Victimology and Measuring Crime

Vocabulary flashcards covering Victimology, victim classification, theoretical perspectives on crime, the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights, and crime measurement tools.

Victimology

An area of criminology that aims to understand the processes and effects of victimization, including awareness of victims' rights, their voice in the criminal justice process, and advocacy.

Victim

A person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action.

Primary Victims

Individuals who are directly affected or physically injured in a criminal event or accident.

Secondary Victims

Persons not directly impacted by a crime but who may have witnessed the event or must deal with its aftermath, such as family members or witnesses.

Tertiary Victims

Persons who suffer repercussions of victimization even though they were not directly involved in the event, such as support workers or police.

Survivor

A term preferred by some individuals (such as survivors of sexual assault or domestic violence) and organisations like battered women's shelters to reject the label of "victim" and retain agency and power.

Rape Trauma Syndrome (RTS)

A unique set of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms specifically linked to victims of severe sexual assault.

Victim-Blaming

A process whereby a victim is found at fault for his or her own victimization, often influenced by gendered and racial assumptions.

Victim Precipitation

A concept suggesting that victims influence their own victimization by provoking an offender or acting in a way that leads to crime.

Victim Impact Statement (VIS)

A written statement introduced in 1988, prepared by a victim of crime, detailing the physical, emotional, social, psychological, and financial impact of an offence for consideration at sentencing or parole hearings.

Canadian Victims Bill of Rights

Legislation enacted in 2015 establishing four core rights for crime victims throughout the criminal justice process: the right to information, protection, participation, and to seek restitution.

Lifestyle Theory

A theory developed by Hindelang, Gottfredson, and Garofalo in 1978 stating that an individual's likelihood of becoming a crime victim is determined by their lifestyle and choices.

Structuralist Perspective of Crime

A conflict theory perspective asserting that the Criminal Code reflects those in power and focuses on the unequal distribution of power in society.

Positivist Perspective of Crime

A consensus theory perspective viewing the Criminal Code as a direct reflection of societal consensus regarding values, norms, and collective beliefs.

Constructionist Perspective of Crime

A perspective holding that crime and laws are constructed through social interaction, questioning whether laws are applied equally and asserting crime rates reflect social processes.

Integrationist Perspective of Crime

An approach combining structuralist, positivist, and constructionist theories to include the philosophy/sociology of law, empirical crime studies, and implementation by authority.

Dark Figure of Crime

The proportion or volume of criminal incidents that remain unknown or unrecorded by official police statistics.

The Crime Funnel (Attrition)

The filtering process that systematically reduces the number of criminal cases as they move through the various stages of the criminal justice system.

Crime Rate

The measure of the overall number of police-reported crimes calculated as a percentage or ratio relative to the population in a given region.

Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Survey

A police-reported crime data survey first developed in Canada in 1962 and updated to UCR2 in 2009.

General Social Survey (GSS)

A population-based victimization survey conducted every 5 years in Canada to gather data on unreported crime.

Crime Severity Index (CSI)

A metric used in Canada to measure both the volume and relative severity of police-reported crime based on the seriousness of offences.

Memory Fade

A methodological issue in victimization surveys where a respondent forgets a crime event that actually occurred.

Telescoping

A recall bias in victimization surveys where a respondent mistakenly reports a crime event as having occurred more recently than it actually did.

Cybercrime

Deviant behavior or criminal acts committed over the Internet or computer networks, lacking a physical location and clear territorial boundaries.

Official Crime Statistic Process

The multi-step decision process outlined in Figure 4.1 showing how a criminal event transitions from perception and police decisions into an official statistic.

Victimization Survey Construction Process

The process detailed in Figure 4.2 showing how a criminal event involving a victim moves through recall, labeling, and reporting to become a victim statistic.