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Summary Victimology and the Criminal Justice System - Criminologische Wetenschappen KU Leuven
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Summary 'Victimology and the Criminal Justice System' - academic year 2023/2024.
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Summary: victimology and the criminal justice systemAcademic year – Prof. Pemberton.
Forms of research
Limitations of official statistics: data from police and courts.
1. Dark number:
Not all crime are reported or detected by police.
Not all reported crimes are duly (=correct) reported.
Many crimes rely on victim reports.
2. Accuracy:
o Differences in / changes in definitions.
o Depending on willingness and ability to register.
o Statistics can be manipulated (by police).
o Much depends on the questions asked.
→ Differences for cross-country comparison and understanding trends.
→ Lack of variables for further study.
Crime victim surveys: Surveys of people who are asked to report all cases where they have been a
victim of crime recently. Main purpose to offer a more reliable estimate of the volume of crime – one
that could also estimate the dark number.
Problems with victim surveys:
Difficulties in achieving a representative sample → reaching respondents: is there a
correlation between non-response and victimization?
Forgetting or not mentioning:
o Conscious: too personal for instance.
o Unconscious: cf. reverse record check.
Reverse record-check studies (Averdijk & Effers): the extent to which
crimes that are reported in one source can be traced back to the other.
Reverse checks: individuals who in the survey did not mention
victimization even though it appeared in registration.
Forward checks: individuals who said to have reported their
victimization, but there is no record of it.
Not knowing → Not knowing that a specific victimization is actually a crime → much
depends on how the questions are phrased.
Inaccurate information:
o Forward telescoping: moving experience forward in time to fall in the period of the
survey.
o Mentioning other people’s experiences.
Differences in productivity → Filling out a survey or answering questions is for instance
more difficult for people with a lower education.
Criminal perspectives on victimology
Victim precipitation – Hans Von Hentig
→ First victimological theory: about the role of the victim in the event of crime.
o Positive: how can victims protect themselves?
o Negative: should we blame the victim for his/her conduct?
Meant to develop a risk profile that would provide insight into the characteristics of those vulnerable
to suffering crime.
1
,Legalistic position to crime → Crime = an intentional act in violation of the criminal law without
defense or excuse and penalized by the state.
→ Critique from social scientists: this unqualified acceptance violates a fundamental criterion
of science: scientist must have freedom to define his own terms.
Changing views on crime:
1. Differences throughout history
2. Differences between countries and cultures
3. Difference in political perspectives
4. Different sides of political conflict
Victimological risk analysis
Victimological risk analysis = comparing actual victimizationrates per group and calculation of
riskfactors which and controlling them for other characteristics.
1. Lifestyle exposure theory = certain lifestyles increase exposure to criminal offenders.
Exposure to potential offenders → For example geographical living in a high crime area or
the social proximity by being out at night.
Attractiveness → For example the ownership and desirable and portable possessions.
Accessibility of victims: social and technical accessibility.
Reaction to crime.
2. Routine activities theory = victimization results from the interaction of everyday factors.
Presence of motivated offenders.
Availability of suitable targets → value, physical visibility, accessibility, inertia.
Absence of capable guardians → for example spending considerable time alone can create
vulnerability.
Attractiveness and availability of suitable targets by the CRAVED principle:
Concealable
Removable
Available
Valuable
Enjoyable
Disposable
The appropriate environment for committing crime depends on some crime generators → Crime
generators (hotspots) are places affording many criminal opportunities that are well known to
offenders. The large number of crime or disorder events is due principally to the large number of
place users and targets. Examples are shopping areas, transportation hubs, festivals, and sporting
events.
Research on intimate partner violence (IPV)
Family violence research: IPV results from family conflict.
Continuum of non-violent and violent behavior.
Use of Conflict Tactics Scale → IPV in family is …
o Very common
o Equally perpetrated and suffered by man and woman in heterosexual relationships.
o Most violence in the family is not serious.
o Results largely from frustration and escalation in routine conflict in the home.
2
,Gendered violence research = IPV results from patriarchal values in society → Initial interest in
wife beating and other forms of violence against woman.
Data from police and for instance battered woman shelters and crime victim surveys:
o IPV is frequent but much less prevalent than in family violence research.
o Victims are most often woman; perpetrators men → can be explained through
patriarchy and opinions about sexroles.
o Violence has serious consequences for the victim and is likely to escalate.
Micheal Johnson suggests a way out of this debate:
IPV is NOT a unitary phenomenon.
Use of different sample (biased) strategies which tap different types of partner violence. These
types differ in their relationship to gender.
→ The types of violence are defined by the degree of control not by characteristics of the violence.
If the behavior of both people in the relationship is considered, we can distinguish 4 basic types
of violence:
1. Intimate “terrorism”: one partner is violent and controlling → Part of a general strategy
of power and control: frequent violence; escalating; male perpetrated.
2. Mutual violence: both partners are violent and controlling → Gender symmetry.
3. Violent resistance: one partner is violent and controlling → Almost exclusively found
among woman in heterosexual relationships.
4. Situational couple violence: both partners are non-controlling, violence occurs as a
result: product of escalation of a couple conflict into violence → less frequent and serious and
gender symmetry.
A general framework: The Big Two
Victimization by crime involves an impaired sense of agency and communion and justice can be
viewed as an attempt to repair both these dimensions.
Agency = a person striving for individuality.
o Locke: threats to agency tend to increase agentic motives (to feel competent,
accomplished and empowered) → the act of confronting the offender or of
overcoming the felt anger and anxiety can serve the victim’s sense of self-mastery.
Communion = the participation of the individual in and connection with a group.
o Locke: threats to communion active communal motives (to be connected, understood,
and embraced).
Agency and communion are sometimes clearly distinguished in judgement behavior and motivation
but sometimes it is more complicated:
A combination of agency and communion
o Simantov-Nachlieli et al: victimization = experiencing powerless and loss of
control and a diminishing sense of competence, status, and honor → Agency!
But also, communion: damage to concrete relationships and experience of
trust in closer and more distant surrounding (more symbolic tokens of
unity and togetherness with social surrounding: values and norms in society).
Communion motives are often neglected / misinterpreted as agency motives.
Victims’ reactions along the dimension of retribution and value restoration (Wenzel, Okimoto
and colleagues): crime itself may be understood as a public wrong in that it transgresses the values
by which the political community defines itself as a law governed polity. An offence is a threat to
community consensus about the correctness of a rule and hence the values that bind social groups
together. If therefore not only says something about the victim but also about the community to which
the victims belong to.
Retribution as a payback to the offender → focus on achieving respect, status and standing
(agency).
3
, The offenders action represents an (implicit) attack on values in society while values represent
the symbolic glue of society → Value restoration focuses on repair of the transgressed
symbolic, moral connection to key norms in society (an example of communion-based
motivation).
Given the fact that the same behavior might result from very different motives the goal-directed
act itself may be unclear.
Child victimization: developmental victimology
Children run a greater risk, but child victimization is often not detected / reported → The
younger the victims, the less likely that victimization will be reported to law enforcement.
Poly-victimization = a victim who has had several victimizations → 10% of young victims
suffered more than 7 instances of victimization in one year.
Finkelhor: Stranger danger? A plausible principle of developmental victimology is that
younger children have a greater proportion of their victimizations at the hand of intimates and
correspondingly fewer at the hands of strangers because they live more sheltered lives and
spend more time around family – Cf. pattern which occurs because the responsibilities created
by children’s dependency status fail primarily on parents and family members – the main
individuals in a position to violate those responsibilities in a way that would create
victimization.
Young victims suffer the same consequences as adult victims, and they suffer from much
victimization specific to childhood. The importance of dependency:
Children also suffer from offenses that are particular to their status. The main status
characteristic of childhood is its condition of dependency which is a function of social and
psychological immaturity. The dependency of children creates what might be thought of as
a spectrum of vulnerability: the victimization types that children suffer from can be
arrayed on a continuum according to the degree to which they involve violations of
children’s dependency status.
o Mix of victimization threats that face children on different ages.
o Differentiate how children at different stages react and cope with the challenges
posed by victimization.
Three types of child victimization based on prevalence:
1. “Pandemic” victimization = often seen as no crime but happens to a majority of children
at some time in the course of growing up → E.g., sibling and peer assault, theft, vandalism,
robbery.
Deserves greater attention if only for the alarming frequency with which they
occur and the influence they have on children’s everyday existence.
2. “Acute” victimization = less frequent and occur to a sizable minority but maybe on
average of a generally greater severity → E.g., physical abuse and neglect and family
abduction.
3. “Extraordinary” victimization = very low prevalence but attract the most attention →
E.g. (child abuse) homicide and stranger abduction.
Complexities of child victimization:
1. Crime: conventional crimes with child victims.
2. Child-maltreatment: acts that violate a child’s welfare statute (also indirect victimization:
children witness or are closely affected by the crime victimization of a family member or
friend) → throughout the years there has been a change in how we see this.
3. Non-crimes: acts that would have been crimes if occurring between adults but are
generally not seen so between children → The cultural assumption is that these acts are less
serious or less criminal when they occur at earlier stages.
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