Why British police should focus on victims

For MOST Britons who worry about crime, two facts should provide some reassurance. First, it has fallen over the past three decades. The latest Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that most crimes, including violent ones and burglary, continue to fall from a peak in the mid-1990s. Second, a relatively small number of people are disproportionately likely to be victims. Previous research has suggested that 5% of people (in Britain and in America) experience 60% of all crimes in which there are victims.If that means most Britons are less likely to experience crime than they might deduce from media headlines, it also means that life is much grimmer and more dangerous for a smaller number of people than most care to think about. Sometimes repeat victimisation occurs because the target is personally vulnerable: a woman living with a violent man, say. In other cases it is because one crime invites a repeat: a shoplifting episode in which a thief clocks that the cashier does not have a clear view of the exit, for example. Often, it is both. Perpetrators of anti-social behaviour, which is not a crime but definitely has victims, also often pick on the same people.