Victimisation

• Working Class

  • Marxism - Working class are victims of corporate crimes - Health and safety
  • Left Realism - Working class fear of crime.
• Matza

  Subtarrian values lead to young offenders.
• Males / Gender

  • Men are 2x likely to be victims of violent crime — Masculinity
  • Patriarchy Control (Heidenson)
  • Women in domestic violence.
• Ethinic Minority

  • Under reported - Institutional racism
  • They aren’t taken care of
  • Official statistics - Lack validity and the issue of the dark figure.
  • British crime survey - structured interviews.
• Positivist Victimology

  • Social problems and issues can be discovered in some way to improve through the use of scientific methods.
  • Based on exploration of the victim as somehow different to other people and that in some way they are different to others
  • Putting themselves at more risk.
  • Identifying people who have characteristics that predispose them to becoming victims.
  • Patterns can be established and therefore prevention strategies implemented.
  • Von Henting - Victims put themselves into various typologies, victims guilty for allowing or encouraging others to make them a victim.
• Positivists Victimology

  • Criticisms - Assuming that the identity of the victim is known and there is law i place to prevent that particular from harm
  • Criticism: They concentrate too heavily on crimes that involve violence or on property crime
• Critical Victimology

  • Challenge existing social order to see changes in society to make it more fair and just.
  • Marxism and Feminism - argue victims are constructed in a way that reinforces and justifies structural inequalities.
  • Argues that the state looks after its own interests and uses its power to apply the label of victim in a way in which deflects from the real inequalities in society.
  • Tombs and Whyte - the victim is blamed for the crime that is committed against them. For example in rape cases usually the behaviour of the rape victim who is scrutinised.
• Critical Victimology

  • Those who are victims of health and safety violations at work are often labelled ‘accident prone’ .
  • This process plays an ‘ideological function’ and sends clear message to victims who are often already marginalised and powerless - they are unable to seek or gain justice for the crime that had been committed against them.
  • Criticism: Ignoring the fact that not al crimes are committed against the powerless
  • Criticism: Ignores the fact that people behave in a less responsible way, they are partly responsible
• Primary Victimisation

  • Which refers to the victim who directly experiences the crime

  Secondary Victimisation

  • Refers to the negative experiences which people have when going through the process of reporting the crime for example, in rape.