2012
Jan van Dijk
The extent, nature, and cross-national variation in crime based on research on victimisation rates.
Professor Van Dijk was lauded for his sustained work with the International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS), a key source of knowledge about crime. By using public surveys rather than official statistics, the ICVS can more reliably compare the extent, nature, and structure of crime across the 80 participating countries.Jan van Dijk
Born 1947 in the Netherlands. Jan van Dijk was professor at the International Victimology Institute, Tilburg University (Netherlands) at the time of the award.
Showed that crime victims need to be heard – in statistics as well as policy.Showed that crime victims need to be heard – in statistics as well as policy.
Global focus on crime victims’ perspective
Jan van Dijk was awarded the 2012 Stockholm Prize in Criminology for his groundbreaking work in developing the International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS).
Van Dijk has been a leader in victimology: the study of the victims of crimes, their vulnerability to crime and experiences of society’s support. He has been working since 1989 with the ICVS, which is designed to provide an alternative to official crime statistics. The ICVS has shed light on crimes that do not come to police attention and enables an international comparison of exposure to crime and perceptions of the legal system in different countries.
Unique comparison between countries
The ICVS gathered data from a total of approximately 350,000 people in some 80 countries, including data from 33 major cities. Data was collected from the general public and may therefore have been somewhat free of influence by the political or ideological agendas of their governments. The survey is widely considered to have produced the most reliable evidence to date that many kinds of crime have been falling in Europe, the United States, Canada, and other Western countries since the early 1990s.