Crime and Deviance - Victimology

Question 1

What is victimology?

Answer 1

Victimology:
- The study of crime victims
- A victim is someone who suffers physical, mental or psychological harm, economic loss or impairment of their rights
- Christie (1986) - victims are socially constructed

Question 2

Victim statistics - Age

Answer 2

Age - 16 to 24 year olds experience the most violence; lifestyles of young people make them likely to be both criminals and victims as they are more exposed to criminal opportunity or to be a victim due to night time economy, drugs and alcohol, living alone; the older you get, the less likely you are statistically to be a victim of crime

Question 3

Victim statistics - Class

Answer 3

Class - Lower class are not represented in some crimes (e.g. fraud); however, they are the highest risk group (poor parts of the working class - environments of poverty, high levels of crime = high levels of victims, graffiti etc)

Question 4

Victim statistics - Ethnicity

Answer 4

Ethnicity - Mixed race adults are more likely to be victims; lower age profiles for this group and high fertility rates means that there are also more young ethnic victims - they are also more likely to be fearful of being a victim of crime; they are also 14x more likely to be a victim of a hate crime and the black population is 4x more likely to be a victim of murder

Question 5

Victim statistics - Gender

Answer 5

Gender - Women are more afraid of being victims of crime, men are twice as likely to be a victim of any crime than women and men are more likely to experience crime from strangers / acquaintances; HOWEVER, women are more likely to experience domestic violence from a known person (90% of rapes are women)

Question 6

Victimology - Standards of the CJS

Answer 6

VIctims are now considered consumers in the CJS with standards to expect and a role to be considered - the 4 standards met by the CJS to help victims:
1) Victim surveys to judge the CJS
2) Victim Support services
3) Involvement of victims in the process of justice (e.g. impact statements); talking them through the processes of court, trial, sentencing
4) 2002 National Crime Recording standard - priority to victim accounts over police review

Child victims and vulnerable victims use remote witness reports in court and sometimes victims are hidden from view

Question 7

Victimology - how do we know who the victims are?

Answer 7

The most representative Victim Survey is the Crime Survey of England and Wales, and this covers approximately 35,000 adults in England and Wales in private households and the survey asks about crime the individuals have been victims of within the last year, and asks whether they reported these crimes to the police

A problem with this survey is that certain aspects of victimisation are absent:
- Some people are missing from it - such as children and the homeless
- Some crimes are not asked about - e.g. corporate crimes
- Some crimes even if asked about may be under-reported (e.g. domestic violence because of the setting)
- The victim is socially constructed and relative - some people may not consider themselves a victim
Skewed towards those who know they have been a victim - victimless crimes, green crime, coercive control and fraud people often do not know they are victims
-Skewed samples because of homeless people, people in shared homes and children not being surveyed

Question 8

Victim blaming / shaming

Answer 8

• ‘It is the height of impudence for any girl to hitchhike at night’ (Judge Richards, 1982)
• Women who say ‘no’ do not always mean ‘no’ (Judge Wild, 1982)
• Hong Kong Security Secretary said the following - ‘some of these cases…involved the victims being raped after drinking quite a lot of alcohol, so I would appeal young ladies do not drink too much.’
• Victim blaming leads to issues with reporting and also has an impact on increasing victims by giving criminals a defence - it has an impact on the individual failing to be defended and wider social impact

Jackson Katz: Postmodernism
- Conducted research in which men and women were asked what they do to prevent personal assault, and women gave a range of answers including always having money, phone access, being in public places, and men stated they did not have to think about being assaulted and so had no strategies to prevent it

Question 9

Positivist victimology - how the victim is created (Func.)

Answer 9

• Deals with quantitative data and social facts about crime and victims - the individual is too blame
• Tierney - focus on victim proneness - why do certain people become victims and they looked at social and psychological characteristics of people
• von
  Hentig - what makes people more vulnerable; he identified 13 characteristics that make certain people more vulnerable such as gender, age, mental age, immigrants, depression, blocked opportunities
• Wolfgang - studied 588 homicides; 26% involved victim precipitation, with the victim triggering the events and bringing it on themselves

Evaluation -
- Victim blaming is negative for the justice system - some people do make their victimhood more likely, but it is not always their fault
- Deterministic and reductionist - anyone can be a victim, unfairly labels and makes assumptions out of groups
- Removes blame from offender and CJS
- Some crimes such as terrorism, the victim is completely random
- Ignores structural inequalities that increase likelihood of crime
- The data reinforces their ideas

Question 10

Conflict / critical / radical victimology - how victims are created (Marx/Fem)

Answer 10

• Victimhood is due to structural inequalities - society is to blame
• Victims are powerless, and they are people most likely to be victimised and the least likely to be recognised and supported by the state
• The powerful can deny status to their victims - clumsy workers; may be actually a victim of the companies breach in health and safety but a case can be made for the individual being negligent to protect the company (Tombs and Whyte)
• Structural factors play a part in explaining why people are more likely to be victims e.g. poverty and patriarchy
• Victim status is created for the poor (exploited, live in deprived areas = higher risk of crime) and for women (more likely to be a victim of sex crime/trafficking/violence etc)
• Global power structures create victims in poorer places (drone attacks, war, environmental disasters) and they often do not face justice - the powerful create the victims

Evaluation -
- Ignores individual behaviour (e.g. victim precipitation)
- There is less empirical evidence for structural causes - an intersection of structures can create confusion over the actual institutional cause

Question 11

Effects of victimisation

Answer 11

1) Hoyle (2012) - victims experience 12 negative reactions including sleeplessness, PTSD, fear, shock etc
2) Secondary victimisation - Feminist Walklate (2004) stated that this was the idea that on top of the original victimisation, victims can be victimised by the CJS e.g. rape victims
3) Fear of victimisation - creates fear of becoming a victim; could be irrational e.g. women not going out for fear of attack when men are more likely to be attacked or elderly distrusting the wider population
4) Can also create indirect victims e.g. family, friends, witnesses
5) Hate crimes can lead to waves of fear and panic in communities, again affecting others