victimology

• miers - positivist victimology

  • defines positivist victimology as having three features:

  1. It aims to identify the factors that produce patterns in victimisation – especially those that make some individuals or groups more likely to be victims.
  2. It focuses on interpersonal crimes of violence.
  3. It aims to identify victims who have contributed to their own victimisation.
• Hans von hentig - 13 characteristics of victims

  • female
  • Old
  • young
  • depressed
  • immigrants
  • minority
  • the fighter
  • alone
• Wolfgang - victim precipitation

  • studied 588 homicides in philadelphia
  • found that 26% of the cases were where the victim triggered the events (victim precipitation)
  • e.g victim was the first to use violence
• evaluation of positivist victimology

  • brookman - Wolfgang shows the important of victim-offender relationships
  • ignores wider structural factors e.g poverty, patriarchy
  • victim blaming
  • ignores situations where victims are unaware they are victims of crime e.g domestic violence
• critical victimology

  • based on conflict theories
  • 2 elements

  1. structural factors - patriarchy, poverty place powerless groups at greater risk of victimisation (mawby and walklate)
  2. states power to apply or deny label of victim - 'victim' is a social construct. the state apply label of victim to some but not others. e.g 'Judge lets off sex offender then blames the victim' - the mirror news article
• mawby and walklate - structural powerlessness

  • argue, victimisation is a form of structural powerlessness.
  • therefore groups such as the working class, women, ethnic minority groups and young people are more susceptible to victimisation
• tombs and Whyte - safety crimes

  • show that ‘safety crimes’, where employers’ violations of the law lead to death or injury to workers, are often explained away as the fault of ‘accident prone’ workers. 
  • As with many rape cases, this both denies the victim official ‘victim status’ and blames them for their fate.
  • they are marxists that argue the state de-labels victims, create their own label to hide the crimes of the powerful
• evaluation of critical victimology

  • disregards the role victims may play in bringing victimisation on themselves through their own choices (e.g. not making their home secure) or their own offending.
  • too soft on the 'powerless' groups in society - doesn't look at how crimes can occur within groups of society not between