Crime and elder issues, problems and practical responses

Paper presented at the conference 'Understanding and responding to crime and older people', Centre of Ageing & Centre for Criminology, The University of Hong Kong, 11th November 1999, by Adam Graycar, Director, Australian Institute of Criminology. This speech is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Since the 1970s there has been an increase in concern about older people as victims of crime. Older people, in a similar manner as other groups in the population, are at risk from four main sources: family members, friends and acquaintances, who may assault or steal from them; strangers who may victimise them; commercial organisations or "white collar" criminals who could defraud them; and carers with whom they are in a "duty of care" relationship and who may neglect or abuse them. Abuse here refers to physical, psychological, sexual and financial