Victims of frequently occurring crime

Victims data are based on the Integrated safety monitor 2011 (available in Dutch only), a large scale population study among people aged over 15 years in the Netherlands. All respondents are asked whether they have been the victim of one more specific criminal offences. Fourteen categories of offences are listed: violent crimes (sexual offences, assault, threatening behaviour), property offences (burglary or attempted burglary, bicycle theft, car theft, theft from car, pick pocketing with and without violence, other theft), vandalism (car vandalism and other vandalism), and other, not further specified, offences. The latter category (other offences) is not included in the analyses. For each category of offences, respondents are asked if they have been the victim of one of these offences in the last five years. If so, they are asked in which year and which month their last experience was, and where applicable, in which year and month and the time before that was.

This article distinguishes between persons who had been the victim of a crime in the preceding 12 months and persons who had been a victim between one and five years previously. For both groups of victims, an analysis was made of whether victims had experienced one category of crime, or more than one category of crime.