Home Office publish detailed Commercial Victimisation Survey findings

Professor Martin Gill was part of an advisory team on the 2012 Commercial Victimisation Survey (CVS), for which the Home Office recently published their detailed findings. These built on their headline findings released in January. The CVS was previously carried out in 1994 and 2002, and is planned to be repeated in 2013 and 2014.

The survey statistics are based on 4017 interviews covering four sectors: manufacturing, wholesale and retail, transportation and storage, and accommodation and food. The survey looked at whether businesses had experienced any of a number of crime types (such as burglary) in the last twelve months.

Key findings include:

• ‘In incidents of burglary with entry, the most commonly reported way that the building was accessed was through a wooden or glass door (36% of incidents), or a metal door, roller door or shutter (17% of incidents). Goods or stock were the items most commonly reported stolen in burglary incidents (stolen in 37% of incidents).’
• ‘The most common form of vandalism experienced was damage to any part of the premises’ buildings, experienced by almost two-thirds (64%) of vandalism victims.’
• ‘Amongst those premises whose employees had been victims of assaults or threats, the most common type were threats by a customer (80% of incidents). Employees were physically injured in 12% of cases of assault or threat.’ (Pg. 6)

The CVS dataset is now available to download from the UK Data Service.