Repeat Victimisation: Taking Stock

The Home Office Police Research Group (PRG) was formed in 1992 to increase the influence of research and development in police policy and practice. The objectives are to sponsor and undertake research and development to improve and strengthen the police service and to identify and disseminate good policing practice. The Crime Detection and Prevention Series follows on from the Crime Prevention Unit Papers, a series which has been published by the Home Office since 1983. The recognition that effective crime strategies will often involve both crime prevention and crime investigation, however, has led to the scope of this series being broadened. This new series will present research material on both crime prevention and crime detection in a way which informs policy and practice throughout the service. A parallel series of papers on resource management and organisational issues is also published by PRG, as is a perodical on policing research called 'Focus'. The development of repeat victimisation as a crime prevention strategy has come a long way since the start of the Kirkholt project in 1986. Some key milestones include the series of regional conferences organised jointly by the Home Office and ACPO in 1994, the adoption of repeat victimisation as a key performance indicator for the police, and the Biting Back project in Huddersfield. Our understanding of the implications of this crime pattern for policing and crime prevention continues to grow as we learn more about it, and now seems a timely point at which to summarise the current state of the art. Professor Ken Pease OBE is the leading authority in this country, if not the world, on repeat victimisation and policing. In this paper, he sets out what the accumulated research evidence to date means for the police in their operations against crime, and what the future holds for making best use of this knowledge. iii Acknowledgements I have spent the bulk of the last decade of my professional life working on repeat victimisation. I am grateful to PRG for providing me the platform for a personal view of the state of the art, and a view of how the future might be shaped to make the best use of rv facts in crime reduction. I am grateful to the many police officers with whom I have worked and discussed these issues. Their imagination, intelligence and dedication to crime reduction makes me optimistic that the vision of intelligence-led …