Repeat Personal Victimization. ‘Boosts’ or ‘Flags’?

By A. Tseloni, K. Pease. 2003

163 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Repeat victimization has recently featured prominently in crime reduction research, especially in the UK. Crime prevention efforts which focus on repeats have enjoyed some success. Yet little is known about what generates repeat victimization. While this remains the case, the scope for crime reduction through the prevention of repeated events against the same target will be limited. There is general agreement about the potential relevance of two intertwined theoretical causes, namely event dependence (where the crime event boosts the probability of repetition), and heterogeneity (where the crime event flags an enduring risk, which enduring risk makes repetition likely). This paper attempts to disentangle the effects of event dependence and heterogeneity on repeat personal victimizations across three interviewing periods using the 1994 National Crime Victimization Survey. We employ a (fixed effects random intercept) multilevel model of personal crime counts incorporating individual and household characteristics as well as lifestyle and prior non-victimization of individuals clustered within households. Our results show that victimization by personal crime, especially over successive time periods, is partly due to measured heterogeneity. Personal crimes experienced by members of the same household are moderately but persistently correlated. This suggests that unmeasured heterogeneity is also implicated in period-to-period repetition of personal crime. The combined effects of unmeasured and measured heterogeneity do not exhaust the predictivity of prior for subsequent victimization, meaning that a degree of event dependence is involved.

Subfields: Nature and Landscape Conservation, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c4555a0be4ec0f69fabbb8f64cca5ed242ec2f78

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In Nature and Landscape Conservation

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Citations in the corpus

Repeat burglary victimisation: a tale of two theories (2008, background): “The results indicated that both prior victimisation and time-stable characteristics had a part to play, with the regression coefficient for prior victimisation being the highest of all those considered (see also Lauritsen and Davis-Quinet 1995; Tseloni and Pease 2003 ).”
Reciprocal Effects of Victimization and Routine Activities (2011, background): “However, earlier research has shown support for a positive state dependence effect (Ousey et al. 2008; Tseloni and Pease 2003; Wittebrood and Nieuwbeerta 2000; Lauritsen and Davis Quinet 1995).”
The Meaning of the Victim-Offender Overlap for Criminological Theory and Crime Prevention Policy (2021, background): “These theoretical notions centered on victim choice guide some of the explanatory research on the repeat-victimization (e.g., Tseloni & Pease 2003).”
Polyvictimization and trauma in a national longitudinal cohort (2007, background): “In more colloquial terms, these have been described as “flags” ~of enduring risk! versus “boosts” ~increased vulnerability resulting from victimization; Tseloni & Pease, 2003!.”
Offender as Forager? A Direct Test of the Boost Account of Victimization (2009, background): “Unusual in that they analyze personal rather than property crime, Tseloni and Pease (2003) apply a multilevel model to personal crime counts from the National Crime Victimization Survey.”
Same-Offender Involvement in Repeat and Near Repeat Burglaries (2008, background): “These findings have been explained by two mechanisms (Tseloni and Pease 2003).”
“Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop”: Self-Control, Risky Lifestyles, and Repeat Victimization (2012, background): “5 We recognize that other forms of non-violent victimization (e.g., theft) are also relevant to the study of repeat victimization (Averdijk and Loeber 2012; Farrell et al. 1995; Tseloni and Pease 2003).”
Poly-victimization: a neglected component in child victimization. (2007, background): “Others pertain to characteristics of children, themselves including those implicated in theories about social learning and attachment processes (see, Finkelhor, Ormrod, & Turner, in press; Perry et al., 2001; Tseloni & Pease, 2003).”