Victims of crime

Question 1

The victims of crime

Answer 1

Victimology = The study of the relationship between victims and their offenders.
* United Nations defines victims as ‘those who have suffered harm (physical, mental or emotional suffering, economic loss and impairment of their basic rights) through acts and omissions that violate the laws of the state’.
* Nils Christie (1986) takes a different approach highlighting the notion that ‘victim’ is a social construct.
* The stereotypes of the ‘ideal victim’ favoured by the media, public and criminal justice system is a weak, innocent and blameless individual - such as a small child or an old woman - who is the target of a strangers attack.

Question 2

Positivist victimology

Miers (1989) defines positivist victimology as having three features

Answer 2

1. It aims to identify the factors that produce patterns in victimisation - especially those that make some individuals or groups more likely to be victims.
2. It focuses on interpersonal crimes of violence. (Crimes between people).
3. It aims to identify victims who have contributed to their own victimisation e.g. going out at night, substance and alcohol abuse, provoke someone.

Question 3

Positivist victimology

The earliest positivist studies focus on the idea of?

Answer 3

• Victim proneness
• They sought to identify the social and psychological characteristics of victims that make them different from and more vulnerable than non-victims.
• Hans Von Hentig (1948) identified 13 characteristics of victims such as they are more likely to be female, elderly or ‘mentally subnormal’. These factors can also include lifestyle factors such as those who display there wealth.

Question 4

Poitivist victimology

An example of positivist victimology is?

Answer 4

• Marvin Wolfgang’s (1958) study of 588 homicides in Philadelphia
• Wolfgang found that 26% involved victim precipitation - the victim triggered the events leasing to the homicide, for example by being the fist to use violence

Question 5

Positivist victimology

Evaluation

Answer 5

• This approach ignores wider structural factors such as poverty (Marxists) and patriarchy (Feminists).
• It can easily tip over into victim blaming, for example one in five rapes are victim precipitated which is not very different from saying ‘they asked for it’.
• It ignores situations where victims are unaware of their victimisation, as with some crimes against the environment when harm is done but not law is broken. (Green crime).

Question 6

Critical Victimology

Critical victimology is based on conflict theories such as Marxism and Feminism. It focuses on two elements:

Answer 6

1. Structural factors = such as patriarchy and poverty, which place powerless groups such as women and the poor at greater risk of victimisation.
2. The states power to apply or deny the label of the victim = ‘victim’ is a social construct in the same way as a ‘crime’ or ‘criminal’. Through the criminal justice process in the state applies the label of victim to some but withholds it from others. For example, when the police decide not to press charges against a man for assaulting his wife, therefore denying her victim status.

Question 7

Critical Victimology

The failure to label the victim conceals?

Answer 7

• The true extent of victimisation and its real causes
• It hides the crimes of the powerful and denies the powerless victims aby redress. In the hierarchy of victimisation therefore the powerless are most likely to be victimised, yet the least likely to have this acknowledged by the state

Question 8

Critical Victimology

Evaluation of critical victimology

Answer 8

• Critical criminology disregards the role victims may play in bringing victimisation on themselves through their own choices e.g. by not making their how secure or their own offering.
• It is valuable in drawing attention to the way that the ‘victim’ status is constructed by power and how this benefits the powerful at the expense of the powerless

Question 9

Patterns of victimisation

Class?

Answer 9

The poorest groups are more likely to be victimised e.g. crime rates are highest in areas of high unemployment and deprivation

Question 10

Patterns of victimisation

Age?

Answer 10

Younger people are at more risk of victimisation. Those most at risk of being murdered infants under the age of one.

Question 11

Patterns of victimisation

Gender?

Answer 11

Males are at greater risk than females of becoming victims of violent attacks. About 70% of homicide victims are male

Question 12

Patterns of victimisation

Ethnicity?

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Patterns of victimisation

Repeat victimisation?

Answer 13

Refers to the fact that, if you have been a victim once, you are very likely to be one again. 4% of the population are victims of 44% of all crime.