NCJ Number
154599
Journal
British Journal of Criminology Volume: 35 Issue: 1 Dated: (Winter 1995) Pages: 114-133
Date Published
1995
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This article presents the results of a crime survey among 11- to 15-year-old teenagers.
Abstract
Crime surveys have recently become commonplace in Britain. However, they tend to be based on interviewer administered questionnaires conducted with adults in their domiciles. Further, they neglect to question respondents about their offending behavior. In this survey, teenagers were questioned at school, rather than at home, and were quizzed on their offending behavior as well as their victimization experiences. Victimization was common, with 82 percent of the sample reporting at least one victimization during the previous year. Females were more likely to be victims of harassment and sexual offenses, with males more likely to suffer from theft and assault. Overall, they were unlikely to report victimization experiences, although some 80 percent of them were serious in the sense that victims identified the offender as an adult stranger. On average, members of this sample confessed to having committed one offense, a quarter of the rate of victimization. Perhaps understandably, there is a consistent inverse relationship between having committed an offense and rating the commission of it as serious. Figures, tables, references, appendix