Criminal Victimization in Cross-National Perspective
| Author | Johan van Wilsem |
| Published date | 01 January 2004 |
| Date | 01 January 2004 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1477370804038708 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Criminal Victimization in
Cross-National Perspective
An Analysis of Rates of Theft, Violence and
Vandalism across 27 Countries
Johan van Wilsem
Department of Criminology, Erasmus University Rotterdam,
The Netherlands
ABSTRACT
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.
KEY WORDS
Cross-National Comparison / Crime Victimization / Violence / Theft /
Vandalism.
Volume 1 (1): 89–109: 1477-3708
DOI: 10.1177/1477370804038708
Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks CA, and New Delhi
www.sagepublications.com
Introduction
Criminological theories have been tested by making comparisons across
various types of ecological units, such as neighbourhoods or cities (e.g.
Land et al. 1990; Miethe and Meier 1994). From these tests, it appears
that the number of criminal events within spatial units depends not only
upon the presence of negative social factors, such as income inequality
and lack of informal control, but also upon beneficial social condi-
tions that exert perverse effects. According to routine activity theory,
increasing affluence is related to higher levels of ownership of luxury
goods and a shift in daily activities from home-centred to non-domestic.
Cohen and Felson (1979), the founders of this theory, argued that
conditions associated with affluence increase the attractiveness of people
and property as crime targets as well as increasing people’s exposure to
offenders through out-of-home activities. However, unlike traditional
criminological theories, such as strain/anomie theory and social dis-
organization theory, routine activity theory predicts crime-specific effects
of levels of material possession: whereas theft crimes are assumed to
become more likely as a result of higher target attractiveness, rates of
violent crime are assumed to be unaffected by these conditions (Bennett
1991a; Miethe et al. 1987).
Although empirical tests of criminological theories have been per-
formed at a cross-national level, few studies have examined cross-national
crime variation for multiple types of offences. Because of inconsistencies in
legal codes and differences in the public’s propensity to report crimes to the
police across nations and within nations over time, most cross-national
studies on crime have concentrated on homicide (Gartner 1990; Krahn et
al. 1986; Messner 1989; Neapolitan 1998). Homicide’s fundamental nature
has made this type of crime less sensitive to definition problems than other
types and, therefore, national rates of homicide are considered to be the
most reliable data source for cross-national studies of crime. However, the
focus on homicide has narrowed the research field, and has resulted in a
situation in which it is not clear if the structural correlates of national
homicide rates relate in the same way to other types of crime or, as
expected for affluence, whether they operate differently for theft and
violent crime. Exceptions to this are the studies by Bennett (1991a,b), Kick
and LaFree (1985) and LaFree and Kick (1986), in which the determinants
of theft and violence are compared in a cross-national perspective. Their
findings suggest that some of the structural correlates of theft and violence
are not similar. For instance, Bennett (1991a) found that theft rates were
positively related to gross domestic product per capita, whereas rates of
90 European Journal of Criminology
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