Page 176 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 1

IPS129 Claudia V. et al.

The cost of victimization: Subjective and
objective dimensions
Claudia Villante, Maria Giuseppina Muratore, Isabella Corazziari, Alessandra
Capobianchi
ISTAT – National Institute of Statistics
Abstract
Public perception of crime is sometimes opposite to the official statistics data
provided. Also citizens having not experienced crime victimization by their
own, can be alerted and suffer fear of crime due to indirect victimization. Crime
victimization consequences are not only economic: changes in ordinary life of
victimized households and individuals, due to the direct and indirect crime
experience, can be a heavy cost to be faced. Starting from a cross country
analysis of victimization and literature, the paper, based on evidence of
Citizen’s Safety Survey, performed by Istat on a periodically every 5-7 years,
household and individual costs due to the experience of victimization will be
analyzed, according to different covariates as geographical area, the type of
suffered crime, its dynamic, fear of crime among others. Costs will be
estimated in terms of both material and not tangible changes: defense systems
adopted for the house, individual strategies and behaviors changes adopted
to prevent crime victimization, both in case of experienced than in case of fear
of crime with not direct experience of victimization. Also the actual economic
loss by type of crime on properties, both individual and household’s ones, will
be evaluated, using a model to analyze socio-economic impact of
victimization.

Keywords
victimization; impact; fear of crime; crime; impact of crime

1. Introduction
Crime is a widespread activity that affects society and human living at all
latitudes, but despite its pervasiveness the systematic measurement of its
impact on society is far from being a major concern of policy makers. Fear of
crime is a social phenomenon more complicate to analyze (Austin et al., 2002):
it effects an high impact on the quality of life (Jackson and Gray, 2010), causing
anxiety and other psychological issues on a personal level (Ruijsbroek et al.,
2015) and, at a social level, affects prejudice and segregation. So that this
insecurity has now become a major policy concern (Carro et al., 2010, Curiel &
Bishop, 2017) .
1

1 Rafael Prieto Curiel & Steven Richard Bishop, Fear of crime: the impact of different distributions
of victimization, |DOI: 10.1057/s41599-018-0094-8 | www.nature.com/palcomms
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