Victimology

Question 1

What is Victimology?

Answer 1

The study of the impact of crime on victims, their interests and patterns of victimisation.

Question 2

What is a ‘Victim’?

Answer 2

Those who have suffered harm, whether mental or physical, through acts which are illegal in the eyes of the law/state.

They are increasingly being viewed as customers of the CJS, its success is determined by how it meets the needs of victims.

Question 3

What is the Positivist approach to Victimology?

Answer 3

Miers = to identify factors that produce victims, focuses on interpersonal crimes of violence, and identifies victims who have contributed to becoming a victim.

Victim proneness = social and psychological characteristics of victims that make them more vulnerable than non-victims.

Garland = ‘responsibilisation’ - pushes responsibility onto the victims, self-report provides statistics, helps people learn how to avoid becoming victims of crime.

Question 4

Evaluation of Positivist Victimology?

Answer 4

• Victim blaming; ‘they asked for it’.
• It identifies patterns but ignores wider structural factors, such as poverty or patriarchy.

Question 5

What is the Critical (left-wing) approach to Victimology?

Answer 5

A left-wing approach based on conflict theories, focuses on structural factors (how they create victims) and the state’s power to deny or apply the label of victim (social construct, withholds the victim label from others e.g: rape).

Christie = the media, CJS and the public stereotype the ‘ideal victim’ as weak, innocent and blameless.

Question 6

Evaluation of Critical Victimology:

Answer 6

• Disregards the roles that victims may play in their own victimisation. E.g: not securing their home.
• Draws attention to the way that ‘victim’ is constructed by power and benefits the powerful at the extent of the powerless.

Question 7

What is the impact of Victimisation?

Answer 7

• Physical and emotional harm
• Secondary Victimisation = further victimisation by the CJS e.g rape victims
• Fear of victimisation due to moral panics by the media
• ‘Indirect’ victims through witnesses of crime or friends of the victim
• ‘Waves of harm’ e.g hatecrimes which affect the whole community.

Question 8

Victimisation Statistics:

Answer 8

1 in 4 people are a victim of crime each year, risk is unevenly distributed between social groups.

Repeat victimisation = groups not having a higher chance of becoming a victim, but being more likely to be a victim of crime on more than one occasion = chances of being a victim increase after being a victim once.

Question 9

Social Class:

Answer 9

• The poorest sections of the WC are the most likely to be victims of crime.
• Unemployed, long term sick, low-income families.
• Areas of high physical disorder, such as vandalism, etc.

Question 10

Age:

Answer 10

• Lifestyles of the young expose them to greater risk of becoming victims of crime, 16-24 more likely to become victims of violent crime.
• Victimisation declines with age, but the elderly are at risk of abuse eg nursing homes, mugging.

Question 11

Ethnicity:

Answer 11

• Minority groups are at risk of being victims of general crime, as well as racially motivated hate crimes.
• Younger age profile and socially deprived area e.g young black men.
• Minority groups often feel under-protected, yet over-controlled by police.

Question 12

Gender:

Answer 12

• Women are more likely than men to have fear of becoming victims.
• 70% of homicide victims are male.
• There are some crimes that women are more likely to become victims of: domestic violence, rape, sexual violence, stalking.
• Men are twice as at risk than women of being victims of violent crimes.