Characteristics of the personal victimisation and victims attitude to policing in Lithuania
College of Police and Security Studies |
| Date Issued |
|---|
2002 |
In this paper the cases when a person has suffered from a direct personal compulsory (or noncompulsory) contact with an offender in Lithuania are examined. This includes: robbery; deeds of sexual character (violence); assault/threat and intimidation, which have inflicted fear to a victim; personal thefts. A theft of a person could be committed openly, when the victim realizes, that something is being taken (stolen) from him. A theft can also be secret (e.g. pickpocketing), when the victim fails to realize that lie is being robbed. But in both cases some compulsory or non-compulsory contact between the victim and the offender is necessary. In Lithuania, from the total number of 1000 respondents questioned in 1997, there were 366 persons victimized by direct personal contact with the offender (in the past five-year period), or 36,6 percent of the total number of the respondents. The same indicator in capital Vilnius was 637 persons in 2000, or 42 percent of the total number of the respondents (1526). So, in this presentation the representative rate of victimization and policing characteristics in Lithuania is researched (indicators of 1997 are compared to those of 2000).