Control, Punishment and Victims

• Some say victims are a social construction just as deviants are. Some people may not be seen as victims if they do not match the idealised image of one
• People can adopt 'victim' as a label. For some, this may become their master status
• The working class are more likely to be victims of crime, possibly due to living in low-income areas
• The middle class have a greater fear of crime
• Teens are most likely to be victims of theft, violence and sexual crimes
• Men are more likely to be victims of crime overall. 70% of homicide victims are male
• Women are more likely to be victims of sex crimes, domestic violence and trafficking
• Ethnic minorities are more likely to be victims, especially people who are mixed-raced
• The traditional view of a crime victim is someone who is white, female, innocent, and possibly elderly
• Statistics show that victims are usually male, 16-24, and from an ethnic minority
• Repeat victimisation is more likely to happen for some types of crime than others
• 14% of burglary victims suffered repeat victimisation vs 27% of violence victims
• Hayle identifies many reactions to being a victim, including PTSD, anxiety, sleeplessness and poor health
• Walklate talks about secondary victimisation, whereby someone is also a victim in the courtroom as defence teams discredit and blame them
• Miers says three things define positivist victimology:

  -Identifies factors that make an individual susceptible to becoming a victim

  -Looks at the relationship between victim and offender

  -Examines how victims contribute to their own victimisation
• Victim precipitation - how a victim interacts with an offender may contribute to the crime being committed
• Von Hentig's duet theory suggests criminals can be tempted by behaviours of victims - reflected in judgement on rape cases factoring in what women were wearing
• Positive victimology is essentially victim blaming, which is heavily criticised by feminists
• Positive victimology is based on subjective interpretations of events eg police reports
• Spencer and Walklate outline three features of critical victimology:

  -Examines the role of the state in creating victimhood

  -Looks at broader scale of crime, including people who don't know they're victims

  -Critiques the idea of victim blaming
• Tombs and Whyte say the state fails to acknowledge victim status of those affected by corporate or state crime
• Victims are often defined by their characteristics - for example men and working class people are less likely to be considered victims
• Grenfell Tower - cladding not made illegal, people just offered loans to replace it. Many people do not realise this makes them victims of corporate crime
• Murder of Stephen Lawrence not investigated properly due to assumption it was gang-related
• Scraton - Hillsborough disaster - deaths of fans were blamed on drunken behaviour rather than failings of the police and ground staff to ensure health and safety
• Critical victimology might have limited reach as it opposes mainstream narratives
• Clarke suggests situational crime prevention which draws on the ideas of rational choice theory. It implements target hardening, making specific targets more difficult to access
• Situational crime prevention targets specific types of crime, eg theft or vandalism, so it can implement strategies that are specific to the most pressing issues in an area
• Designing out crime - altering areas that are susceptible to crime to make this more difficult. For example implementing hostile architecture to reduce rough sleeping
• Reducing rewards and increasing risk, so that criminals are less tempted. This is why CCTV is declared - its main purpose is to deter criminals, not catch them!
• Felson looked at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York and found that altering the layout and redesigning parts like the toilets meant that all forms of crime were reduced
• Situational crime prevention may just create displacement - criminals are simply displaced to different areas, times, or types of crime instead
• Situational crime prevention ignores professional crime
• Situational crime prevention may be unfair to the working class who cannot afford many of the systems needed for it to work, eg security systems
• Welsh and Farrington found CCTV mostly reduced vehicle crime, but not much else
• Displacement does not always happen - phasing out toxic coal gas saw suicides by gassing fall to almost 0, but the total suicide rate fell, too
• Environmental crime prevention builds off Wilson and Kelling's broken window theory
• Environmental crime prevention aims to tackle signs of disorder in a neighbourhood and fix them immediately to send a message that the area is cared for and looked after
• Zero tolerance policing - police should tackle minor crimes and deviancy to prevent a transition into more serious crime
• Environmental improvement has been accused gentrification, as it makes areas too expensive for original residents to live in