critical victimology

• Approaches to the study of victims

  • Positivist victimology
  • Critical victimology
• Critical victimology


  • Looks at the role of the state and the authorities rather than individuals
  • Focuses on how the status of victim is defined by the state and its agencies
  • Examines how the structure of society can impact individuals who become victims
• Spencer and Walker


  • Identified three main features of critical victimology
  • Examines the role of the state in the social construction of victimhood
  • Looks at the broader scale of victims of crime
  • Critiques the process of victim blaming
• For Tombs and White


  The state often fails to acknowledge the victim status of those who are victims of state or corporate crime
• The recording of a verdict of death by misadventure on the 96 Liverpool fans who died in the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989 was overturned 26 years later
• Successive governments failed to identify innocent football fans as victims due to their status as working class
• State crimes are crimes that are committed by the state or their agents against their own people
• Examples of state crimes

  • Police shooting of Mark Duggan
  • Actions taken by the British armed forces in Northern Ireland after the Bloody Sunday massacre
  • John Charles de Menezes shot by police after the London bombings in 2005
• The government recently failed to pass legislation that called for the immediate removal of flammable cladding from buildings affected by the Grenfell Tower fire
• Residents of buildings with the flammable cladding were unaware that they were victims of corporate crime
• Positivist victimology approaches initially denied Stephen Lawrence victim status despite being murdered by five white males
• The McPherson inquiry found that failings within the police were signs of institutional racism in the police force
• Phil Scraton outlined how the government were complicit in the victim blaming of football fans at Hillsborough
• Critical victimology examines the social construction of the victim which gives a voice to those that are denied this status by the media and the state
• Critical victimology draws attention to the conduct and denial of responsibility of those in power
• Critical victimology can be seen as limited in its reach particularly given its opposition to the narratives put up by mainstream media and the state