1. VICTIMS & OFFENDERS

2. WHO IS A VICTIM?
• The concept of a victim is foreign to civil law,
which speaks instead in terms of people who
have been injured or wronged.
• The word victim denotes someone who has been
harmed through the kind of activity proscribed
by the criminal law.
• The term "crime victim" generally refers to any
person or group who has suffered injury or loss
due to illegal activity
• The harm can be physical, psychological, or
economic

3. Becoming a Victim?
• General risks of victimization disguise the
greater risks for some groups.
• Individuals within certain groups may fall victim
to many offences in a year whereas others in
different subgroups may never or rarely
experience a crime.
▫ Lifestyle may affect the likelihood of victimization

4. Nature of Victimization
• Social Ecology
▫ Violent crime more likely to take place in public, open
area – park, street, school, bar
▫ Time of day – between 6pm to 6am
▫ Urban areas

5. Important Victim Characteristics
• Gender
• Age
• Social status
• Marital status
• Race and Ethnicity
• Repeat victimization

6. Victim Characteristics
• Gender
▫ Males are more likely to be the victims of violent crimes
(robbery/assault)
 Except for rape or sexual assault
▫ Two thirds of women are victimized by someone they know or live
with
 Half of male victims are attacked by someone they know
▫ With the increase in gender equality, women’s victimization rates
are as well

7. • Age
▫ Victim risk decreases at age 25
▫ Elderly only make up 1% of the victim population
(teens 16-19 suffer 50 personal victimizations per
1,000; 65+ 2 per 1,000)
▫ More vulnerable to frauds and scams, purse snatching,
stealing checks from mail, attractive financial targets
▫ Elder Abuse
• Social Status
▫ Wealthy more susceptible to personal theft
▫ Across all gender, age, and racial groups, the poorest
are the most likely victims of violent and property
crime
▫ The homeless have very high rates of assault
victimization

8. • Marital Status
▫ Single people more likely to be victims
▫ Widowers lowest victimization risk
▫ Also influenced by age, gender, and lifestyle
 Young people who have the highest victimization
rate are too young to have ever been married
 Young, single people go out to public places more,
and are more likely to interact with high-risk peers
 Widowers older, interact with older people, and are
more likely to stay at home at night

9. • Race & Ethnicity
▫ Minority groups are more likely to be victims
• Due to income inequality, many racial and
ethnic minorities live in deteriorated urban areas
with high rates of violence
• Repeat Victimization
• Individuals who have been crime victims have a
significantly higher chance of future
victimization than non-victims

10. Becoming a Victim?
• Risk factors for acquaintance violence:
▫ Youth aged between 16-29 years
▫ Unmarried
▫ Having children below 12 years
▫ Living in an area where the rate of incivilities are
high
• Risk factors for stranger violence:
▫ Rates differ for men and women
 Men
 Age
 Lifestyle
 Women
 Area of residence
 Marital status

11. Becoming a Victim?
• National crime victimization surveys indicate
almost every American 12 and older will one day
become a victim of a common-law crime such as
larceny or burglary.
• > 75% of the general public has been victimized
at least once; as many as 25% develop post
traumatic stress syndrome and their symptoms
last more than a decade after the crime occurred

12. Victims and their Criminals
• Men are more likely to be violently
victimized by a stranger, and women by a
known person
• Most crimes are committed by a single
offender over the age of 20
• Crime is usually intra-racial
• Substance abuse is involved in about one
third of violent crime incidents

13. Minorities and Victimization
• According to the BCS, Afro-carribeans and
Asians suffer more victimization than whites.
• Maybe explained partly by locational and
demographic differences between, Afro-
carribeans, Asians and Whites
• Afro-carribeans and Asians are more likely than
whites:
▫ To live in the highest crime risk inner city areas
▫ To be more transient and less residentially stable
▫ To have lower household incomes
▫ To have larger proportions of youth
▫ To have higher rates of unemployment

14. Minorities and Victimization
• Crime is more often intra-racial than it is inter-
racial
• Most telling factor in racial victimization is
institutional racism.
▫ Rodney King incident
▫ Stephen Lawrence incident
• Institutional racism leads to a flagrant disregard
for the rights and needs of racial/ethnic
minorities and a failure to protect them and an
official victimization of minorities.

15. Minorities and Victimization
• African Americans more likely to be victims of
violent crime than European Americans
• Minorities experience income inequality in greater
number than European Americans

16. Victimization Theories
1. Victim Precipitation
2. Life Style
3. RAT
4. Deviant Place Theory

17. Victimization Theories
• What makes someone a victim?
• Victim as agent provocateur
• Victim characteristics contribute to
victimization
• Situational context
• Spatial characteristics
• Can we decrease our chances of being
victimized?

18. Victim Precipitation
• The degree to which victim is responsible for
own victimization
• Victim was “the first to slap, punch, stab..”
• The prevalence of victim precipitation in murder
and assault is contrary to the popular image
victims as totally innocent
• Interpersonal dispute is a dominant
characteristic of many homicides
• Five stages of escalation for typical homicide
• 1. Victim makes a direct offensive verbal attack
against the offender (40 % of victims initiate the
homicide drama by verbal threat)

19. Victim Precipitation
• 2. The offender interprets the victim’s words and
deeds as offensive
• 3. The offender makes the opening to “pay back”
the victim for the previous insult
• 4. The eventual victim “stands up” to the
offender’s opening, responding with increased
hostility
• 5. Commitment to battles ensues, the victim is
left dead or dying (35% of offenders carry gun or
knives, and nearly 65% leave the crime scene to
obtain weapons

20. Passive Precipitation
• Occurs when the victim exhibits some personal
characteristic that either threaten or encourages
the attacker
• Related to power
• Group of immigrants arriving to the community
and compete for job
• Love interest, promotion

21. Problems with Victim Precipitation
• Creates Culturally Legitimate Victim
• Excuses Offenders Behavior

25. Hate Crimes
• Vary in seriousness from genocide, ethnic
cleansing and serial killing at one end to name
calling and harassment at the other.
▫ Consequence - degradation of the individual
• Perpetrators of hate crimes see their victim as a
type “them” not “us” rather than as individuals
with rights and feelings.

26. Hate Crimes
• Hate crimes are evident in the following areas of
differences:
▫ Racial
▫ Religious
▫ Sexual orientation
▫ Gender
▫ Immigrants/migrants
• Much focus is placed on racial hatred and
discrimination.
• Not all crimes are hate crimes.

27. Lifestyle Theory
• Victimization is the function of the victim’s
lifestyle
• Going out in public places late at night, living in
urban areas
• High-risk lifestyles: drinking, taking drugs,
getting involved in crimes, leaving household for
a long time, etc
• Variations in lifestyle affect # situations with
high victimization risks that an individual may
experience
▫ People associate with
▫ Working outside of the home
▫ Leisure activities

28. Lifestyle Theory
• Someone who has drug dealer as friend is more
likely to be victimized than someone with
prosocial friends
• Dangerous times:
▫ Nighttime and weekends are the peak times for
most violent crimes, property offenses, and public
order violations
▫ Darkness is a criminogenic condition (fewer
people are around, higher rates of drug and
alcohol use, greater anonymity)

29. Lifestyle Theory
• Dangerous places:
▫ Dangerousness of particular physical locations
changes according to crimes
▫ Victims’ homes (homicide, assault, sexual
offenses)
▫ Streets around victim’s homes and deserted
areas near parking lots and entertainment
establishments (muggers and auto thieves)

31. Routine Activity Theory
• “Opportunity makes the thief”
• RAT argues that when a crime occurs, three
things happen at the same time and in the same
space:
• 1. a suitable target is available
• 2. there is the lack of a suitable guardian to
prevent the crime from happening
• 3. motivated offender is present

32. A Suitable Target
• The first condition for crime is that a
suitable target must be available
• There are three major categories of
target:
• a person
• an object
• a place

33. Potential Targets
• Four things make a target suitable to an offender and
these use the acronym VIVA:
• Value. The offenders value the target for what they gain
or value the effect they have on it
• Inertia. The size or weight of an item can effect how
suitable it is. For example, items such as CDs and
watches are suitable targets for shoplifters because they
are small and portable.
• Visibility. How visible a target is can affect its suitability.
For example, items left in view of a window or someone
counting money near a cash point machine are visible
targets.
• Access. If a target is easy to get to, this increases its
suitability. So, goods displayed outside shops, or
someone walking through a deserted street alone at
night are accessible.

34. Absence of a Capable Guardian
• A capable guardian is anything, either a person
or thing, that discourages crime from taking
place
• Police patrols, security guards, Neighbourhood
Watch schemes, locks, fences, barriers, lighting,
alarm systems, vigilant staff and co-workers,
friends
• A guardian can be present, but ineffective. For
example a CCTV camera is not a capable
guardian if it is set up or sited wrongly
• Staff might be present in a shop, but may not
have sufficient training or awareness to be an
effective deterrent

35. Likely Offenders
• Gain/Need: poverty, to feed a drug habit,
greed.
• Society/Experience/Environment: living in
a culture where crime is acceptable, because of
peer pressure, coercion, lack of education, poor
employment prospects, envy, as a rebellion
against authority.
• Beliefs: a belief that crime in general or
particular crimes aren’t wrong, as a protest on a
matter of principle, prejudice against certain
minority/ethnic groups.

38. The Opportunity Structure of Crime

39. Deviant Place Theory
• Victim prone to victimization because one resides
in a socially disorganized high-crime area
• The more often victims visit dangerous places, the
more likely they will be exposed to crime and
violence
• Deviant places include: poor densely populated
areas, highly transient neighborhoods and
commercial areas with residential property in close
proximity
• William Julius Wilson suggests White residents flee
high-crime areas, leaving racial minorities behind
to suffer high victimization rates

40. Repeat Victimization
Victim (SITTING DUCK) Problems
• Repeat victimization - victims repeatedly
attacked by different offenders.
• SITTING DUCK problems occur when victims
continually interact with potential offenders at
different places, but the victims do not increase
their precautionary measures and their
guardians are either absent or ineffective.

41. Victim (SITTING DUCK) Problems

42. • What factors predict chronic victimization?
▫ 1. target vulnerability: the victims physical weakness
or psychological distress renders them incapable of
resisting or deterring crime and makes them easy
targets
▫ 2. target gratifiability: some victims have quality,
possession, skill or attribute that an offender wants.
E.g. a leather coat
▫ 3. target antagonism: some characteristics increase
risk because they arouse anger, jealousy, or destructive
impulses in potential offenders. E.g. being gay or
effeminate may bring undeserved attacks or being
argumentative and alcoholic may provoke barroom
assaults
• Repeat victimization may also occur when a victim
doesn’t take defensive action
▫ E.g. abusive husband whose wife won’t call the police

43. The Extent of Repeat Victimization

44. Two Explanations for Repeat
Victimization
• Boost Explanations – repeat victimization
reflects the successful outcome of an initial
offense. Specific offenders gain important
knowledge about a target from prior experience
and use this information to re-offend.
• Flag Explanations – some targets are
unusually attractive to criminals or particularly
vulnerable to crime.

45. Types of Repeat Victimization
• True repeat victims
• Near victims
• Virtual repeats
• Chronic victims

46. Where Repeat Victimization Occurs
• Repeat victimization is most common in high
crime areas.
• Persons and places in high crime areas face a
greater risk of initial victimization and they may
lack the means to block a subsequent
victimization.
• In high crime areas, crime is so concentrated
among repeat victims that recurring offenses can
create hot spots - relatively small geographic
areas in which victims are clustered.

47. When Repeat Victimization Occurs
• Repeat victimization is sometimes most likely to
occur very soon after the initial victimization
(particularly for financially-based crimes).
• For example, studies suggest that the chances of
repeated burglary of homes increases in the year
following the initial burglary
• This may reflect an “insurance effect” whereby
the thieves return to steal property that was
recently replaced by insurance companies.

48. Linking Repeat Victimization to
Other Crime Patterns
• Hot spots
• Hot products
• Repeat Offenders
• Crime series
• Risky Facilities

49. Special Concerns
• Blaming the victim
• Increasing fearfulness
• Violating privacy of victims
• Displacing crime
• Unintended consequences