ABSTRACT
Repeat victimization may often be a rational choice on the part of the offender. It is partly this element of rationality that gives repeat victimiza tion a degree of predictability, facilitating its prevention. The first type of rationality underlying a decision to offend repeatedly against the same target seems to be the recognition that the target has a known suitability, entailing known risks, effort and rewards. The second seems to be for the simple reason that some targets are more attractive, for a range of reasons, and hence different rational offenders may victimize the same target. Build ing on Eck’s (1993) concept of ‘familiarity decay’ and Cornish’s (1994) notion of the ‘script’, the thesis of this chapter is that preventing repeat victimization is likely to result in relatively low rates of displacement or no displacement at all. In the case of opportunistic victimization where repeat offending is induced by the attractiveness of the target, displacement may be wholly eliminated. While this is very much in keeping with Cornish and Clarke’s (1987) observations regarding displacement in general, it is even more optimistic that significant and sustainable inroads into crime can be made through prevention. It is also proposed that in the case of preventing repeat victimization, the crime prevention benefit may be greater than it at
first seems, since the increased likelihood of prevention interacts with the reduced likelihood of displacement to produce a disproportionate gain. Hence, while preventing repeat victimization is already used as a practical means of allocating scarce crime prevention resources, the likelihood of minimal displacement may make it more efficient than was previously recognized. This chapter is presented in three sections. First, it reviews explanations
for the occurrence of repeat victimization and the implications of repeat victimization for crime control policy. This is followed by a path model of the criminal event which places repeat victimization in the context of the occurrence of the event, desistance, continuance and displacement by the offender. The third section suggests why preventing repeat victimization may result in relatively low rates of crime displacement, including the explanation for the possibility of an interaction effect that may make the prevention of repeat victimization especially attractive.
