A VICTIM IS A VICTIM IS A VICTIM?: Chronic Victimization in Four Sweeps of the British Crime Survey

This paper builds on previous work which identified the importance of multiple victimization in determining crime rates. Using the first four sweeps of the British Crime Survey, patterns of property and personal crime victimization are investigated, and the interdependence of incidents is established: the probability of a further victimization increases with each subsequent victimization. A comparison is made between the observed distribution, and a hypothetical distribution which assumes that crime incidents are randomly distributed throughout the population. Given the extent of concentration of incidents amongst a small number of chronic victims, recommendations are made for the way official crime statistics are recorded.