I say “crime victim.”
Without thinking, what popped into your mind? If you had a mental image, what was it? Chances are, the person that you immediately thought of is female, white, middle class, maybe a little girl, maybe a soccer mom. Yet the data don’t support that image, which is created by media and perpetuated by racialized fears.
The best national-level data we have on crime victimization in the US is the National Crime Victimization Survey. The most recent available data come from 2010, and are found in this report. No doubt, there are many difficulties in measuring criminal victimization, and these figures should not be treated as absolute truth. But they do give you an idea of the relative relationships between crime, race, sex, and victim-offender relationship for violent victimizations.
Whites and Asians have the lowest crime violent crime victimization rates.
With the exception of sexual assault, males have higher rates of violent victimizations than females.
Violent crimes committed against women are largely non-stranger crimes, while just under a half violent crimes against males were committed by strangers.
How does that square with the mental image you just conjured up?
Louise Behiel
April 24, 2012
It is an interesting false belief that crimes are committed by strangers…when obviously that’s not true. thanks for the stats.
CrimeCents
April 25, 2012
Hello Louise, yes, it’s a common misconception about crime. It’s also dangerous, especially for women. Self-defense courses, etc., focus on teaching women about fending off attacks from strangers when what they really need is education on abusive relationships and how to recognize problems in someone close to you. Thanks for stopping by.
Louise Behiel
April 25, 2012
Ditto the ‘stranger danger’ campaign. While I can’t imagine anything worse, it is way way more common for children to be raped and beaten by a family member, usually dad, rather than a stranger.
anotherboomerblog
April 25, 2012
I’m going to pick a bone with your statistics. It is estimated that over 25% of females in the US are raped or molested by at 18. I don’t think those numbers are being included here.
When I think a crime victim I think of the women and children I served during my years in CPS.
You’re also limiting crime to just a few things – white collar crime can be just as destructive.
CrimeCents
April 25, 2012
Hello, anotherboomer. You raise some good points. You are correct, I just used violent vicitmizations in this post. Solid national-level data on white collar crime and its effects can be difficult to come by, though you might check out: https://ncjrs.gov/app/Search/Abstracts.aspx?id=255111.
Sexual assault statistics are fraught with problems. Prior to the NCVS (what this post is based on), all we had were law enforcement numbers from the FBI’s UCR data. The NCVS asks victims directly about their experiences, and is a far more accurate way to measure rape. When the NCVS first came out, people were amazed at how much more sexual assault was happening than anyone knew — because victims weren’t reporting to police.
You might also want to check out today’s post, which shows you how to use an easy tool from Google to look at FBI UCR data, including sexual assault, to look at trends over the last several decades.
http://crimedime.com/2012/04/25/using-googles-public-data-service-to-visualize-fbi-uniform-crime-report-data/
The figure you cited – the one in four before 18 – comes from work done by the CDC in the early 1990s. Two things to consider – that was an estimate across several years (0-18), whereas the numbers above are a single year (2010). Also, crime rates where much higher then, and we didn’t know as much about how to study sexual assault.
The most recent (and best) data that we now have on sexual assault comes from another CDC study (called the NISVS). The current estimate is nearly one in five women (18.3%) experience a sexual assault or attempted assault across the entire lifetime. You can find more about the study here: http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/nisvs/
Just because the numbers are down, doesn’t mean the problem has gone away. Gendered violence is still a very serious problem, and we don’t do nearly enough to either prevent these crimes or support victims afterward.
Thanks for stopping by, and I may just turn this discussion into its own post.
anotherboomerblog
April 25, 2012
The problem with statistics is that they are only as good as the statistics collected.
As a retired social worker I know that most sexual assaults on children under the age of 18 are not reported. I can’t begin to enumerate the number of people in ACoA meetings and other support groups who recount instances of being sexually abused by step-fathers, fathers, brothers, uncles, neighbors, or date raped and these instances were never reported.
Look at the Catholic Church’s crisis with pedophile priests or the recent revelations of sexual assaults of young men by coaches. Those were not reported either. The reality is that boys are far less likely to report than girls are.
I don’t care who does the stats, incidents of sexual assault of children are far, far higher than are actually reported.
What’s the old saying? There are lies, damned lies and statistics. Having studied statistics I know their limits.
foreverfreshindoorgarden
April 25, 2012
Thank you! This is good information to have!