Victims and the Criminal Justice System. CRIM102 Lancaster

Victims and the Criminal Justice System

• Victimological perspectives

• Researching victims

• Extent of victimisation

• Public policy

Victimological perspectives

• Positivist Victimology

  • Focused on

    • Victim precipitation

    • Victim proneness

      • Some people are more at risk than others

        • Similar to how some groups are more likely to be criminals

    • Victim culpability

    • Victim blaming

      • How are victims to blame for being a victim?

      • What is an ideal victim?

        • Vulnerable

        • Defenceless

        • Innocent

        • Worthy of sympathy

  • A lot of victimisation is hidden

  • Hierarchy of victimisation

    • Children near the top

    • Gang members near the bottom

      • Exists even though those near the bottom are often the most at risk

• Radical victimology

  • Associated with the feminist movement

  • Need to face up to the reality of crime from a social democratic perspective

  • Criminal victimisation has two elements

    • Geographically and socially focused on the most vulnerable aspect of society

    • Impact of victimisation is a product of risk rates and vulnerability

  • Does not deny the impacts of capitalism

    • Most crime happens to the poor

  • Wish to contextualise victimisation within the socioeconomic and political framework

    • Has mirrored several aspects of positivist victimology

      • Criticised for this

• Critical Victimology

  • Need for the development of an empirically based victim science

    • Do victims of crime have needs/rights?

    • Question of citizenship

    • Roles of the state

• Feminist Victimology

  • Examines the gendered dimensions of victimisation

    • Domestic and Sexual Violence

      • Led to the introduction of support systems for ‘surviors’

        • Rejection of the term victim

      • Attempts to make violence against women seem unusual rather than normative

    • Responding to domestic violence

      • Advocate 0 tolerance policing

        • Challenge police perceptions about domestic violence policing

      • Domestic violence as a social issue as well as a criminal issue

    • Responding to sexual violence

      • Creation of **** crisis centres

      • Only 16% of victims report

        • Due to fear of being blamed

        • 26% of people think the victim will be blamed

      • Desire to tackle secondary victimisation

    • Responses to disability hate crime

      • Police are not trained to deal with certain disabilities

        • Usually dealt with outside of the CJS

          • Lack of victim support due to this

• Male victims

  • Victims of hegemonic masculinity

  • Female victimisers

• Many different aspects of victimisation

  • Class

  • Ethnicity

  • Age

  • Gender

  • Sexual orientation

    • These aspects are also risks for offending

Researching victims

• What is a victim?

  • A person who has come to some form of harm due to the actions of another

• How much are crime and victimisation measured?

• How much victimisation is there?

  • Not just amount that is important

    • Extent and impact important too

• Who and what is victimised?

  • Not all victims are obviously victims

    • Hidden victimisation

      • Need to be answered to tackle the issue of victimisation

        • (Walklate, 2012)

    • Can use crime survey data to do this

    • Aims of crime surveys:

      • Level of victimisation

        • How many victims are there?

        • Is the rate of victimisation increasing?

      • Correlates of victimisation

        • Who are typical victims?

          • Poor people are systematically penalised for just being poor

            • Victims of the process and society

        • How is victimisation distributed?

      • Dynamics of victimisation

        • What is the relationship between the victim and offender?

        • Do victims resist victimisation?

        • What about…