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Violence in retailing: physical and verbal victimisation of staff

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Abstract

Increasing recognition is being given to the fact that the workplace is a common setting for criminal victimisation, including the use of violence. According to the 1988 British Crime Survey retail staff were twice as likely as ‘average’ workers to be assaulted at work (Mayhew et al, 1989). Other studies have begun to explore violence against staff in the retail sector (Beck and Willis, 1991a; Ekblom and Simon, 1988; Hibberd, 1990; Hibberd and Shapland, 1993). Most recently, the British Retail Consortium’s national survey of 54,000 outlets suggested that in the course of a year over 14,000 staff were subject to physical violence, a further 106,000 were threatened and nearly 300,000 staff were the victims of verbal abuse (Burrows and Speed, 1994). These studies have laid a sound knowledge base about comparative levels of violence in different retail contexts. The findings reported below add to this emerging database.

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© 2005 Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Beck, A., Gill, M., Willis, A. (2005). Violence in retailing: physical and verbal victimisation of staff. In: Gill, M. (eds) Crime At Work. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23551-3_7

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