International Journal on Criminology Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 33

International Journal on Criminology
Their approach at the time consisted of an attempt to explain, a posteriori, a
period of sharp declines in the domain of criminality, and it was generalized during the
first decade of 2000 (Bettaïeb and Rizk 2014).
Indeed, it appeared that this phenomenon did not only concern homicides
or assaults more generally, but also property crime 2 such as motor vehicle thefts and
burglaries.
Moreover, the geographic scale of the analysis had to change, as most Western
countries began to show trends comparable to those observed in the United States.
Thus, in November 2012, Jan Van Dijk, Andromachi Tseloni, and Graham Farrell
called their work on the trends in crime in the Western world over the past 20 years The
International Crime Drop (Van Dijk, Tseloni, and Farrell 2012).
Yet at the same time, in France, it appeared that one of the offenses that was part
of the crime drop, home burglaries with forced entry, had not followed the general trend
since 2008, contrary, for example, to thefts of motor vehicles, which continued to decline
(ONDRP 2012).
How can the rich debate on the causes of the crime drop integrate this change of
trend, which also concerned Belgium and Germany, among others?
Closing the Doors
The awarding of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology 2012 to Jan Van Dijk for
his “sustained leadership of the International Crime Victims Survey [ICVS]” allowed
him, during his acceptance speech in June 2012, to demonstrate how those international
victimization surveys were capable of both measuring trends and testing the hypotheses
that might explain them.
Thus, in his research on the “explanations for the crime decline,” he suggested
the following approach: “Let’s now turn to criminal opportunity theory for a possible
explanation and see whether ICVS data can be used to test relevant hypotheses” (Van Dijk
2012, 19). He offers a hypothesis, “responsive securitization,” for which he had defined the
theoretical framework between the second and third rounds of the ICVS (Van Dijk 1994).
In 1993, in the report on the results of the ICVS survey in 1992, Van Dijk, with
Patricia Mayhew, had already touched on the question of the impact of property protection
on the observed trends in burglaries by emphasizing: “One might conjecture that the
USA—where burglary rates have declined over recent years—exemplifies a situation
where there are sufficient numbers of sophisticated alarm systems (and perhaps enough
caretakers/security guards in apartment buildings) to influence overall burglary rates”
(Van Dijk and Mayhew 1993, 56).
times. In this article, however, the “debate on the crime drop” can be defined as the research and discussion
related to a phenomenon of sharp decline.
2
According to statistical sources, there are different boundaries of property crime. This type of infractions
includes nonviolent thefts (vehicle-related theft, larceny theft), trespassing or breaking and entry
(burglary), and, depending on the cases, acts of vandalism or specific acts, such as intentional fires
(arson), or even crimes such as fraud and forgery.
32