Tourism and Victimisation

Abstract

The 2004/2005 International Crime Victim Survey (ICVS) found that 15.7% of respondents had been the victim of at least one crime in the preceding year [van Dijk, van Kesteren, and Smit, 2008]. That is, the average member of the public could expect to experience at least one crime every 6 or 7 years. However, this average hides marked variations. Risk varies according to a number of variables: country of residence, where within a country one lives, age, gender, ethnicity, etc. To explain these patterns, victimologists have focused on citizens' behavior and the way that they spend their time as leading to an increase or decrease in risk of victimization. As travel and tourism become more significant features of modern-day living, it is therefore surprising that criminologists have largely ignored the relationship between tourism/travel and crime. Unlike tourism researchers, for whom crime and deviance appear to hold considerable attraction [Ryan, 1993; Pizam and Mansfeld, 1996; Brunt and Hambly, 1999; Mansfeld and Pizam, 2006], criminologists have, with a few notable exceptions, avoided discussions of tourism as a crime generator. Even studies of antisocial behavior have tended to ignore tourists as offenders and tourist resorts as crime and disorder hotspots. True, a few victimologists have made reference to tourism in passing. For example, in the first edition of his text, Karmen [1984:66] noted that "tourists are notoriously vulnerable people," especially because they will be unwilling to return to give evidence should a case come to trial. By the third edition, he added that tourists' "less careful lifestyle," combined with general ignorance of risky locations, further explained their disproportionate risk [Karmen 1996:39]. This suggests that further consideration of the relationship between tourism and victimization is important for at least two reasons: first, because it can inform tourism academics and practitioners; and, second, because in identifying the various ways in which tourism impacts on risk, it can contribute to victimological theory.