Issues In Crime - Victimology Flashcards
Patterns of Victimisation
Class - the poor are more likely to be victims.
Age - infants are at most risk of murder, teens are more vulnerable to assault, the old are at risk of abuse.
Ethnicity - EMs are a greater risk of being victims of racially motivated crimes.
Gender - about 70% of homicide victims are male, females are more likely to be victims of domestic and sexual violence.
Repeat Victimisation - it you have been a victim once, you are very likely to be one again. Less powerful groups are more likely to be repeat victims.
Positivist Victimology
Remember the data positivste prefer, quantitative.
Key feature of this theory:
Identifies factors that produce patterns of victimisation - things that make others more likely to be victims.
Focuses on interpersonal crimes of violence.
Aims to identify victims who have been contributed to their own victimisation.
E.g. victim proneness, the characters that make victims different from and more vulnerable than non-victims.
Hans Von Hentig - 13 characteristics of victims, e.g. female/ elderly or have lower IQ. This could mean they somehow invite their victimisation just by being themselves.
Victim Precipitation - people are victims because they provokes something, they brought it on themselves.
Positivst Victimology AO3:
Ignored wider structural factors influencing victimisation, e.g. poverty & victimisation.
Close to being victim blaming, Amir’s view that 1 in 5 rapes are precipitated - they’re asking for it.
Ignores situations where victims are unaware of their victimisation.
Critical Victimology
Based on conflict theories & shares the same approach as critical criminology.
Structural factors - like patriarchy and poverty, making women and the lower class at greater risk of victimisation.
Mawby and Walklate - victimisationis a form of structural powerlessness.
The states power to apply to deny the label of a victim.
victim is a social construct, some people are labelled as a ‘victim’ by the state, but others are denied the victim status (EMs in a western country).
Tombs and White - ‘safety crimes’ where employers violate the law are often explained away as the fault of accident-prone workers. also with the rape cases, they say that women were asking for it.
This ideological function of the failure to label people as victims means it hides the crimes of the powerful.
critical victimology AO3:
disregards the role victims may play in bringing victimisations (victim precipitation).
(support) draws attention to how ‘victim’status is constructed and how it benefits the powerful.
missing white women syndrome
impact of Victimisation
crime can have a seriouse physical and mental impact on its victims.
crime may also create indirect victims,
Pynoos et al found that child witnesses of a sniper attack continued to have grief-related dreams a year after the vent.
secondary victimisation - apart from the crime itself, people may suffer further victimisation in the CJS, feminists argue the police treat rape victims poorly.
fear of victimisation - crime may create fear of becoming a victim, e.g. women are more afraid of going up for fear of being attached.
impact of victimisation AO3:
feminists have attached the emphasis on ‘fear of crime’. they argue it focuses on women being passive. and their psychological state, when we should be focusing on their safety.
