This book examines the use and misuse of official statistics on crime and victimization, and looks at the representation of these statistics in contemporary political debate. The author charts the changing attitudes to victims and victims' rights within the criminal justice and penal systems and considers the political, academic and practical reasons for these developments, in addition to describing the various measures of assisting and compensating victims. Laurence Koffman provides a clear account of the rationale, content and methodology of crime/victimization surveys. He focuses on the British Crime Survey programme at a national level and also assesses the achievements of some of the leading local crime surveys. In particular, he interprets data from his innovative Aberystwyth Crime Survey (1993) one of the few local surveys to record crime and victimization in a rural area. -- Publisher description.