Repeat victimisation
Definition
The empirical pattern in which a small proportion of people or locations experience a disproportionate share of violent incidents. Domestic violence shows the most pronounced repeat victimisation: most serious cases involve ongoing patterns of abuse rather than isolated incidents.
Related terms
- Secondary victimisation
- Additional harm caused to a victim through the process of reporting and investigation, such as disbelief, insensitive questioning, or retraumatisation. Fear of...
- Victim impact statement
- A written or oral account submitted by a victim (or victim's family) describing the physical, psychological, financial, and social effects of the...
- Victimology
- The sub-field of criminology that studies crime victims: their characteristics, the victim-offender relationship, the impacts of victimisation, and the adequacy of legal...
- Boost theory
- The explanation that repeat victimisation arises because the original offender returns, having gained operational knowledge of the target, its routines, and its...
- Dark figure of crime
- The gap between the actual volume of crime and the amount recorded in official statistics. Crimes go unrecorded when victims do not...
- Flag theory
- The explanation that repeat victimisation arises because a target has stable characteristics, such as poor natural surveillance or weak security, that make...
- Gini coefficient
- A measure of income inequality ranging from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (one person holds all income). Consistently one of the strongest...
- Hegemonic masculinity
- A concept from gender sociology describing the dominant cultural script of manhood in a given society, typically emphasising toughness, control, and willingness...
- Homicide rate
- The number of unlawful killings per 100,000 population per year. Used as the primary cross-national indicator of violent crime because it is...
- Hot spot
- A small geographic area, sometimes as small as a single address or street segment, where crime concentrates at a rate substantially above...
- Intimate partner violence (IPV)
- Physical, sexual, or psychological harm by a current or former partner or spouse. Encompasses physical assault, sexual coercion, emotional abuse, and coercive...
- Lifestyle-routine activity theory
- A framework that links individual victimisation risk to the daily routines and lifestyle choices that bring potential victims into proximity with motivated...
Explained in these topics
- Foundations of VictimologyThe empirical finding that individuals and locations victimised once face substantially elevated risk of revictimisation, often within weeks or months. A small...
- Victim Rights, Support, and the Impact of CrimeThe phenomenon whereby victims of one crime have a substantially higher probability of being victimised again, often by the same offender and soon after the fi...
- Victimisation Patterns and Repeat VictimisationThe occurrence of more than one criminal incident against the same person or place within a defined period. The risk of re-victimisation is highest immediately...
- Violent Crime as a Social PhenomenonThe empirical pattern in which a small proportion of people or locations experience a disproportionate share of violent incidents. Domestic violence shows the...