Violence and the crime drop
| Author | Soenita M. Ganpat,Laura Garius,Andromachi Tseloni,Nick Tilley |
| Published date | 01 July 2022 |
| Date | 01 July 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1477370820913456 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370820913456
European Journal of Criminology
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370820913456
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Violence and the crime drop
Soenita M. Ganpat
University of Derby, UK
Laura Garius
Andromachi Tseloni
Nottingham Trent University, UK
Nick Tilley
University College London, UK
Abstract
According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales, violence fell dramatically between 1995
and 2013/14. To improve understanding of the fall in violent crime, this study examines long-
term crime trends in England and Wales over the past two decades, by scrutinizing the trends
in (a) stranger and acquaintance violence, (b) severity of violence, (c) age groups, and (d) sexes.
It draws on nationally representative, weighted data from the Crime Survey for England and
Wales, and examines prevalence, incidence and crime concentration trends. The overall violence
fall was driven by a decline in the victimization of young individuals and/or males perpetrated
by acquaintances since 1995. Stranger and acquaintance violence followed different trajectories,
with the former beginning to drop post 2003/4. Falls in both stranger and acquaintance violence
incidence rates were led by a reduction in victims over time. Counting all incidents reported by
the same victim (instead of capping at five incidents) significantly affects trends in stranger violence
but not in acquaintance violence. In relation to the distributive justice within the crime drop, this
study provides unique evidence of equitable falls in acquaintance violence but inequitable falls
in stranger violence. These findings highlight the need to examine violence types separately and
point to a number of areas for future research.
Keywords
Violence trends, crime drop, age, sex, crime concentration, crime risk
Corresponding author:
Soenita M. Ganpat, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Department of Criminology and Social Sciences,
University of Derby, 1 Friar Gate, Derby, DE1 1DZ, UK.
Email: s.ganpat@derby.ac.uk
913456EUC0010.1177/1477370820913456European Journal of CriminologyGanpat et al.
research-article2020
Article
2022, Vol. 19(4) 767–790
Introduction
Many types of crime have fallen across many jurisdictions since the early 1990s, after
inexorable rises following the Second World War (Tonry, 2014; Van Dijk and Tseloni,
2012). Since crime fell first in the USA, the early literature on the crime drop focused on
trends in violent crime and the special conditions there that might explain the drop
(Blumstein, 2000; Blumstein and Wallman, 2000). It has now become clear that the crime
drops are widespread, albeit their timing has varied across crime types and countries
(Tseloni et al., 2010). As a result, explanations that speak to conditions in particular coun-
tries have become less persuasive (Tonry, 2014). Moreover, very general explanations
about overall crime falls are threatened by the increases that occurred in a small number
of specific crime types (Farrell, 2013). We need to be able to explain the general patterns,
and variations within that general pattern, if we are to fully understand the trends.
However, Aebi and Linde (2012) caution that researchers must first establish that there
has been a drop in different types of crime before attempting to provide explanations.
Evidence remains mixed regarding the pervasiveness of falls in non-lethal violence
(Tonry, 2014). A first step to address this inconclusiveness is to disaggregate violence
types and victim populations, as well as single and repeat victimization trends. Early
analysis suggested that a reduction in repeat violent victimization drove the falls in violent
crime in England and Wales between 1995 and 2006/7 (Thorpe, 2007); however, more
recent evidence is lacking. Moreover, personal crimes are now more concentrated on the
most vulnerable victims than before the crime drop (Ignatans and Pease, 2016). This
raises the issue of distributive justice (Rawls, 1999), specifically vertical equity in the case
of the crime drop – those at highest victimization risk should experience the largest crime
falls (Hunter and Tseloni, 2016) – which has not been examined for violence to date.
The current study addresses the gaps identified above and investigates specifically
non-domestic, non-fatal violent crime trends in England and Wales from 1991 to 2013/14,
disaggregating:
violence types in relation to (a) the victim–offender relationship; and (b) whether
the event resulted in wounding; and
victim populations by (a) sex and (b) age.
This work draws on victimization survey data – the Crime Survey for England and
Wales (CSEW) – which is the only source of consistent crime estimates in England and
Wales over time; police recorded crime varies owing to changes in crime definitions, the
public’s reporting and police recording practices (Van Dijk and Tseloni, 2012). Although
crime concentration is best gauged from crime survey data, incidents reported to the
survey by the same victim were until recently capped at five (ONS, 2018). This led to
criticisms that crime rates have been kept superficially low and crime concentration
underestimated (Farrell and Pease, 2007; Walby et al., 2016).
The following four questions are addressed in this study:
I Has violence fallen in a similar manner across violence types?
II Has violence fallen to the same extent across different demographic groups?
768 European Journal of Criminology 19(4)
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