Victims

• Miers 


  Positivist victimology has three features:

  Aims to identify the factors that produce patterns in victimisation - especially those that make some individuals or groups more likely to be victims.

  Focuses on interpersonal crimes of violence.

  Aims to identify victims who have contributed to their own victimisation.
• Hans Von Hentig


  Victims in some sense invite victimisation by being the kind of person that they are / lifestyle factors.
• Wolfgang


  Study of 588 homocides in Philadelphia.

  26% involved victim precipation (the victim triggered the events leading to the homocide).

  Often the case when the victim was male and the perpetrator was female.
• Class

  Poorer groups -

  Material deprivation -> more crime occurs in poorer areas. Unemployment -> more opportunity to become a victim. Less money to spend on crime prevention measures.
• Ethnicity

  Minority ethnic groups -

  Racism

  More likely to be working class
• Age

  Young people -

  vulnerable

  more opportunity to become victims
• Gender

  Men greater risk of violent crimes.

  Women at greater risk of domestic violence, sexual violence, stalking, harassment, trafficking.
• Impact of victimisation

  Indirect victims

  Hate crime - waves of harm

  Secondary victimisation

  Fear of victimisation
• Critical victimology focuses on two elements

  Structural factors - eg patriarchy and poverty.

  The state’s power to apply or deny the label ‘victim’.
• Tombs & Whyte


  Safety crimes - employers violations of law lead to death / injury, but explained away by claim of ‘accident prone’ workers.

  Rape - victims of rape denied victim status by state.

  Ideological function of failures to label victims - hides the crimes of the powerful.