Seniors and Crime Victimization

Statistics Canada released a study today entitled Seniors as victims of crime. Data comes from police reports and from self-reported victimization data from the agency's General Social Survey.

Highlights:

• Seniors were three times less likely than non-seniors to experience a victimization in the 12 months preceding the survey (10% versus 31%)
• Seniors were far less likely than their younger counterparts to experience an assault, a sexual assault or a robbery. The violent victimization rate reported by seniors was almost four times lower than for 55 to 64 year olds (12 versus 45 incidents per 1,000 population), and almost 20 times lower than for 15 to 24 year olds (226 incidents per 1,000 population)
• Senior males were more likely than senior females to be victims of violent crime. In 2005, overall rates of police-reported violent crime were 1.5 times higher among senior men than senior women (200 versus 131 per 100,000 population)
• In 2005, police-reported data found that nearly 5 in 10 senior victims were victimized by a family member compared to 4 in 10 for non-senior victims. The most common perpetrators of family violence against seniors were adult children (35%) and current or previous spouses (31%)
• Although seniors may be perceived as being more frail and vulnerable than their younger counterparts, they were no more likely to sustain injuries. Over two-thirds (68%) of violent incidents involving seniors did not result in any physical injuries, a figure that was comparable to the proportion of incidents involving non-senior victims
• Seniors experienced theft of personal property (such as money, credit cards, jewellery, purse, wallet or clothing) at a rate that was far lower than other age groups. The senior rate was less than half that of 55 to 64 year olds (22 versus 51 incidents per 1,000 population), and almost eight times lower than the rate for 15 to 24 year olds (165)
• Households with only senior residents were nearly three times less likely than all Canadian households to experience a break and enter, a property theft, a motor vehicle theft or vandalism (87 compared to 248 incidents per 1,000 population)
• Seniors’ feelings of personal safety have improved over the last five years. In 2004, 92% of older persons reported feeling satisfied with their overall level of safety from crime compared to 89% reported in 1999

Earlier Library Boy posts about crime victim studies include:

• Canadians' Use of Crime Prevention Measures (November 27, 2006): "Last week, the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics released its study on Canadians' Use of Crime Prevention Measures that seeks to 'examine the various crime prevention measures employed by Canadians to protect themselves and their property from crime'."
• First Ever Canadian Study On Workplace Victimization Published (February 16, 2007): "Nearly one-fifth of all incidents of violent victimization, including physical assault, sexual assault and robbery, occurred in the victim's workplace in 2004. This represents over 356,000 violent workplace incidents in Canada’s ten provinces (...) Physical assaults made up a higher proportion of all violent incidents in the workplace, representing 71% of all incidents of workplace violence. This compares to 57% of violent non-workplace incidents (...) Violent workplace incidents involving male victims were more likely than those involving female victims to come to the attention of the police (57% versus 20%)."
• Statistics Canada Report on Impacts and Consequences of Criminal Victimization (March 1, 2007): "This analysis shows that not only do victims incur physical, emotional and financial costs as a direct result of their victimization, but that their perceptions of their neighbourhoods and personal safety and their opinions concerning the police system are affected by their prior victimization experience. The analysis highlights the fact that regardless of crime experiences, women tend to express more fear related to crime than men and when women are victims of crime the impact on their emotions, their use of precautionary measures and their sense of security seems to be greater relative to men."