The International Crime Drop ─ New Directions in Research

Drawing on studies from major European countries and Australia, this exciting new collection from a group of internationally-renowned scholars extends the ongoing debate on falling crime rates from the perspective of criminal opportunity or routine activity theory. Considering the trends and discourse of the international crime fall, this book analyses the effect of Post World War II crime booms which triggered a universal improvement in security across the Western world, such as the introduction of mandatory security in motor vehicles in Europe and the US. Preliminary evidence is also presented on the impact of collective improvements in home security, analyzing levels of household burglaries and their distribution amongst the population in The Netherlands, England and Wales.


The International Crime Drop discusses how improved security against volume crime has initiated a prolonged recession on criminal markets in the West, a downturn that appears largely independent from criminal policies of individual governments. With fresh evidence for the causes of international falls in crime, this book signals a new direction in epidemiological studies of crime.

JAN VAN DIJK is the founder of the International Crime Victims Survey and a former director of the crime programme of the United Nations in Vienna, Austria. He currently serves as the Pieter van Vollenhoven Professor in Victimology and Human Security at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. His latest books include the World of Crime, an overview of international statistics on crime and criminal justice (SAGE, 2008). He is the winner of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology 2012.


ANDROMACHI TSELONI is Professor of Criminology at Nottingham Trent University, UK, Visiting Professor at the University of Huddersfield, UK, and SCoPiC Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. In addition to her collaborative research on the international crime falls she is renowned for her work on individual and contextual risk and protective factors of victimisation risk and frequency. She has taught Applied Social Statistics at Universities in Greece, the UK and the USA. Her work is mostly published in academic journals.


GRAHAM FARRELL is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies at Simon Fraser University, Canada, and Professor of Criminology at Loughborough University, UK. He has worked at the Universities of Cincinnati, Rutgers, and Oxford, at the Police Foundation, and the United Nations, and published around 100 studies on repeat victimization, crime prevention, policing, and criminal justice. In 2007 he evaluated UNODC work developing the criminal justice system in Afghanistan.