By Lisa Tompson, Apriel Jolliffe Simpson, Richard Wortley, Bridget O’Keeffe & Devon Polaschek

Policy efforts based on evidence about risk for re-victimisation both protect some of the most vulnerable people in society and have a good chance of reducing crime levels overall (Farrell and Pease, 1993; Grove et al., 2012; Pease et al., 2018). While research has established that the phenomenon of re-victimisation is ubiquitous, less is known about what makes some people more vulnerable to re-victimisation than others (Hamilton and Browne, 1998; Nazaretian and Fitch, 2021). Enhanced understanding of who these people are is thus crucial for developing contemporary victim-centred crime prevention policy. Victimology theories suggest that people at high risk of victimisation are typified by multiple overlapping and intersecting personal characteristics (e.g., gender, age, race/ethnicity, class, disability status, sexual identity), rather than forming homogeneous higher-order groups (e.g., delineated by a single personal characteristic; Shoham et al, 2010; Walklate, 2012). Accordingly, in this study we examined socio-demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, age, ethnicity, disability status, sexual identity) of people who were re-victimised, with an emphasis on intersectionality1. That is, we focused on identifying where the co-occurrence of socio-demographic characteristics intensified risk of re-victimisation. We use re-victimisation as an umbrella term to cover: • Poly-victimisation (i.e., >1 victimisation for different types of crime), and • Repeat-victimisation (i.e., >1 victimisation for different types of crime) for 11 different crime types. We therefore analysed 12 different types of re-victimisation over five waves of the New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey (NZCVS) in the privacy- and security-protected environment of Statistics New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) with Conjunctive Analysis of Case Configurations. This method enabled us to position groups (i.e., combinations of characteristics) as the unit of analysis and identify where intersecting characteristics were associated with high rates of re-victimisation and isolate when particular individual characteristics were especially noteworthy. This research makes four important contributions to the evidence base on victimisation. First, while re-victimisation experiences have been studied for a range of crime types internationally (see Farrell et al., 2005), this is the first research to do so for Aotearoa New Zealand. Second, it adds to the scant evidence base on poly-victimisation. Third, it corroborates the empirical findings from other countries that risk of re-victimisation increases cumulatively (Johnson et al., 1997), hence the need for policies and practices that get upstream of the problem and prevent re-victimisation at the earliest opportunity. Fourth, this research advances knowledge on how socio-demographic characteristics intersect to elevate risk of re-victimisation. The findings are relevant for policymakers developing victimisation prevention programmes across various organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Te Puna Haumaru New Zealand Institute for Security and Crime Science, The University of Waikato , 2025. 105p.

By Shamus Khan, Joss Greene, Claude Ann Mellins, and Jennifer S. Hirsch

In this review, we provide an overview of the literature on sexual assault. First, we define sexual assault, noting its multiple dimensions and the consequences for operationalization—including reviewing strategies for such operationalization. Second, we outline different approaches to sexual assault, critically assessing those frameworks that rely upon a model of sociopathy; instead, we propose focusing on more sociological and ecological understandings that push beyond the single dimension of gender and the framework of gender and power. Third, we outline the range of data sources that have been used to generate insights into sexual assault. Fourth, we provide the core research findings of the field, which at times are contradictory, mapping them to our ecological model of individual, relational, organizational, and cultural levels. We then review the evidence around those interventions that have been successful in addressing sexual assault (and those that have been unsuccessful) before concluding with suggestions for further research directions.

Annual Review of Criminology, Vol. 3 (2020), pp. 139–163

By Vivien Miller 

This essay uses the 1950 “case of the clinking brassieres” to explore female theft in Miami at mid-century and the ways in which gender, race, class, respectability, and youth offered protections and shaped treatment within Florida’s criminal justice system. It focuses on the illegal activities of three female telephone employees, their criminal prosecution, and post-conviction relief. These seemingly respectable coin thieves challenged a familiar image of theft as a lower-class crime associated with poverty and economic need, while their blonde hair and white skin (and an idealization of the meanings of white beauty standards), complicated public attitudes in a period when “true” or serious criminals were racketeers and organised crime operatives.

European Social Science History Conference, 2013. 39p.