Victims of Crime

Victim Patterns - Males

• 70% of homicide victims

Victim Patterns - Females

• 60% victims killed by partner/ex

• 31% intimate violence

• most likely to be victimised by an acquaintance

• 10x more likely to have reported sexual assault

• most likely to be killed by a friend or acquaintance

• less likely to be overall victims of violence

• more likely to experience repeat victimisation

Victim Patterns - Ethnic Minorities

• Much more likely to be victims of hate crimes

• Macpherson Enquiry - institutional discrimination

• more likely to experience secondary victimisation

• more likely to be young and unemployed

What do Positivist Victimologists focus on?

Focuses on individual factor which increases the rate of victimisation

What are Miers’ key ideas of Positivist Victimology?

• Aims to identify the factors that reproduce patterns in victimisation

• Focuses on interpersonal crimes of violence

• Aims to identify victims who have contributed to their victimisation

According to Wolfgang, what is Victim Precipitation?

26% involved victim precipitation (victim triggered the events leading to the homicide: e.g. they used violence first)

• often the case where the victim was male and perpetuator female

How does Brookman strengthen the Positivist Victimology approach?

Importance of victim-offender relationship

• interpersonal victimisation

• matter of chance of who becomes the victim

How is the Positivist Victimology approach criticised?

• Ignores wider structural factors influencing victimisation: e.g. poverty & patriarchy

• Victim blaming: Amir - 1 in 5 rapes are victim precipitated (no different from saying the victim derserved it)

• Ignores situation where victims are unaware they are a victim

What do Critical Victimologists focus on?

Structural causations of victimisation

• conflict: Marxists & Feminists

What are the key ideas of Critical Victimology?

• Structural Factors - patriarchy and power: powerless groups at greater risk

• State’s power to apply or deny the label of the victim - ‘victim’ is a social construct

According to Tombs and Whyte, what is Denial of Victim Status?

Workers die or are severely injured due to employers failing to abide by health and safety laws - normally explained away as ‘accidents’ or the fault of ‘accident prone workers’

• not given victim status!

What is the Ideological Function of the Denial of Victim Status?

Concealing the true extent of victimisation and its real causes - hides the crime of the powerful and denies it powerless victims

• hierarchy of victimisation - powerless are most likely to be victimised, yet least likely to be acknowledged by the state

How is the Critical Victimology approach strengthened?

• Valuable in drawing attention to the way that ‘victim’ status is constructed by power and how this benefits the powerful at the expense of the powerless

How is the Critical Victimology approach criticises?

• Disregards the role victims may play in bringing victimisation on themselves through their own choices or their own offending