victimisation Flashcards
patterns of victimisation
Class - Crime rates are typically highest in areas of high unemployment and deprivation. Poorer households are more likely to be burgled than higher income households
Age - Younger/older people - infants under the age of one are most at risk of being murdered, teenagers more vulnerable to assault, harassment, theft and abuse at home. Old are at risk of abuse but elder abuse is less visible.
Ethnicity - Ethnic minority groups cf. white pop. Issue of racially motivated crimes. In relation to the police also more likely to report feeling under protected and yet over controlled - also case for young and homeless.
Gender - Males more at risk of violent attack from a stranger. 70% of homicide victims are male. However, women are more likely to be victims of domestic abuse, sexual violence, harassment and stalking.
Repeat victimisation - CSEW-60% of the population not victims of any kind of crime but 4% of the population are victims of 44% of all crimes in that period.
the impact of crime/ victimisation
Indirect victims:
• Friends and relatives
• Witnesses
• Hate crimes - message crimes’ radiate out to the minority community involved
Secondary victimisation:
Victims suffer the crime then further at the hands of the criminal justice system. E g feminist analysis of treatment of rape victims by police and courts, amounts to a double violation
Fear of crime:
Survey results indicate that many live in fear of becoming a victim but statistics do not substantiate the likelihood. Some relationships are complex e g. women more likely to fear random attack but males are more likely to be victims. Feminists argue that this fear conveniently deflects away from real issues resulting from power.
Psychological Impact :
• disrupted sleep
• feeling helplessness
• Difficulties in social functioning
• Security anxiety
Miers - positivist victimology
• aims to identify patterns - what factors make someone more likely to be a victim?
• focuses on violent interpersonal crime
• identify victims who have contributed to their own victimisation
evaluation of miers
Bookman shows the importance of the victim - offender relationship and in many homicides, it is a matter of chance which party becomes the victim
Christie - defining and labelling victims
- victim as a social construction - media ideal, weak and blameless individual, the target of a strangers attack.
- Some victims are considered more newsworthy than others
evaluation of christie
Can result in victim blaming - Amir claims 1/5 of rapes are victim precipitated, this overshadows motives of the perpetrator
Walklate - critical victimology
• draws attention to the states power to apply or deny the label of victim.
- the CJS and its laws can reinforce or withhold this status
e.g. not prosecuting a man for assaulting his wife.
- Also, the police are agents in this process - If the police decide not to press charges then you are denied the status of victim and possibly compensation.
• ‘Failure to label’ hides the crimes of the powerful and denies victims redress.
walklate evaluation
Disregards the role victims play in the choices they make eg not securing house or in their own offending
Mawby and walklate - critical victimology
evaluation of Mawby and Walklate
tombs and Whyte - marxist victimology
• poorer sections of society are often the victims of crime or harms committed by the powerful such as price fixing, green crimes and negligent practices-the victims are often not aware that they are so.
• Tombs and whyte - ‘safety crimes’ employers’ violations that result in the injury and death of workers are presented as accident prone workers.
evaluation of tombs and whyte
