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24 How. J. Crim. Just. 1 (1985)

handle is hein.journals/hjcj24 and id is 1 raw text is: The Howard journal Vol 24 No 1. Feb 85 0265-5527 $2.50/E2.00 Elderly Victims of Crime and Exposure to Risk RONALD CLARKE, PAUL EKBLOM, MIKE HOUGH and PAT MAYHEW Ronald Clarke (formerly head of the Home Office Research and Planning Unit) is Professor of Criminal justice, Temple University, Philadelphia Paul Ekblom is Senior Research Officer and Mike Hough and Pat Mayhew are Principal Research Officers at the Home Office Research and Planning Unit Abstract: It has been debated for some time whether lower rates of personal victimisation among the elderly are due to the fact that - because offear or other reasons - they shield themselves from situations in which they might be victimised. This 'differential exposure' explanation is examined using data from the 1982 British Crime Survey which provides risks for different age! sex groups and detailed information about respondents' 'lifestyles'. Looking at evening 'street' offences, differences in risks between the age groups change very little when account is taken of different patterns of going out: irrespective of frequency, means of travel, destination and activity, the elderly are still less frequently victimised. Some theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. It has been shown in numerous victimisation surveys (see for example, Hough and Mayhew 1983; Ministry of the Solicitor General 1983; van Dijk and Steinmetz 1983; Smith 1983; U.S. Department of Justice 1984) that the elderly are less at risk of most crimes than others are. In the first report on the 1982 British Crime Survey (B.C.S.), for example, Hough and Mayhew (1983) showed that older people (aged 61 or over) were much less likely to be the victims of 'street crime' than the 'middle-aged' (31-60) or the 'young' (16-30); rates of victimisation for the young were nearly six times greater than those for older people. Despite being much less at risk, the elderly are more fearful of crime than others are (see for example, Maxfield 1984) and it is not clear whether this is because they misperceive their risks or because the consequences of victimisation may generally be more severe for them - they may be more likely to be injured, upset or seriously inconvenienced by crime than younger people. What is known, however, is that the elderly go out much less often and are more likely to give fear of attack as a reason. This leaves open the disquieting possibility (cf. Balkin 1979; Lindquist and Duke 1982; Stafford and Galle 1984) that if the elderly were to go out as much as younger people they would indeed be the most frequently victimised age group. This hypothesis - which underlies the 1

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