Northern Ireland
Victims of crime
Key points
- For both violent crime and burglary, income and gender have a much bigger influence on fear of crime than age or location.
- Just as worry of crime varies sharply by income, so to does the incidence of some forms of crime. The likelihood of assault increase steadily with the area's level of deprivation. Thus, the rate of recorded assaults in the most deprived tenth of wards is, at 33 per 1,000 population, twice the average rate and five times the rate in the least deprived tenth.
- But there are other forms of crime where the link with deprivation is much weaker. Although it is true that the burglary rate in the most deprived tenth of local areas is, at 10 burglaries per 1,000 population, somewhat above average, for all other levels of deprivation, the rate fluctuates between 5 and 7 per 1,000.
Graph 1: By level of deprivation
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Graph 2: Fear of crime
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Definitions and data sources
The first graph shows how the prevalence of both assaults and burglaries varies by the level of deprivation of the local area (i.e. ward).
The data source for the number of assaults and burglaries is the Northern Ireland Neighbourhood Information Service and the data is for 2006/07. It is a count of the number of notifiable offences recorded by the police.
The data source for the level of deprivation of the local area is the ward-level 2005 Multiple Deprivation Measure (MDM), with the wards being grouped into ten equal groups according to their MDM score.
The second graph shows how the proportion of the population who have 'a high level of worry' about burglaries and violent crime varies by household and individual characteristic. Fear of crime can be excluding in a way that simply living in a run down area is not because being frightened to leave the house reduces a person's ability to partake fully in wider society. As fear of crime is subjective, it can vary between groups in the same geographical area.
The data source for the second graph is the Northern Ireland Crime Survey. To improve its statistical reliability, the data is the average for the latest two surveys (2005 and 2006/07). The data was obtained via the Northern Ireland Office reports entitled Perceptions of crime: findings from the 2006/07 Northern Ireland Crime Survey and Perceptions of and concern about crime in Northern Ireland: findings from the 2005 Northern Ireland Crime Survey. The characteristics shown have been selected from a longer list.
Overall adequacy of the indicator: limited. The data shown in the two graphs has been mainly driven by data availability. The ward-level data on recorded crime in the first graph may be affected by differing recording practices in different parts of the country.