Women are the Most Vulnerable Targets for Criminals, Research Shows

Women are the most vulnerable targets for criminals while children are the least vulnerable.

This is according to research by the National Crime Research Centre (NCRC).

The research released on March 4 revealed that housebreaking and general stealing were the most prevalent crimes and that economic status, gender, and age contributed to the vulnerability of the victims of crime.

Unemployment, alcohol and weak law enforcement were identified as some of the factors contribute to crime, according to the report

The NCRC undertook a National Crime Victimization survey to establish the trends of crime victimization in Kenya where it was found that the main victims of crimes in the localities covered were women (77.4percent), men (57.3percent), youths (36.1percent), elderly persons (26.5percent), and children (20percent).

The survey said factors leading to certain categories of persons being more vulnerable to crime victimization include economic status (75.8 percent), gender (49.4percent), age (41.6percent), lifestyle (36.8percent) social background (17.3percent), literacy status (11.6percent), and marital status (6.2percent).

The survey established that about 50 percent of the study respondents had been direct victims of crime.

According to the survey, the most prevalent crimes experienced were housebreaking (28.5 percent), general stealing (26.6 percent), theft of stock (20.7 percent), burglary (12.9percent), stealing from a person (16.6percent), and robbery with violence (9.8percent).

The NCRC study indicated the consequences of crime victimization as loss of property (84.3 percent), public mistrust and fear (58.8percent), slow economic development of an area (52.2 percent) death (40.2percent), and disability due to injuries (37.4percent).

Crime was found to have resulted in loss of employment, livelihood and income; increased poverty levels, psychological distress; and emotional distress.

The underlying factors which contribute to crime victimization were mentioned as unemployment, availability of alcohol, illicit drugs and substance of abuse, idleness, poverty and weak law enforcement.

Others are youth peer pressure factors, corruption in the criminal justice system, illiteracy, physical environmental factors such as the absence of street lighting and bushy farm plantations, gender vulnerability factors, ignorance of the law, and local community harboring criminals.

Most of the respondents indicated that most crimes were committed at night while 32 percent of them indicated that there is no specific time of the day for crime occurrence.

Authorities have been informed to take action on the same.