Statistics Canada Report on Impacts and Consequences of Criminal Victimization

Statistics Canada released a new report this morning entitled Impacts and Consequences of Victimization, GSS 2004.

GSS 2004 refers to the agency's 2004 General Social Survey on victimization.

"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".

According to the report, nearly three out of ten Canadians 15 years of age and older were victimized in some manner in the year leading up to the Survey. In close to one quarter of the incidents, the victim sought medical attention.

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%)."