Campus Criminal Victimization among Higher Education Students: A Diagnosis of Local Security in Porto

Abstract

This study addressed and characterized direct and indirect criminal victimization among college students and examined the associations between victimization and other variables. The participants were 775 students of both genders with a mean age of 21.76 years. Data were collected through self-reports using the "Diagnosis of Local Security Questionnaire". Overall, 8.6% of the students reported direct victimization, and 39.7% reported indirect victimization. The most reported crimes were robbery and theft, while the least prevalent were sexual offense, domestic violence, and fraud. Most incidents involved a stranger and occurred at night in the street. Direct victimization was associated with gender, age, marital status, student level, attendance status, and institution domain. There were significant associations between indirect victimization and nationality, student type, attendance status, and institution domain. The perception of (in)security was significantly associated with victimization. Therefore, physical and social measures are necessary to reduce crime and increase security. ARTICLE HISTORY

Is Campus a Place of (In)Security and Crime? Perceptions and Predictors among Higher Education Students

“…When we asked students to explain their answers, previous experience/observation was the main presented reason. Indeed, similarly to other international studies [ 15 , 46 , 47 ], in a previous work [ 10 ], we concluded that there was a significant association between perception of (in)security and victimization (both direct and indirect). It should be noted that a slightly higher percentage of students reported feelings of insecurity (26.6%) than those observed by Starkweather [ 12 ], namely 20.6%.…”

“…Fear of crime and risk perception should be conceptually distinguished: namely, while the first consists of an emotional reaction toward the self or others, risk perception addresses a cognitive dimension. In a previous study [ 10 ], we found relevant results for objective insecurity: for instance, around 9% of the students were direct victims, and nearly 40% were indirect victims. Moreover, males presented a high risk for direct victimization, but there were no gender differences on indirect victimization.…”

“…At this point, we cannot be sure if the campus is actually safer than the local community where it resides or not, making it urgent to collect data about the topic. In a previous study [ 10 ], we found that the majority of students felt safe in Asprela’s area (73.4%, n = 569). However, we did not explore explanatory reasons nor the predictors of perception of (in)security based on sociodemographic and criminal variables.…”

“…According to the participants’ points of view, the presence of crime/danger and the urban environmental degradation/space distribution cause this perception. The campus environment is where students spend most of their time: they attend classes, study, live, socialize, and it seems to also be a place where they become victims of crime [ 10 ]. Moreover, Porto’s campus layout and design may also be influencing perceptions of crime and fear.…”

“…This supports previous findings from the international literature [ 11 , 13 , 15 ], but also national-community-level trends [ 41 ]. Moreover, in our previous work [ 10 ], victims reported mainly being victims of those crimes, and the media also pay special attention to these kinds of episodes [ 37 , 38 ]. Therefore, we can conclude that there seems to be a match between the most feared crimes and perceptions of occurrence, not only on our study but also when comparing with other indicators.…”