The victims of crime

Question 1

Victimology definition

Answer 1

the term used for the study of the impact of crime on victims, victims’ interests and patterns of victimisation

Question 2

Victimology

Answer 2

• a growing concern in both academic research and the CJS since the 1980s
• accompanied by a growth in the use of victim surveys eg CSEW
• victims of crime are increasingly viewed as customers or consumers of the CJS and its success is judged based on how well it meets their needs
• a new National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) was adopted in 2002 giving more importance to victims’ accounts in the recording of crime
• victim support schemes are now integral to the CJS
• Home Office announced in 2013 that victims of low-level offences (anti-social behaviour etc) will have a say on out-of-court punishments of offenders (from a list of options)
• greater importance of victims is linked to the need for victims to report crimes for the CJS to function

Question 3

The social construction of victimisation

Answer 3

• who counts as a victim and the label of ‘victim’ is socially constructed
• many unreported and unrecorded victims never come to the attention of the CJS
• victims may be unaware that they are victims (eg in fraud)
• victims may refuse to accept that they have been victimised or blame themselves (eg domestic violence)
• people may reject the label of ‘victim’ as it connotates weakness or foolishness
• some are denied the label of victim because they are viewed as responsible for their own victimisation (eg some victims of sexual assault)
• Tombs and White (2007) - accident victims of corporate crimes arising from neglect of health and safety regulations are themselves blamed for being accident-prone or negligent

Question 4

The effects of victimisation

Answer 4

• Hoyle (2012) - range of possible effects, apart from physical harm or financial/material loss or damage, including anger, anxiety, depression, withdrawal, panic attacks, shock, PTSD, disrupted sleep, poor physical health, feeling powerless, fear of further victimisation - these effects depend on the nature of the offence and the characteristics of the victim
• CSEW shows high levels of worry about crime arises from those victimised, and security industry developed around the fear of crime
• other consequences may include restricted movement (eg feminists - women fearing going out at night) or ongoing fear (eg victims of hate crime)
• 3/4 of reported domestic violence victims and 1/3 of reported victims of burglaries have been victimised before
• further victimisation may occur as a result of primary victimisation - Walklate (2004) - CJS may contribute to secondary victimisation in rape trials by presenting victims as questionable or unreliable
• secondary victimisation crime also found ‘honour crime’

Question 5

Patterns of victimisation: Gender and victimisation

Answer 5

• CSEW - women more likely to have high levels of worry about being victims of burglary or violent crime
• young men (16-24) most likely to be victims of most violent crime, but this declines with age
• some crimes in which women are more likely to be victims eg domestic violence, honour crimes, rape etc

Question 6

Patterns of victimisation: Gender and victimisation: Domestic violence

Answer 6

• 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men will suffer domestic abuse (estimated)
• most of the assaults and physically most violent incidents which end in injury (89%) are committed by men against their female partners, and the men who experience domestic violence suffer less serious and less frequent attacks
• 2/3 of domestic violence victims do not report it
• each year 150 people are killed by an ex or current partner
• many victims of domestic abuse are repeatedly victims
• Walklate (2004) - police is beginning to take domestic violence more seriously, with specialist units
• Hester and Westmarland (2006) - 5% of reported domestic violence incidents result in a conviction

Question 7

Patterns of victimisation: Gender and victimisation - rape

Answer 7

• 90% of victims are women
• CSEW - 1 in 10 rape victims report it to the police
• Walklate - poor treatment of victims in rape trials
• low conviction rate - 6% of reported incidents lead to conviction
• 84% of rape victims know the perpetrator
• 70% of rapes occur in the home of the victim or offender
• as most victims know the offender, it makes it harder to prove what occurred and if it was non-consensual with victims often partially blamed

Question 8

Patterns in victimisation: Age and victimisation

Answer 8

• lifestyles of the young makes them more likely to commit and be victims of crime
• 2013/14 CSEW - likelihood of being a victim decreases with age
• higher proportion of 16-24 victims of personal crimes (assault and theft) - 9x more likely than those aged 75+
• 2013/14 CSEW - 16-24 faced 3x risk of violent crime than other adults and 6% of 10-15 year olds had experienced violent crime or theft in that year

Question 9

Patterns in victimisation: Ethnicity and victimisation

Answer 9

• 2013/14 CSEW - risk of being a victim of personal crime is higher in minority ethnic groups
• differences may be explained by younger age profile of minorities, social class or social deprivation
• all minority ethnic groups report higher levels of worry about crime than white people
• 23% of homicides 2007-10 were minorities - more than 2x the risk of white people (4x the risk for black people)
• Corcoran et al (2015) - average of 106,000 incidents of racially motivated hate crime per year (300 per day)

Question 10

Patterns in victimisation: Social class and victimisation

Answer 10

• poorest sections of the WC most likely to be victims eg the unemployed, sick, low-income families in areas of high physical disorder (vandalism etc) and high deprivation

Question 11

Explaining victimisation: positivist victimology

Answer 11

• Tierney (1996) - positivist approach to victimology involves identifying characteristics or circumstances of victims which make them different to non-victims - victim proneness (making them more vulnerable) and victim precipitation (suggesting they are involved in or to blame for their victimisation eg women ‘leading men on’)
• positivist victimology criticised for victim-blaming, downplaying the role of the law, focusing too much on the characteristics of individual victims and failing to recognise situations in which victims are unaware they are victims or become victimised unwittingly

Question 12

Explaining victimisation: radical (or critical) victimology

Answer 12

• associated with conflict theories (marxism, feminism)
• focus on how wider social issues and circumstances (including the CJS) produce victimisation - eg most deprived are most likely to become victims
• main criticism of radical victimology is that it ignores the issues of victim precipitation and proneness that positivist victimology identifies (eg when drug addicts are ripped off by dealers)