International Journal on Criminology Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 56

The involvement of organized crime in domestic burglary with forced entry may have
led to the introduction of “professional” methods of targeting and breaking into residences that,
for the moment, has not found a response in terms of situational prevention. This hypothesis
of “professionalization” should, according to the responsive securitization theory, lead to a
reaction by potential victims due to the size of the phenomenon today and the awareness it
has raised.
The ONDRP does not have a question related directly to the perception of the risk
of burglary, but it has established that the increase in the proportion of people aged 14 and
older stating that they sometimes feel unsafe at home was explained in part by individuals
from households that declared themselves to be victims or had heard of burglaries with forced
entry in their neighborhood:
Among people aged fourteen and older, the proportion of those belonging to a
household that declared itself a victim of a crime against their residence or that
knew of burglaries with forced entry in the neighborhood increased by almost 5
points between 2007–2009 and 2010–2012, going from almost 35% to more than
40%. These are factors that have a strong impact on increasing the feeling of being
unsafe at home. The ONDRP estimates that this growth in the population is a
structural variation that explains almost one-third of the increase of 1.8 points of
the proportion of people age 14 and older who declared that they sometimes feel
unsafe at home between 2007–2009 and 2010–2012 (Scherr 2013, 5).
Conclusion
What recent property crime trends in Western Europe tells us about the crime drop
Taking inspiration from the English model, the ONDRP, in partnership with INSEE,
was able to provide France with a national victimization survey, which allows a measurement
of annual trends of the main crimes that affect individuals and their property.
In the United States and in England/Wales, more longstanding annual crime surveys
have allowed observation and analysis of a phenomenon of strong decrease in the rates of
victimization that began in the 1990s.
Since 2000, this underlying trend, called the “crime drop,” has been at the center
of debates about its causes that have been very rich in interpretative hypotheses. The most
general among them have not been able to be verified on the basis of empirical data, and,
when possible, the conclusions of analyses using different methodologies have sometimes
been contradictory (Bettaïeb and Rizk 2014).
Some explanations of the drop in motor-vehicle-related thefts and domestic burglary
have nonetheless been suggested and then supported by results taken from victimization
surveys, mainly the BCS and the ICVS international survey.
Inspired by the theoretical ideas that emerged in the 1970s with the development of
the notion of situational prevention, especially under the impetus of British researchers of the
Home Office, namely Ron Clarke, Pat Mayhew, and Mike Hough (“crime opportunity theory”)
and the American researcher Marcus Felson (“routine activity theory”), a process called
“responsive securitization” was defined by the winner of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology
2012, the Dutchman Jan Van Dijk. He bases it on the following economic reasoning:
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