the possibility to indicate statistical discrepancies of rates for a single country on the basis of the entire sample. The method also allows us to identify the outlier countries with regard to differences between ICVS data and police data.

Repeat Victimization in the ICVS and the NCVS

Overall, 40 per cent of crimes reported to the International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS) in 2000 were repeats against the same target within a year, with variation by crime type and country. However, policy makers have yet to realise the potential of victim-oriented crime reduction strategies. A preliminary comparison of repeat victimization uncovered by the ICVS and the US National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) finds ICVS rates are double those of the NCVS. The NCVS may be seriously flawed in the manner in which it measures repeat victimization, and hence crime overall. Further study is needed, but since the NCVS is an influential survey, the possibility that it is misleading may have widespread implications for crime-related research, theory, policy and practice in the United States and elsewhere.

Government Effectiveness, Crime Rates and Crime Reporting

We use data on crime incidence and crime reporting from the International Crime Victimization Survey to analyze how governance influences crime incidence and crime reporting by households. We find that governance has a significant effect on the incidence and reporting rates of some crime categories, especially theft, even after controlling for a potential reverse causality problem. We also find that governance and income inequality does not have the same effect in every household; on the contrary it is conditional on personal, social and economic characteristics. Urban, female, or poor households are more likely to experience a crime incidence and less likely to report these crimes if they live in countries with high income inequality and poor governance.

Reporting to the police in western nations: A theoretical analysis of the effects of social context*

One of the most consistent findings in empirical studies using victimization data is that the decision to report victimization to the police is determined in large part by the seriousness of the crime. The police will be notified more often of crimes that involve more serious injury or greater monetary loss. These findings, however, may be due to the fact that most studies on reporting have been conducted using victimization surveys that devote a great deal of attention to the crime event and victim characteristics and much less to the social context of that event. As a result, influences on reporting operating at the neighborhood, jurisdiction, or nation level have been neglected. The aim of this paper is to bring social context into the discourse on reporting to the police by presenting a much more inclusive model of crime reporting. In addition, the influence of four aspects of macro-level social context on reporting are tested—the perceived competence of the police, institutionalization of insurance business, norm of conformity, and level of individualism—by merging incident-level data from the International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS) for 16 Western industrialized countries with nation-level data from various sources. Hierarchical logistic modeling is used to analyze the nested data. The perceived competence of the police has a positive effect on whether property crimes are reported.

The International Crime Business Survey: Findings from Nine Central–Eastern European Cities

The important findings of the International Crime Victim Survey (ICVS) have led the organisers to attempt to expand the scope of research to address the problem of victimisation of businesses through a specific international survey. Further to a first international survey in eight countries in 1994, the questionnaire was revised to focus in particular on the issues of corruption, fraud and extortion. The International Crime Business Survey (ICBS) was conducted in nine central–eastern European capital cities in 2000. The article presents a comparative analysis of experiences and attitudes of businesses in central–eastern Europe, where possible with reference to comparable information collected through the international households survey (ICVS) in the same cities and at the same time. Although there is great potential in this type of international research, too few resources are involved in analysing the results and looking at possible policy implications.

Crime in Central and Eastern European Countries in the Enlarged Europe

An enlarged European Union not only means more territory and a greater population, but also more crimes and perpetrators of crimes. The European integration brings a new challenge to criminology. Comparison of crime statistics across countries is still one of the most difficult methodological problems in criminological analyses. Countries differ in respect of their penal systems and penal policies. Reporting and statistical systems are also different. How, then, can one compare crime between European countries? Can one say where it is safer or where the police work better? Can one determine what the manner of data collection should be so that it reflects reality accurately? This article concentrates on a representation of some trends of crime in Central and Eastern European countries. A main source of information about crime are official crime statistics collected according to the methodological rules worked out by the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics. In the case of homicide, police data are confronted with vital statistics gathered by the World Heath Organization (WHO). The statistics on assault and robbery were compared, as much as possible, with the victimization data from the International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS). The socio-economic context of the crime, the main circumstances of the crime statistics, which affected the interpretation of the crime trends for Central and Eastern European Countries, is presented.

Gender inequality, violence against women, and fear: a cross-national test of the feminist theory of violence against women.

This article presents a cross-national test of the feminist theory of violence against women. Combining data from the International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS) with United Nations statistics, the findings support the theory. Specifically, the results indicate that the educational and occupational status of women in a country is related to the prevalence of sexual violence against women. In countries where the status of women is low, prevalence of sexual violence against women tends to be higher. In turn, sexual violence is related to higher levels of fear among women relative to men. In comparison, in countries where the status of women is high, sexual violence against women is lower. The findings of this study add confirmation to the argument that we need to look beyond individual level variables to understand and develop strategies for reducing violence against and fear among women.

Criminal Victimization in Cross-National Perspective

This research examines the effect of resource deprivation, criminal opportunities and social disorganization on national rates of homicide, non-lethal violence, theft and car vandalism. Previous cross-national research has concentrated on homicide variation, owing to the comparative problems associated with rates for other crimes. In the present article, International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS) data on various contact crimes, as well as homicide figures from the World Health Organization (WHO), are analysed across 27 East European and Western countries. First, a comparison of homicide levels with victimization rates for theft and non-lethal violence indicates considerable overlap, which suggests that countries with high levels of homicide tend to have high levels of other violence and theft too. Second, results from multivariate analyses indicate that income inequality is the most consistent structural correlate of victimization rates for homicide, theft, non-lethal violence and car damage across this selection of countries. Also, homicide and theft show negative relations with GDP per capita. This may indicate that societal development goes together with lower levels of exposure to likely homicide offenders (family, friends). However, the results provide no support for the crime-inducing impact of high target attractiveness, thereby challenging predictions derived from routine activity theory on theft.

Cross-National Differences in Victimization. Disentangling the Impact of Composition and Context

Varying rates of criminal victimization across countries are assumed to be the outcome of countrylevel structural constraints that determine the supply ofmotivated oienders, as well as the differential composition within countries of suitable targets and capable guardianship. However, previous empirical tests of these ‘compositional’ and ‘contextual’ explanations of cross-national diierences have been performed upon macro-level crime data due to the unavailability of comparable individual-level data across countries. This limitation has had two important consequences for cross-national crime research. First, micro-/meso-level mechanisms underlying cross-national differences cannot be truly inferred from macro-level data. Secondly, the eiects of contextual measures (e.g. income inequality) on crime are uncontrolled for compositional heterogeneity. In this paper, these limitations are overcome by analysing individual-level victimization data across 18 countries from the International CrimeVictims Survey. Results from multi-level analyses on theft and violent victimization indicate that the national level of income inequality is positively related to risk, independent of compositional (i.e. micro- and meso-level) diierences. Furthermore, crossnational variation in victimization rates is not only shaped by diierences in national context, but also by varying composition. More speci¢cally, countries had higher crime rates the more they consisted of urban residents and regions with lowaverage social cohesion.

Street-level corruption in industrialized and developing countries

This paper offers a cross-country analysis of street-level corruption. In line with earlier studies on general corruption (where data did not allow a distinction between street-level and high-level corruption, e.g. Treisman 2000 and La Porta et al . 1999), nine hypotheses based on general economic theories of law enforcement are tested using data from the International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS) held in forty countries (N = 27,456). The analyses employ multilevel logistic regression models. The results show that citizens living in countries with (a) high levels of economic development, (b) high levels of economic freedom, (c) long exposure to democracy, (d) a non-federal structure, (e) Protestant traditions, and (f) a British legal culture, experience less corruption. A relation between corruption levels and economic development, economic freedom, long democratic traditions, and a British legal culture, however, is found only when no distinction is made between industrialized and developing countries. As for individual characteristics, a higher risk of being victimized by corruption is correlated with a lower age and higher levels of education and income.

Teen Births Keep American Crime High

The United States has a teenage birth rate that is high relative to that of other developed countries, and falling more slowly. Children of teenagers may experience difficult childhoods and hence be more likely to commit crimes subsequently. I assess to what extent lagged teen birth rates can explain why the United States had the highest developed country crime rates in the 1980s, and why US rates subsequently fell so much. For this purpose, I use internationally comparable crime rates measured from the 1989-2000 International Crime Victims Surveys. I find that an increase in the share of young people born to a teen mother increases the assault rate. The type of assault affected is perpetrated by unarmed lone assailants known to the victim by name, particularly at home or at work, and is not reported to the police. The pattern of teen births in the United States explains -30% of the relative fall in assaults by assailants known to the victim, but more than explains the 1980s gap with the rest of the world. I also present evidence on larceny and burglary.

Experiences of the International Crime Victim Survey in Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Yugoslavia

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