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THE
2004/05 |
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| The International Crime
Victim Survey (ICVS) is a programme of standardised sample surveys
to look a householders’ experience with crime, policing, crime
prevention and feelings of unsafety in a large number of countries.
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NEWS
Spanish translation of the Summary report on the Phnom Penh surveys
Call
for ICVS / EU ICS based papers
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Van Dijk, J.J.M., van Kesteren, J.N. & Smit, P. (2008).
Victimización en la perspectiva internacional
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Summary report on the
Phnom Penh surveys (March 2008)
^up
Changing Crime in Phnom Penh Is Phnom Penh more or less dangerous than it was five years ago? Residents and frequent visitors to the city have in recent years noted a more relaxed and peaceful ambience. In the past self-imposed curfews emptied streets early in the evening but has Phnom Penh become as safe as other cities? All over the world official crime statistics account for only a fraction of crime. Many crimes are not detected or reported to the police. Even when crimes are reported they are not always recorded by the police, although records of serious crimes such as homicide are usually more reliable. Criminologists refer to these unaccounted crimes as the ‘dark figure of crime’. The ‘dark figure’ of unreported crime varies from country to country and partly reflects confidence in police and differences in the severity and frequency of some crimes. Compared to many places in the world Cambodia has one of the lowest rates of reporting crime to the police and thus one of the largest ‘dark figure’ of crime. File in PDF |
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Van Dijk, J.J.M., van Kesteren, J.N. & Smit, P. (2008).
Criminal Victimisation
in International Perspective. The Hague, Boom Legal Publishers. ISBN 978 90 5454 965 9
Download
full report or
Summary
The
report can be ordered from your academic bookstore or from:
Boom Legal
Publishers, Meppel. The book reports on the combined data from the International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS) and the European Survey on Crime and Safety (EU ICS). It is written by INTERVICT in coorporation with WODC, UNODC & UNICRI and reviewed by key researchers from the involved countries. It is published in the "Onderzoek en Beleid" (Research and Policy) series of the WODC (Research and Documentation Centre of the Dutch ministry of Justice). Also visit the EU ICS website: www.europeansafetyobservatory.eu The report is available in bookstores and downloadable from the websites of the mentioned institutes in Acrobat PDF format. Our Mexican partners are preparing a full Spanish translation of the report. Summaries of the report will be available shortly in Japanese and Turkish. |
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Preparing for ICVS-6 (2009) ^up Quite a number of countries have already committed themselves to organise and participate in ICVS-6, scheduled for spring 2009. There is a provisional secretariat at the WODC (Dutch Ministry of Justice) and the British Home Office. Surveys outside the industrialised countries will be coordinated by the UN. |
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Call for ICVS / EU ICS based papers for ESC conference in Edinburgh 2008 ^up Following the success in Bologna, we intend to repeat the exercise in Edinburgh 2008. We are looking for hypothesis based papers/presentations, preferably - but not necessarily - including advanced data analysis techniques.
contact
John van Kesteren – INTERVICT, Tilburg University –
vanKest @ UvT.nl
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ICVS and EU ICS in Bologna ^up The European Society of Criminology held its 7th Annual Conference in Bologna, Italy. INTERVICT organised two thematic sessions on the ICVS and EU ICS project. 9 researchers from different countries and with different approaches were invited to present a paper. Below are the details and summaries of the papers ABSTRACTS Galma Jahic - Istanbul Bilgi University, Human Rights Law Research Center and Aslı Akdaş - Dogus University, Department of Psychology Title: Fear of crime in Istanbul in the light of the shift in understanding of “safety and security” in Turkey Turkey participated in the fifth wave of ICVS for the first time, with a city survey of Istanbul. 1242 households from Istanbul metropolitan area have participated in this research. Face-to-face interviews were conducted using the standard ICVS questionnaire, that was translated and adapted to Turkish. While it was found that Istanbul rated among the highest in property crimes, compared to other European cities (based on reports of The European Crime and Safety Survey), when it comes to contact offences, its ranking was much lower. Nevertheless, the fear of crime was found to be disproportionately high. Approximately 70% of the citizens reported that being a target of burglary in the following year was possible or highly likely - such estimation was one of the highest across EU cities. It was found that risk estimate was directly associated with previous victimization, increasing for those whose houses were burglarized once or more times in the past. Despite relatively low rates for violent crimes (compared to other European cities), Istanbul citizens reported feeling very unsafe on the streets. Those reporting feeling "very safe" and "fairly safe" constituted less than 50% of participants, which is one of the lowest rates in European cities, and gender was identified as a significant factor influencing sense of safety. Discrepancy in actual victimization rates and reported fear of crime will be discussed in the light of changing security context in Turkey. Hans-Jörg Albrecht, Dietich Oberwittler and Harald Kania, – Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law Title: Attitudes towards Punishment in the European Union No summary. Sami Nevala - European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights Title: Approaches to surveying the victimisation of immigrants and ethnic minorities in Europe Immigrants and ethnic minorities are some of the most under-researched groups in criminal victimisation survey research. With this in mind, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) has conducted innovative pilot victimisation survey research in six EU Member States to explore the feasibility of collecting survey data on immigrant and ethnic minority groups. The surveys have consisted of face-to-face interviews on crime victimisation and feelings of safety as well as experiences of and attitudes towards the police. A prerequisite for participation is that the respondents identify themselves as belonging to an immigrant or ethnic minority group. Part of the crimes experienced by the respondents may be considered racially motivated or hate crimes; information on these is collected based on respondents' evaluation of the incident. Earlier work by FRA has shown that in some Member States hate crime data collection is inadequate or missing altogether. Differences in the data collection systems also result in the data not being comparable between Member States. The FRA victimisation survey pilot is an effort to address both the problems of missing data and comparability. The main purpose of the pilots has been to test different sampling approaches and the questionnaire with selected immigrant and ethnic minority groups. The presentation will cover some of the lessons learned from the pilot exercise and the specific considerations to be taken in interviewing immigrants and ethnic minorities on their victimisation experiences and attitudes towards the police. Christina Zarafonitou – Panteion University, Athens Title: Criminal victimisation in Greece, some results from the EU-ICS The measurement of victimisation was rare and sporadic in Greece until 2005 when it is included in EU ICS. Many findings are of high interest as for example those concerning corruption. It is also very important to remark the high rates of unsafety among the inhabitants of Greece and in particular of citizens of Athens, in spite of relatively low rates of their victimisation. This paper focuses on this point, trying to reveal the factors who could explain this "paradox". Jan van Dijk - INTERVICT, Tilburg University Title: Performance indicators for police and victim support based on the ICVS The ICVS provides rough estimates of the level and trends of common crimes in a global comparative perspective. It is also a source of information on many related issues that are of interest to internationally minded criminologists and policy makers. In this paper we will first discuss how ICVS results on victim reporting , victim satisfaction with reporting and assessments of police effectiveness can be used as elements of an international police performance indicator. We will subsequently show how results on the reception and need for specialized victim support can be used to estimate the take up rates of national victim support organizations. Martin Killias – University of Zurich Sandrine Haymoz – University of Zurich and Philip Lamon - University of Zurich – Title: Crime trends, ICVS Switzerland participated in the ICVS of 1989, 1996, 2000 and 2005. Overall, survey trends match police statistics reasonably well in direction, though not necessarily in size. Burglary has doubled between the late 1980s and 1997, has dropped after that period and stabilised ever since. Unlike countries like England and others, Switzerland, probably along with a few other countries in Western Europe, has seen how burglary has developed from a crime committed by local youths to a trans-national industry after the opening of borders in 1989. This is reflected in arrest data as well as in police intelligence on stolen items – both clearly indicate that most stolen goods are being exported over long distances. Theft of motorcycles has dropped substantially after 1988, probably because a law that made the wearing of crash helmets compulsory has heightened the risks to potential thieves. Bicycle theft follows a trend more similar to personal crime, i.e. robbery/mugging and assault. What these three offences have in common is that, to a large extent, they have to be committed in the public sphere, and their trends may well reflect the changes in safety on the streets. There was, apparently, a first “high” around 1995, followed by a substantial drop in 1997 that certainly reflects the change in drug policy during the years following 1994 when more and more addicts became eligible for heroin and/or methadone prescription. The increase after 1997 reflects increasing trends of violence among young people in Switzerland, as documented by recent national self-report surveys comparing 2006 data with those collected in 1994 (Killias, Aebi et al. 2007). Trends in reporting to the police show a decreasing trend for property offences, probably reflecting changes in policies by insurance companies tending to reduce coverage in case of minor losses. There is also a clear trend in reporting less violent offences, such as street robbery and assault, probably because victims of such offences tend increasingly to be teenagers who at all times were more reluctant to report offences to the police. Overall, the data on reporting offer no support whatsoever to frequent claims that increasing trends in police statistics merely reflect changes in reporting behaviour. Femke de Keulenaer – The Gallup Organisation, Europe Title: Feeling Safe in European cities: A Multilevel Model of the Impact of Victimisation, Perceived Vulnerability to Victimisation, Neighbourhood and City Characteristics This paper uses data from the European Crime and Safety Survey (EU ICS), conducted in 2005, to examine the relative importance of various factors in predicting feelings of safety in the capital cities of the 15 ‘old’ EU Member States. The current research tests several conceptual models found in the literature to explain citizens’ fear of crime and feelings of safety, such as vulnerability, disorder and social integration models, and studies the effects of many factors, such as gender, age, past experiences with crime, perceived vulnerability to victimisation and neighbourhood characteristics. In addition, since there is proof of cultural bias in reporting levels of safety, we attempt to include the effects of differential cultural answering patterns in the conceptual models. To more accurately test these models, the current analysis considers the simultaneous impact of individual and city level variables using a simple multilevel modelling technique. Helgi Gunnlaugsson - University of Iceland, Reykjavik and Rannveig Thorisdottir – Reykjavik Police Title: Criminal victimization in Iceland, results from the first Icelandic ICVS
Research has repeatedly shown that the amount of crime in society far exceeds
crimes reported to the police. In this paper we examine overall victimization in
Iceland with particular focus on consumer fraud victimizations and police
reporting based on data from the 2005 Icelandic ICVS survey (International Crime
Victims Survey). John van Kesteren – INTERVICT, Tilburg University Title: Crime drops and responsive securitisation; evidence from the ICVS on household burglary The International Crime Victim Surveys confirms what many national victimisation surveys show; common crime has reached its peak around 2000 and is now steadily going down. One of the possible driving forces behind this near universal drop in crime is ‘responsive securitisation’ : In response to increasing losses from crime, many households have stepped up their investments in preventive measures and may thereby have started to discourage burglaries. The ICVS trend data show that the use of anti-burglary measures such as burglar alarms has gone up in all developed nations. They also show increases in self protection to have been more steeply among affluent than among poor households. The analysis of trend data on burglary victimization reveals significantly larger drops in burglary risks among affluent than among poor households. The results bring into focus how responsive securitisation has significantly increased inequalities in security across income groups. |