Tourism, Security and Safety From Theory to Practice

Table 2
Offense Time of Day
Time
Number of Cases
Percent
Midnight–1:59 
AM
144
26
2:00 
AM
–3:59 
AM
77
14
4:00 
AM
–5:59 
AM
110
20
6:00 
AM
–7:59 
AM
11
2
8:00 
AM
–9:59 
AM
0
0
10:00 
AM
–11:59 
AM
22
4
Noon–1:59 
PM
11
2
2:00 
PM
–3:59 
PM
0
0
4:00 
PM
–5:59 
PM
33
6
6:00 
PM
–7:59 
PM
22
4
8:00 
PM
–9:59 
PM
66
12
10:00 
PM
–11:59 
PM
55
10
Total
551
100
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picked up in a bar, passed out drunk in her hotel room and awoke later to discover
that she had been robbed.
In one out of every five cases in our study, victims “collaborated” in their own
victimization, in a sense. That is to say, the opportunity for the victimization was
largely created by the choices made by the victim. These victims most likely would
not find themselves in the circumstances that led to their subsequent victimization
on their home turf. By their actions, within the situational context of tourism, they
placed themselves at a triple disadvantage of being a stranger, being isolated in an
unfamiliar area, and being there in search of some illicit action. Because of the
nature of this context, it is likely that a larger number of incidents of this type go
unreported to the police. In a recent case a tourist picked up someone who he
thought was a prostitute. The “prostitute” turned out to be male in drag who lured
him to a darkened side street and robbed him at gunpoint. In 18% of all tourist rob-
bery incidents, perpetrators, working alone, were found to be responsible. They
took advantage of the victims’ desires for illicit action, and insinuated that they
could help them achieve this objective. After luring the victim to an isolated loca-
tion the robbery took place. All of these robberies were accomplished with a hand-
gun and no one was injured. In most of the remaining cases the crimes were
committed by two or more offenders with some injuries occurring, with the victim
being struck or shoved to the ground and in some cases kicked. In all of the rob-
bery incidents in the study the robbers achieved dominance either through
weapons or dominant numbers (or both) or through the action of the victims. The
victims placed themselves in a contextually weak position by searching for authen-
tic, albeit illicit, action.
Finally, the fact of having the status of tourist, being a non-permanent, tran-
sient person, adds another dimension to contextual weakness. Assuming an
arrest is made in the incident, the likelihood of prosecution being pursued is low.
The victim/witness has returned home, and, unless he or she was seriously
injured or experienced a large but recoverable loss, he or she is not likely to
return to press the prosecution. The local prosecutor has only limited resources
to bring witnesses back to the city. These resources are typically reserved for
high-profile cases where, fearing adverse publicity, it is politically (and eco-
nomically) important for the city to appear to be vigilant. Unfortunately, most gar-
den-variety street robberies that involve out-of-town victims rarely reach the
prosecutorial stage.