Repeat Victimisation in Low Crime Areas

A decision of whether to incorporate repeat victimisation into a crime reduction strategy and hence whether to analyse it during the auditing stage should be based not upon the absolute number of repeats (which may be small in a rural or low crime area) but on their rate. The following example demonstrates the point:

"Consider an area of 10,000 homes of which 100 are burgled during the course of a year. Of that 100, ten are burgled again during the year. Given those numbers, by choosing 100 non-burgled homes to protect, one would prevent (on average) one burglary. If one chose to protect the 100 previously burgled homes, one could prevent ten burglaries." (taken from Home Office 1999c: 21)  

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