REPEAT PERSONAL VICTIMIZATION: Random Effects, Event Dependence and Unexplained Heterogeneity

The paper seeks to clarify the risks of repeat personal victimization, acknowledging that much prior research is limited in enabling efficient applicability to crime-prevention purposes by its failure to address the interplay between personal and household factors conferring risk alongside the effects of prior victimization. The study reported here is an attempt to pin down sources of unexplained heterogeneity in terms of random effects of known characteristics of individuals and their households, their lifestyle and victimization history. The data for this study came from the 1994 US National Crime Victimization Survey, and focuses upon personal victimization. Individual, household and prior non-victimization fixed effects are found to be highly statistically significant, implying that each set of covariates adds important information for the prediction of personal crimes. Recent (6