Victimisation

Question 1

What do the UN give as a definition of victims?

Answer 1

“Those who have suffered harm (including mental, physical or emotional suffering, economic loss and impairment of basic rights) through acts that violate the laws of the state.

Question 2

What does Christie (1986) argue about victimisation?

Answer 2

The term victim is socially constructed.

Question 3

Why is victimology important?

Answer 3

Victims play an essential role in the criminal justice process. E.g. they provide much of the evidence used in the detection of offenders and they act as witnesses in trials.

Question 4

What characteristics did Hans von Hentig (1948) identify about victims? What did he claim that this implies?

Answer 4

=> Positivist Victimology.
=> Identified 13 characteristics of victims such as they are likely to be female, elderly, or mentally subnormal.
=> The implication is that victims ‘invite’ victimisation in some way by being the kind of person that they are.

Question 5

What did Wolfgang (1958) find about victimisation?

Answer 5

=> Positivist Victimology.
=> 26% involved victim precipitation - the victim triggered the events leading to the homicide (e.g., they were the first to use violence).
=> This is often the case with male victims and female perps.

Question 6

Evaluate the positivist approach to victimisation.

Answer 6

=> Identifies certain patterns interpersonal victimisation, but ignores wider structural factors that influence victimisation, such as poverty and patriarchy.

Ignores:
=> Situations where victims are unaware that they have been victimized.
=> Crimes against the environment.
=> Situations where harm has been done but no law has been broken.

Question 7

What is critical victimology?

Answer 7

=> Based on conflict theories such as Marxism and Feminism.

=> Focuses on structural factors and the state’s power to apply or deny the label of ‘victim’.

Question 8

What are the structural factors that fall under focus of critical criminology?

Answer 8

Patriarchy and poverty place powerless groups such as women and the poor at greater risk of victimisation.

Question 9

How does critical victimology focus on ‘the state’s power to apply or deny the label of ‘victim’’?

Answer 9

=> Victim is a social construct in the same way as both ‘crime’ and ‘criminal’.

=> The state applies the label of ‘victim’ to some through the criminal justice process, but withholds the label from others (e.g., when police decide not to press charges on a man who assaulted his wife, she is being denied of victim status).

Question 10

What did Tombs and Whyte note?

Answer 10

=> The ideological function of ‘de-labelling’/’failure to labels’ is concealing the true extent of victimisation and its real causes.

=> Hides the crime of the powerful and denies powerless victims any redress.

=> In the hierarchy of victimisation, the powerless are most likely to be victimized, yet least likely to have this acknowledged by the state.

Question 11

Evaluate the critical victimology approach to victimisation.

Answer 11

=> Valuable in drawing attention to the way that ‘victim’ status is constructed by power and how this benefits the powerful at the expense of the powerless.

=> Disregards the role victims may play in bringing victimisation on themselves through their own choices (e.g., not securing their home) or their own offending.

Question 12

What is the average chance of an individual being the victim of a crime in any one year?

Answer 12

1 in 4.

Question 13

How does class affect the chances that an individual will be a victim of a crime?

Answer 13

=> Poorest groups are likely to be victimized.

=> Crime rates are typically highest in areas of high unemployment and deprivation.

Question 14

What did Newburn and Rock (2006) find about the affect of class on the likelihood that an individual will become a victim?

Answer 14

Survey of 300 homeless people found that they were 12 times more likely to have experienced violence than the rest of the population.

Question 15

How does age affect the chances that an individual will be a victim of a crime?

Answer 15

=> Younger people are at risk of victimisation.
=> Infants under the age of 1 are most at risk of being murdered.
=> Teenagers are more vulnerable than adults to offences including assault, sexual harassment, theft and abuse at home.
=> Elderly also at risk of abuse (e.g., in nursing homes where victimisation is less visible).

Question 16

How does ethnicity affect the chances that an individual will be a victim of a crime?

Answer 16

=> Minority ethnic groups at greater risk than whites of being victims of crime in general, as well as racially motivated crimes.

Question 17

Which groups are more likely to feel under protected yet over controlled by the police?

Answer 17

=> Ethnic minorities.
=> The young.
=> The homeless.

Question 18

How does gender affect the chances that an individual will be a victim of a crime?

Answer 18

=> Males are at a greater risk than females of being victims of violent attacks, especially by strangers.
=> 70% of homicide victims are male.
=> Women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence, sexual violence, stalking, harassment, and trafficking.
=> Women are likely to be victims of mass rape as a weapon of war in times of armed conflict.

Question 19

Describe repeat victimisation.

Answer 19

=> If you have been a victim once, you are highly likely to be a victim again.
=> British Crime Survey states 60% of the population have not been victims of any kind of crime in a given year, whereas a mere 4% of the population are victims of 44% of all crimes in that period.

Question 20

What are the impacts of victimisation?

Answer 20

=> It can cause physical and emotional harm to victims.
=> It can cause disrupted sleep, feelings of helplessness, increased security-consciousness and difficulties in social functioning.

Question 21

Describe secondary victimisation.

Answer 21

=> Individuals may suffer from victimisation at the hands of the criminal justice system.
=> Feminists argue that rape victims are often so poorly treated by the police and courts that it accounts to a double violation.

Question 22

Describe fear of victimisation.

Answer 22

=> Crime may create fear of becoming a victim.
=> Some sociologists argue that surveys show this fear to be irrational in many cases (e.g., women are more afraid of going out, out of fear of being attacked, yet it is young men who are the main victims of crimes from strangers).

Question 23

How do feminists criticise the emphasis on ‘fear of crime’?

Answer 23

They argue that it focuses on women’s positivity and their psychological state, when we should be focusing on their safety (i.e., the structural threat of patriarchal violence that they face).