Victimisation And Insecurity In Europe

Victimisation and insecurity surveys are today one of the major ways to generate data usable for the measurement and study crime. Still, across European countries, they are carried out and put to use in a variety of ways. This report compares practices across some major European countries to map the situation and identify the good - as well as the bad - practices within the European zone.

Concerns over insecurity and questions of safety have become central issues in social and political debates across Europe and the western world. Crucial changes have followed as a result, such as a redefinition of the role of the state in relation to policing - a central theme of this book - and an explosion in the growth of private policing. These developments have, in their turn, heightened feelings of insecurity and safety, particularly where populations have become increasingly mobile and societies more socially fragmented, culturally diverse and economically fragmented. Responses to insecurity now increasingly inform decisions made by governments, organisations and ordinary people in their social interactions. This book makes a key contribution to an understanding of these developments, approaching the subject from a range of perspectives, across several different disciplines. The three parts of the book look at broader theoretical and thematic issues, then at cross-national and pan-European developments and debates in European governance, and finally explore specific examples of local issues of community safety and the broader implications these have. Leading figures in the field draw upon criminological, legal, social, and political theory to shed new light on what has become one of the most intractable problems facing western societies.

"Violence against women undermines women's core fundamental rights such as dignity, access to justice and gender equality. For example, one in three women has experienced physical and/or sexual violence since the age of 15; one in five women has experienced stalking; every second woman has been confronted with one or more forms of sexual harassment. What emerges is a picture of extensive abuse that affects many women's lives but is systematically underreported to the authorities. The scale of violence against women is therefore not reflected by official data. This FRA survey is the first of its kind on violence against women across the 28 Member States of the European Union (EU). It is based on interviews with 42,000 women across the EU, who were asked about their experiences of physical, sexual and psychological violence, including incidents of intimate partner violence ('domestic violence'). The survey also included questions on stalking, sexual harassment, and the role played by new technologies in women's experiences of abuse. In addition, it asked about their experiences of violence in childhood. Based on the detailed findings, FRA suggests courses of action in different areas that are touched by violence against women and go beyond the narrow confines of criminal law, ranging from employment and health to the medium of new technologies."--Editor.

The intercultural contexts and new configurations in Europe offer fertile ground for social conflict, tensions and threat. This book challenges predominant and fear inducing approaches of justice and security as they appear in intercultural contexts, and develops alternative understandings by exploring both theoretically and empirically the potential of dialogic and restorative justice oriented actions in sensitive areas of living together. The book offers unique opportunities for rethinking frames of (in)justice, (in)security, and their intersections, and for reshaping European practices and policies in a more sustainable way. This book is based on an innovative and exploratory action research project in four European countries, which challenges the obsessive focus on security concerns, the merging of the security discourse with intercultural contexts, and the emphasis on technology and surveillance as a way to conceive the doing of security. Both the project and the book offer another vision on what security means and how it can be done, by multiplying participatory encounters between different groups in society, promoting opportunities for deliberations and dialogue about alternative forms of conviviality. The book is one of two volumes resulting from the work by a group of researchers in six European countries having cooperated intensively during four years in ALTERNATIVE, an action research project funded under the EU Seventh Framework Programme.

This new book brings together some of the leading criminologists across Europe, to showcase the best of European criminology. This Handbook aims to reflect the range and depth of current work in Europe, and to counterbalance the impact of the – sometimes insular and ethnocentric – Anglo-American criminological tradition. The end-product is a collection of twenty-eight chapters illustrating a truly comparative and interdisciplinary European criminology. The editors have assembled a cast of leading voices to reflect on differences and commonalities, elaborate on theoretically grounded comparisons and reflect on emerging themes in criminology in Europe. After the editors’ introduction, the book is organised in three parts: five chapters offering historical, theoretical and policy oriented overviews of European issues in crime and crime control; seven chapters looking at different dimensions of crime in Europe, includingcrime trends, state crime, gender and crime and urban safety; fifteen chapters examining the variety of institutional responses, exploring issues such as policing, juvenile justice, punishment, green crime and the role of the victim. This book gives some indication of the richness and scope of the emerging comparative European criminology and will be required reading for anyone who wants to understand trends in crime and its control across Europe. It will also be a valuable teaching resource, especially at postgraduate level, as well as an important reference point for researchers and scholars of criminology across Europe.

This report presents the key findings of the 2004/2005 International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS) together with the results of the European Survey on Crime and Safety (EU ICS). The surveys cover 30 countries and 33 capital or main cities. Where appropriate, the results are compared with those of the four earlier ICVS surveys, conducted in 1989, 1992, 1996 and 2000. The report presents data from the following 30 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, England & Wales, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the USA. Also data from 33 main cities of a selection of developed and developing countries are presented including cities from Argentina, Brazil, Peru, South Africa, Hong Kong-China and Cambodia. The report shows how individual countries and cities compare with each other in relation to crime victimisation rates for ten types of common crimes including car theft, household burglary, robbery, assaults and sexual offences. Where possible, comparisons are also made regarding trends in crime over time in various countries. Besides, the levels of some non-conventional crimes such as corruption, internetbased fraud and hate crimes are addressed as well. The report also gives information on related topics such as reporting to the police, fear of crime, crime prevention measures and opinions about the police and sentencing.

However, widening the range of the tools used for measuring crime will only be fruitful if their consideration proceeds beyond mere juxtaposition, towards genuine comparison. --

Eminent scientists from various European countries--including Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, and Sweden--explain and evaluate the use of self-reported crime surveys in this comparative review. As one of the most prominent ways to measure and study specific types of crime and deviance, self-reported crime surveys are carried out and put to use in a variety of ways across European countries. Contributors to this examination include Marcelo F. Aebi, Lina Andersson, Cécile Carra, Giada Anna Maria Cartocchi, Thomas Görgen, Janne Kivivuori, Susan McVie, Lieven Pauwels, Stefaan Pleysier, Susann Rabold, Philippe Robert, Giovanni Battista Traverso, and Simona Traverso.