positive victimology

• Victimology


  • Study of victims of crime
• Main forms of victimology

  • Positivist victimology
  • Critical victimology
• Positivist victimology


  • More conservative view examining factors leading to an individual becoming a victim of crime
  • Focuses on individual factors, relationships between offenders and victims, and ways in which the victim may have contributed to becoming a victim themselves
• Maya's identified features of positivist victimology

  • Factors linked to the individual making them susceptible to being a victim of crime
  • Relationships between offenders and victims
  • Ways in which the victim may have contributed to becoming a victim themselves
• Research by Wolfgang

  • In 26% of murders in Philadelphia, the victim had instigated the altercation that led to their murder
• Research by Amir

  • One in five rapes were victim precipitated
• Critics of Hindelang et al have accused them of relying upon stereotypes in their construction of victims rather than examining what motivates criminals to attack these people
• Findings of Wolfgang and Amir are based upon the subjective interpretations of those officers that reported them
• Prominent feature of positivist victimology is partially blaming the victim for behaving in a way that would lead to them becoming a victim
• Throughout the 1980s, judges in the UK passed comments on the nature of women's behaviors and how they were dressed, suggesting that these behaviors had meant that the criminal was tempted into crime
• Von Hunting's duet theory suggested that criminals are tempted by the behavior of the victim
• Common criticism of positivist victimology is that it is a victim-blaming approach and implies that certain acceptable standards of moral behavior have been breached by the victim causing them to be attacked
• Positivist victimology approach is based upon subjective judgments presented as facts, which can be a danger when approaching issues such as being a victim of crime in a quantitative manner
• Miers (1989), three features of positivist victimology,

  1. aims to identify the factors that produce patterns in victimisation
  2. focuses on interpersonal crimes of violence
  3. aims to identify victims who have contributed to their own victimisation
• 26% of homicides involved victim precipitation
• Victim precipitation

  • Being the first to use violence
  • Where the victim is male and the perpetrator female
• Fiona Brookman (2005) notes Wolfgang shows the importance of the victim-offender relationship
• In many homicides, it is a matter of chance which party becomes the victim
• Patterns of interpersonal victimisation

  • Victim precipitation
• This approach identifies certain patterns of interpersonal victimisation but ignores wider structural factors influencing victimisation, such as poverty and patriarchy
• It can easily tip over into victim blaming
• Speaker: 'Quote'
• Amir's (1971) claim that one in five rapes are victim precipitated is not very different from saying that the victims 'asked for it'
• It ignores situations where victims are unaware of their victimisation, as with some crimes against the environment, and where harm is done but no law broken
• Critical victimology


  Based on conflict theories such as patriarchy