victims of crime

• positivist victimology

  miers - positive victimology has three features

  • aims to identify the factors that create patterns in victimisation
  • focuses on interpersonal crimes of violence
  • aims to identify victims that have contributed to their own victimisation

  early studies focused on victim proneness and sought to identify social and psychological characteristics of victims that make them more vulnerable

  • von hentig - identified 13 characteristics of victims such as being elderly, female or 'mentally subnormal' which suggests some people invite victimisation by being who they are
• example of positvist victimology

  wolfgang - studied 588 homocides in philadelphia and found 26% involved victim precipitation - the victim triggered the events leading to the homocide eg. being the first to use violence

  • this was often the case when the victim was male and the perpetrator was female
• evaluation of positive victimology

  brookman - wolfgang shows the importance of victim-offender relationships and the presence of chance in homocides HOWEVER

  • ignores wider structural factors that influence victimisation such as poverty and patriarchy
  • is very easily turned into victim blaming
  • amir - one in five rapes are victim precipitated (a view that is almost suggesting victims asked for it)
  • ignores situations where victims are unaware of their victimisation such as environmental crime
  • focuses purely on violent crime so can't be used to explain white collar and corporate crime
• critical victimology

  based on conflict theories such as marxism and feminism and is an extension of critical criminology, has two focuses

  • structural factors - eg. poverty and patriarchy which place powerless groups at greater risk of victimisation
  • mawby + walklate - victimisation is a form of structural powerlessness
  • the state's power to deny or attach the label of victim - victim is a social construct as is criminal, and the criminal justice system is at liberty to apply or rescind the label eg. by choosing to not press charges or convict a criminal
• critical victimology and labels

  tombs + whyte - safety crimes in which employers' violations of the law lead to injury or death of workers are often explained away as the fault of accident-prone workers

  • similar pattern in rape cases where the victim is both denied their victim status and blamed for the assault
  • this 'failure to label' serves the ideological function of concealing the true extent of victimisation and so hiding the crimes of the powerful
  • this creates a hierarchy of victimisation in which the powerless are most likely to be victimised but less likely to have this recognised
• evaluation of critical victimology

  the approach is valuable in drawing attention to the socially constructed natue of the victim label and how the ruling groups use this to manipulate the psoition of victims HOWEVER

  • disregards instances in which victims genuinely bring victimisation upon themselves eg. initiating violence
• class and victimisation

  poorest groups are more likely to be victimised

  • crime rates are highest in areas with high unemployment rates and deprivation
  • newburn + rock - study of 300 homeless people that found they were 12x more likely to experience violence and one in 10 had been urinated on
• age and victimisation

  younger people are the most at risk of victimisation

  • infants under one are at the highest risk of being murdered
  • teenagers are more vulnerable to offences including assault, sexual harrassment, theft and abuse in the home
  • there is also a risk of the elderly being abused in care homes but the overall trend is still that victimisation decreases with age
• ethnicity and victimisation

  minority ethnic groups are at a greater risk of being victims of general crime, as well as racially motivated crime

  • they are also among the groups who are most likely to report feeling under-protected yet over-controlled by police
  • links to recent instances of police violence against black people like stephen lawrence, george floyd and mark duggan, as well as the pattern of stop and search implementation
• gender and victimisation

  gender is the only trait which leads to two simultaneous trends in victimisation

  • men are at greater risk of being victims to violent attacks, particularly by strangers
  • 90% of homicide victims are male
  • women are more likely to be victims of domestic abuse, sexual assault, stalking and harrassment, trafficking and in times of conflict mass rape as a weapon of war
• repeat victimisation


  if you have been a victim of crime once you are very likely to be one again

  • british crime survey - 4% of the population are victims of 44% of crimes within a year, and 60% of the population aren't victim to any crimes
• the impact of victimisation

  crime can have serious emotional and physical impacts

  • depending on the crime research shows that victims can experience disrupted sleep, difficulties in social functioning and feelings of helplessness
  • crime can also create indirect victims - pynoos - child witnesses of sniper attacks experienced grief-related dreams and altered behaviour
  • waves of harm - hate crimes can be message crimes which intimidate the whole community and challenge society's value system
  • secondary victimisation
• secondary victimisation

  individuals may suffer further harm at the hands of the criminal justice system during the investigation and prosecution of crimes

  • feminists argue that rape cases are so poorly handled by the police and court systems that it amounts to double victimisation
  • the baroness casey review of the metropolitan police
  • the volume of rape trials reaching court has decreased by 57% since 2014
  • several case studies detail the poor handling of sexual assault and rape cases experienced by met police officers
• fear of victimisation

  crime often creates a fear of becoming a victim

  • some sociological surveys show this to be irrational
  • women are more afraid of going out for fear of being attacked, but young men are more likely to become victims
  • feminists suggest this focuses on women's passivity and psychological state when we should instead focus on their safety eg. the structural threat of patriarchal violence