Representative research on crime rates and their trends in Germany is sparse. A major research focus at the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony, which is where all papers compiled in this volume came from, is on victimisation. In the last years, research here was carried out on risk factors of victimisation, on vicitimsation of different population groups and on consequences of victimisation. All papers of this book centre on the presentation of findings from empirical research projects. These include both large-scale standardised surveys and qualitative interview studies with small numbers of interviewees.