How do patterns of Victimisation vary by social class, gender, ethnicity and age?
Are some people more likely to be victims of crime than others? And how do the characteristics of victims vary by different types of crime?
This post has been written for students of A-level sociology studying the crime and deviance module, it is an introduction to the topic of victimisation, which is explicitly on the AQA’s specification.
NB some of the latest up to date information in this post may well contradict the very probably dated information in your sociology text books!
The statistics below focus mainly on the victims of crime in the United Kingdom?
Characteristics of victims of any crime by ethnicity, social class and age (TCSEW)
The Telephone Crime Survey of England and Wales is based on a telephone survey of 30 000 respondents, making it the largest sample which addresses the question of who the victims of crime are.
(NB it’s currently a telephone survey because of Covid-19 restrictions, before that it was a face to face interview survey, to which it may return at some point!)
The TCSEW reports the following variations in patterns of victimisation for the year ending March 2020:
People of mixed ethnicity were more likely to have been victims of crime than other ethnic groups
20% of people from mixed ethnic backgrounds reported being victims, but the victimisation rates were very similar across all other ethnic groups (varying from 14-17%)
Gender seems to have very little affected on reported levels of victimisation
There were very similar reporting levels for both males and females in all ethnic groups.
The chart below demonstrates the remarkably similar patterns in victimisation by both ethnicity and gender (the only ‘significant’ difference being the higher reported rates for mixed ethnicity).
Younger people are more likely to victims of crime than older people
The chart below shows percentage of people reporting having been a victim of crime by age group – you’ll notice it generally declines as people get older, and there is a marked difference if you compare the 55s and overs with youngest three categories:
There is no obvious correlation between social class background and being a victim of crime.
In fact the picture is complex – there is no variation by class for white people, for black people, the unemployed report much lower levels of victimisation compared to professionals and for Asian people there is a slightly lower chance of being a victim the higher your social class background!
Repeat Victimisation
Data from the 2018 CSEW shows that 74% of victims of violent crime were victims once, whereas 26% were victims twice or more (7% three times or more) in the previous year.
Limitations with victimisation data from the TCSEW
- These data look at ALL crimes, and the most common types of crime (which have INCREASED MASSIVELY in recent years) are fraud and computer misuse – which are quite likely to be ‘gender/ class/ ethnicity neutral’.
- and it may be the case that for more serious crimes there are still significant variations by class/ gender and ethnicity – such as violent crimes including domestic violence and hate crimes.
- These data may be invalid because the reporting rates might vary by social class, gender, age and ethnicity – a recent report on the victims of violent crime (see section below) for example found that children were twice as likely to NOT report a crime compared to adults. Also where being a victims of Domestic Violence is concerned, with women more likely to be victims than men, this isn’t the kind of thing you can easily report over the phone, during Lockdown.
- And let’s not forget the crimes the TSCEW doesn’t cover victims of State Crime.
Who are The Victims of Violent Crime?
It’s worth looking at who the victims of violent crime are as the impacts are likely to be felt more severely than other types of crime, such being a victim or fraud or burglary.
Victims of Serious Violence England and Wales 2011-2017 pooled data from several years of the Crime Survey for England and Wales and extracted data on over 10 000 incidents.
Extremely low numbers of people are victims of violent crime each year. The report estimates that 2-3% of adults are victims of violence each year, and only 1 in 250 require some kind of medical treatment for their injuries.
- Males were at greater risk of violence – both for adults and children
- Younger people were more at risk than older people
- People from deprived areas were were more likely to be victims – adults from the 10% most deprived areas were almost twice as likely to be victims of violent crime compared to adults from the 10% most affluent areas.
- ethnic minorities in general were less likely to be victims of violent crime
The report states that 36% of violence experienced by adults, and 70% by children does not come to the attention of police or a medical professional
Who are the Victims of Domestic Abuse?
One type of violent, interpersonal crime probably not covered in a representative way in the above research is Domestic Abuse, because of its very low reporting rates.
Safe Lives reports the following patterns of victimisation for this type of crime:
- 90% of victims are women, only 10% are men.
- Women from low income households (less than £10 000) were 3.5 times more likely to be victims compared to women from households earning more than £20 000.
- The majority of victims are in their 20s and 30s, so as with crime in general, young people are more likely to be victims of domestic abuse than older people.
NB the above stats are based on people seeking help and advice about domestic abuse, so many of these won’t show up on the TCSEW.
If these domestic abuse stats are valid, then women are actually at greater risk of violent crime overall than men. Safe Lives reports that 100 000 women are currently at risk of severe violence at home. (This assumes there isn’t just as many male victims of any violent crime NOT coming forward and reporting their victimisation!).
REPEAT VICTIMISATION is also a horrible feature of Domestic Abuse – SafeLives reports that the average victim is a victim of abuse 50 times over, something which you generally don’t find to anywhere near this extent with being a victim of other types of crime.
Who are Victims of Hate Crime?
Hate crimes recorded by the police have been increasing in recent years according to a recent Home Office Briefing (from 2020).
The vast majority of hate crimes are due to someone’s ethnic background (so basically racist abuse) followed by religion, and around 50% of religiously motivated hate crimes are against Muslims. Anti-semitic crimes have also been increasing steadily.
Crimes against LGBT and Trans people are also higher than you might think – the report notes (based on data from a 2017 survey) that 54% of Trans people have reported experiencing a negative incident outside their home, as have 40% of LGBT people).
The vast majority of victims said they did not report the hate crime against them.
46 million Victims of UK State Crime?
And counting….
At time of writing 46 million people have received at least one dose of one of the Covid-19 vaccinations. The live count is here.
It is possible to interpret these people as having been victims of one of the largest ongoing State Crime of modern times.
The UK governments has consistently declared the vaccines to be safe, whereas the simple and objective truth is, that by regular medical-trial standards scientists simply don’t yet have sufficient data to comment on the safety of these vaccines.
The fact that the UK government has not been clear about this means that they have misled the British public into taking part in a country-level medical trial without their full and informed consent.
This is in breach of people’s human rights as UN conventions clearly state that citizens have a right to not take part in medical trials.
Now it’s a stretch to make the case for this being a State Crime, as people have the choice to not get vaccinated, but there is pressure there – and the government is a leading voice in this, which could be interpreted as coercion, which opens up the door to defining this scenario as a state crime with 46 million victims and counting.
