Victim Surveys

• Definition


  A sample of the population is asked what offences have been committed against them over a period of time.
• Strengths


  + Overcomes the dark figure of crime

  + Gives the perspective of the victim

  + Useful for looking at trends overtime

  + Some surveys provided more detail on particular places
• Weaknesses

  - Recollections can be faulty or biased

  - Categorisation is left to candidate, so can be inaccurate

  - Overlook a range of crimes like corporate and fraud

  - Dependent on people being aware they are victims

  - Not all crimes have victims
• Examples

  • Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW): collected annually, 35,000 adults and 3,000 children are sampled. In 2013, the response rate was 75% . Tends to suggest crime rates are 4x higher than police statistics suggest
  • Islington Crime Survey: reported high levels of victimisation of ethnic groups and domestic violence