victimology

    Cards (27)

    • CSEW
      • victim survey that asks over 40,000 households about their experience of crime.
      • helps to make up the ONS crime stats along with police records
      • 2018 CSEW showed that nationally about 1 in 4 people experience a crime against themselves or home
      • those most at risk of violent crimes were young men aged 16-24, full time students and the unemployed
      • the risk of people aged 75 or over was 0.4%
      • 4% of population make up 44% of all crime - experience repeat victimisation
    • Social construction of Victimisation
      • many crimes unreported and unrecorded
      • label of victim is a social construction - not always applied e.g state crimes
      • victimless crimes e.g green crime/corporate crime
      • people aren't always aware they are a victim
      • may reject label of victim e.g in case of sexual assault
      • Christie - media has an 'ideal victim' - weak,innocent and blameless individual
    • Positivist Victimology
      Tierney: characteristics that contribute to own victimhood
      • victim precipitation - thing people do e.g women walking alone at night,valuables on display
      • victim proneness: characteristics -e.g live in inner city
      Hentig: 13 characteristics of victim proneness e.g young,female,old
      Wolfgang: studied 588 homicides in Philadelphia - 26% of them involved victim precipitation
      Miers: Positivist victimology:
      • aims to identify factors that produce patterns in victimology
      • focus on interpersonal crimes of violence
      • aims to identify victims that contributed to own victimisation
    • Evaluation of positivist victimology
      • blames victim rather than offender - takes agency away from criminal e.g Amir - 1 in 5 rape cases were victim precipitated i.e 'asking for it
      • Brookman: shows offender-victim relationships can occur by chance (ignored offender is often someone you know)
      • too much focus on characteristics-ignores structural factors e.g poverty that can explain victimology
      • victimless crimes
    • Critical/Radical Victimology - based on conflict theories
      • based on structural factors like poverty and patriarchy
      • state has power to deny victims of labels of being identified as victims
      • 'victim' is a social construct the same way criminal is
      • CJS decides who gets the label of victim e.g when a police officer does not prosecute a husband for domestic violence,they have denied her the status of 'victim'
    • Critical/Radical Victimology - Mawby and Walklate
      • victimisation is a form of structural powerlessness - 'victim is a social construct' - people in power e.g CJS decide if you are a victim e.g if police do not record reported crime e.g abuse - denial of victim status
      • A03 - Walklate: secondary victimisation in sexual crimes. women can suffer from this by CJS and by original crime
    • Critical/Radical Victimology - Tombs and Whyte
      • safety crimes e.g breach of health and safety regulation labelled as 'accident' or caused by accident-prone workers instead of company taking responsibility so deny victim status
      • performs and ideological function - failure to label a 'victim' - hides crimes of powerful(Pearce)
      • A02- Bhopal Disaster- blamed it on sabotage of equipment
    • Hierarchy of victimology
      • powerless are most likely to be a victim but least likely to be acknowledged by state
      • A02- Grenfell: found to be caused by faulty cladding - more powerless e.g W/C and EM groups lived in it. Many of the victims not rehoused years after and many other buildings have faulty cladding that needs to be replaced but is not being funded by government.
      • A02- fatal stabbings of 13-19 years olds are the highest more than a decade - 23 of 25 deaths in 2019 were stabbings
    • Evaluation of Critical/Radical Victimology
      • disregards role of victims bringing victimisation to themselves e.g not making homes more secure
      • valuable in understanding how powerful groups construct crimes and labels of victims.
    • Gender and victimisation
      • men more likely to be victims of violent street crime
      • around 70% of homicide victims are male
      • ONS - 2012-2013 - 1.2 million women suffered domestic violence
      • Coleman- 2 women killed each week by a current or former partner
      • Walklate- women make up 92% of all rape cases but 2 out of 3 do not report it though
    • Coronavirus
      • 61 % increase in calls to domestic violence helpline in 2020
      • led to Domestic Abuse Act 2021
    • rape case trial in Ireland 2018
      • In the trial of a rape of a 17-year old, the female defence lawyer told the jury - you have to look at the way she was dressed. she was wearing a thong with a lace front.
      • 27 year old man was found not guilty of rape shortly afterwards
      • Walklate - secondary victimisation- victim of crime and victim of CJS
      • Adler - single mothers less likely to believed in court by CJS
    • Why are men more likely to be victims of crime?
      bedroom culture(McRobbie):
      girls controlled in bedroom,boys less controlled-out in streets at night
      subcultures-
      • Miller focal concerns of masculinity leads to violence.
      • Cohen: status frustration: W/C boys structurally lack status from family and education- crime to gain status
      Feminisation of economy and crisis of masculinity -
      • Winlow: deindustrialisation = crisis of masculinity in bouncers - expressed masculinity through violence.
      • Messerschmidt: EM males have less chance of employment-turn to gang membership for masculine status
    • Ethnicity and Crime
      • CSEW and Home Office statistics show EM more likely to be victims of most crimes than white people
      • all minority ethnic groups are likely to be victims of burglary and vehicle theft than white people
      • Black and Indian more likely to be robbed
      • BCS estimates that both Black and Asian were up to 14x more likely to be victim of racially motivated incident than white people
    • Clancy et al
      range of structural factors contribute to high EM victimisation e.g high levels of unemployment, younger demographic of EM groups
      • Pakistani and Bangladeshi and Black unemployment rate is at 8%(2024)
    • Ethnicity and Victimisation - environmental theory
      Shaw and McKay -
      • zones of transition - migrants move into least desirable but cheap areas.
      • as they get wealthier, they move out
      • new migrants move in which causes social disorganisation - no cohesion and no informal social controls - less policing,less environmental crime prevention
      • crime was more common in these areas
    • Messerschmidt
      Black lower working-class youths - may have fewer expectation of a reasonable job and may use gang membership and violence to express their masculinity or turn to serious property crime to achieve material success
    • EM lower in hierarchy of victimisation
      • those who are powerless are more likely to be denied status of being a victim
      • e.g hate crimes
      • A02 - Stephen Lawrence - murdered by racial motivation - police thought immediately it was a gang crime so denied status of victim
      • Sampson and Phillips: hate crimes form of racial victimisation
      • over 150,000 hate crimes recorded in 2022 , 70% racially motivated
    • Sutherland - Differential association
      people in urban areas commit crimes due to 'differential association'. if someone interacts with other lawbreakers, they are likely to follow suit
      EM more likely to be differentially associated with other criminals
      • frequency - how often you are with criminal
      • duration- how long
      • priority- how important they are to you
      • intensity - stage of life individual is in e.g unemployment
    • Age and Victimisation
      • problem with CSEW is it only looks at people aged 16 or over but most at risk of murder is those under 1 year
      • Wilson found that young people are the group most likely to be victims of crime
      • 2003 - separate crime and justice survey was conducted with 10-15 year olds - 35% had been victims of at least 1 personal crime e.g assault,robbery or theft
    • Young children and criminality
      • Palmer - toxic childhood - growing up in world of social media means young people more likely to be victim of crime - children are exposed to violence and adult content via media which harms development
      • Bandura - bobo doll experiment - observe violence,more likely to imitate it
      • average age to view pornography for first time is 11 years
      • Jamie Bulger Case
      • Katz and Lyng - edgework
      • around half of sexual abuse started before secondary school age(2019)
      • most sexual assault victims begins at very young age but stops at 16 when now included in victim surveys.
    • Social Class and Victimisation
      • areas with high levels of deprivation - CSEW found the 20% of poorest areas face twice the risk of being a victim of burglary and nearly double risk of vehicle-related theft
      • unemployed,long term sick and those living in rented accommodation - New Right and underclass
      • Areas with high levels of deprivation - lack of ECP/SCP - no deterrence
      • areas of high physical disorder - Skogan, Broken Window Theory
      • Inverse victimisation law - poor steal from poor - w/c on w/c crime
      • 1 in 4 households will become victims of white collar crime at some point.
    • Social class - Newburn and Rock
      • A survey found that out of 300 homeless people, they were 12 times more likely to have experienced violence than the general population
      • one in 10 had been urinated on when sleeping - inverse victimisation law
      • denied status of victim as cannot report it - so lowest on hierarchy of victimisation
    • Sociological explanation - W/C victims of white collar/corporate crime
      • Pearce - 'crimes of powerful'
      • Snider - rich largely shaped law so do not close down loopholes which could prevent victims of crime e.g tax havens
    • Sir Phillip Green - BHS pension scandal
      • BHS had created a private pension fund for workers - some paid into it for 30 years but were told it was all lost when BHS went into administration
      • victims eventually repaid - made it victimless
    • Post Office Scandal
      Horizon software problems
      • accused post office workers of fraud - eventually exonerated
      • had to pay compensation to victims
      A02 - Tombs and Whyte - health and safety regulation - workers denied status of victim - accident prone worker / accident
      • Box- ideology that corporate crimes are less widespread or harmful than working clasa crime is capitalism's control of the state - 'mystification
      A02 - Awaab Ishak died from extensive mould despite parents reporting it 3 years prior - could have been prevented.
    • Hoyle - effects of victimisation
      lots of effects besides physical harm and material loss
      • anger, anxiety, fear,depression,withdrawal,panic attacks, PTSD, feeling powerless
      CSEW -
      • 'high levels of worry' of being a victim again reported from victims
      • hate crimes could create a wave of worry for community not just primary victims
      Feminists - Brownmiller
      • women live in fear of being attacked
      • too much focus on fear of victimisation rather than changing structures e.g Sarah Evarard
      Walklate - secondary victimisation in rape trials
    See similar decks