Introduction to Victimology

Introduction to Victimology

• Victims are individuals who experience physical, emotional, or financial harm due to illegal activities.
• Victimology is the study of the causes and consequences of victimization, how the criminal justice system assists victims, and how society addresses crime victims.
• Early justice systems involved victims significantly, with goals of retribution and restitution.
• Retribution is punishing the offender to the degree of harm caused, related to "lex talionis" (an eye for an eye).
• Restitution involves offenders paying victims for their losses, aiming for restoration to the victim's pre-crime state.
• Victim precipitation refers to the extent a victim is responsible for their own victimization.
• Mendelsohn's victim typology is based on culpability, ranging from completely innocent to imaginary victims.
• Subintentional homicide is when a victim contributes to their own death through poor judgment or risky behavior.
• The just world outlook believes people get what they deserve, linking to victim blaming.
• Victim blaming involves assuming something is wrong with the victim and advising them to change.
• Social movements like the women's and civil rights movements influenced the victims' rights movement.
• These movements led to victim organizations, legislation, and policies.
• The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act included the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), providing funding for research and partnerships.

Extent, Theories, and Factors of Victimization

• The original UCR had disadvantages, including underreporting, memory decay, and handling of repeat victimization.
• NIBRS is an improvement over the UCR.
• The NCVS, administered by the US Census Bureau, collects data on victimization.
• Screen questions in the NCVS determine if an incident report is filed, detailing the victimization.
• Bounding is keeping households in the NCVS sample for 3 years and interviewing them 7 times in a 6 month period.
• The NCVS advantages include assessing reporting rates. Disadvantages: potential for victims to lie, communication issues, underreporting and overreporting issues, only capture details on the most recent incident.
• The dark figure of crime refers to unreported crimes.
• According to 2023 NCVS data, the average victim of violence is slightly more likely to be a woman who is black, 18-24 years old, never married, and has household income less than $25K
• Violent victimization rates have significantly declined since the 1990s.
• Routine Activities and Lifestyles Theories link victimization risk to activities and lifestyles that increase interaction with offenders.
• Routine Activities Theory involves a motivated offender, suitable target, and absence of capable guardianship.
• Lifestyles Theory includes the principle of homogamy, suggesting people interact with those of similar demographics.
• Neighborhood context, including hot spots, family structure, structural density, and residential mobility, can increase victimization risk.
• Social disorganization theory explains that disorganized neighborhoods lack collective efficacy and have higher crime rates.
• Delinquent peers and family factors, like lack of supervision, can affect victimization risk.
• Self-control theory and age-graded social bond theory explain that low self-control and weak social bonds increase victimization risk.

The Victim-Offender Overlap

• Victim-offenders are individuals with histories of both victimization and offending.
• The dynamic causal perspective suggests that victimization and offending influence each other over time.
• The population heterogeneity perspective argues that victim and offending are related to unchanging personality or environmental factors.
• General Strain Theory demonstrates the dynamic causal perspective, where strain leads to offending.
• ACE scores capture adverse childhood experiences, including abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction.
• Research suggests a relationship between higher ACE scores and increased criminal offending.
• Routine Activities and Lifestyle Theories can explain victim-offender overlap, as daily experiences influence both offending and victimization.
• Low self-control is demonstrated by inability to delay gratification (impulsivity), preference for physical activity over cognitive activity, inability to control emotions (emotional regulation), etc.
• Biosocial explanations, like genetics and environmental hazards, are examples of the population heterogeneity perspective.
• Lifestyle factors, such as a history of violent offenses and drug arrests, can help explain victim-offender overlap in homicide.
• Bullying is the repeated intentional infliction of harm by a more powerful individual.
• Bullying victimization in childhood increases the risk for future offending.
• Intimate partner violence (IPV) includes physical, sexual violence, stalking, or aggression in a romantic relationship.
• Victim-offender overlap is more likely in situational couple violence and violent resistance.
• Prostitution involves engaging in sexual conduct in exchange for a fee.
• The gendered pathways perspective explains victim-offender overlap in prostitution, where abuse leads to running away and engaging in prostitution for survival.

Consequences of Victimization

• Not most victims are injured physically, most suffer from emotional and mental harm
• Resilience is the process of adapting to difficult experiences.
• Understanding resilience is important in explaining differences in psychological reactions to victimization
• Symptoms of anxiety include heart palpitations, trembling, sweating, hypervigilance, panic, sense of impending danger.
• Symptoms of depression include low self-esteem, prolonged grief, suicidal thoughts, loss of interest in activities.
• There is an overlap in symptoms including agitation, sleep disturbances, excessive worry, difficulty concentrating, etc.
• PTSD is a psychiatric condition resulting from traumatic events, like criminal victimization.
• Diagnostic criteria for PTSD include experiencing a traumatic event with actual or threatened death, and re-experiencing the trauma.
• The "neurobiology of trauma" explains differential responses to victimization.
• Negative self-image issues from victimization include self-blame, learned helplessness, and self-harm.
• Economic costs from victimization include medical care, mental health care, lost productivity, and lost quality of life.
• Victimization can generate system costs by increasing fear of crime and criminal justice expenditure.
• Females > males in violent crimes
• Older > younger in violent crimes
• Never married > married or divorced
• Urban slightly > than suburban residents
• Violent victimization > property victimization
• Lower income > higher income
• Black victims > White or Asian victims
• Reasons for not reporting victimization to the police include it being a private matter or not important enough.
• Restitution is money or services paid to victims by offenders.
• In 1983 it was ar 48 then slowly decreases, then had random spikes but in 2023 it reached 40
• Top crime concerns are identity theft, car getting stolen and burglary
• Activities avoided include driving through certain areas, going to crowded events, talking to strangers, and jogging alone.
• Goals of restitution include repaying victims, rehabilitating offenders, reconciling offenders and victims, and punishing offenders.
• Problems with it are cases failing to request it, victims fail to document losses, and victims cannot calculate exact expenses
• Offenders who received a monthly reminder were more likely to pay restitution and paid more money than all other conditions.

Recurring Victimization

• Recurring victimization is when a person or place is victimized more than once.
• Forms include recurring victimization (any victimization followed by another victimization), repeat victimization (same type of victimization occurring close in time), revictimization (any type of victimization occurring at different developmental period), polyvictimization (different types of victimization during the same developmental period), and near repeat victimization (same type of victimization at a nearby location).
• Approximately 25% of victims were revictimized.
• Repeat victims are disproportionately involved in overall victimization.
• No gender difference in recurring victimization.
• Younger individuals and Black individuals have higher rates of recurring victimization.
• The most likely victim-offender relationship in recurring victimization is intimate partner.
• Men are more likely to experience recurring victimization from strangers.
• Rape or sexual assault has the highest percentage of repeat victims.
• "Time-course" indicates how close in time a subsequent victimization occurs after an initial incident.
• Many repeat victimizations occur relatively soon after the initial incident.
• Crime-switching is when a person experiences two different types of victimization.
• Victim proneness is when a person experiences the same type of victimization as previously experienced.
• Individual-level risk factors for repeat victimization include male, younger age, unemployed, evening public transportation, alcohol use, delinquent peers, PTSD, and serious mental illness.
• Macro-level risk factors include low income, children, four or more cars, lack of neighborhood watch participation, lack of security devices, temporary address, urban areas, high density of single parent household, and neighborhood disorder.
• Risk heterogeneity suggests that qualities of the victim keep them at risk.
• State dependence suggests that victimization experience and post-incident reactions determine risk of future victimization.
• Compounding vulnerability, victimization salience, and negative state dependence are three integrated theoretical perspectives.

Victims’ Rights and Remedies

• Victims' are given rights through legislation
• Examples of common victims’ rights include notification, participation and consultation, right to protection, right to a speedy trial, rights related to evidence
• Marsy’s Law covers more in-depth victims’ rights as a constitutional amendment, such as the right to confer with the prosecution, to be notified of his or her rights as a victim, to be treated with dignity and respect through criminal justice proceedings.
• Marsy's Law differs from typical victims' rights legislation in that it is a constitutional amendment providing enforceable rights for victims
• The ACLU worries Marsy’s law as a constitutional amendment can infringe upon the rights of the accused.
• The zero-sum game implies that giving more rights to one person actively takes rights away from someone else.
• Civil litigation, where the process is different than criminal prosecution
• Third-parties are one of the reason why victims sue other people.
• Drawbacks of relying on insurance for victim compensation
• Arguments are made in support of and opposition to state victim compensation funds.
• Funding comes from who?
• The eligibility criteria is what?
• According to impact evaluations, what are some issues with these funds?