Understanding Victimology

• A victim is someone who experiences physical, emotional, or financial harm due to illegal activity.

Defining Victimology

• Victimology studies the causes of victimization, its consequences, how the criminal justice system assists victims, and how society and the media treat them.

Historical Context of Victims in Justice Systems

• Early justice systems heavily involved victims, aiming for retribution and restitution.
• Over time, the level of victim involvement has changed

Retribution and Restitution

• Retribution involves punishing the offender in proportion to the harm caused, aligning with the "lex talionis" principle (an eye for an eye).
• Restitution is when offenders provide money or services to crime victims, forming part of a larger goal of restoring the victim to their pre-victimization state.

Victim Precipitation

• Defined as the extent to which a victim is responsible for their own victimization.
• Mendelsohn's typology classifies victims by culpability, ranging from completely innocent to imaginary victims.

Subintentional Homicide

• Subintentional homicide involves victims contributing to their own death through poor judgment or risky behavior, like substance use.

Just World Outlook and Victim Blaming

• Victim blaming aligns with a just world outlook, assuming people get what they deserve.
• Victim blaming assumes inherent flaws in victims and advises them to change to avoid future victimization.

Social Movements and Victims’ Rights

• The women's and civil rights movements influenced the victims’ rights movement.
• These movements spurred the creation of victim programs, organizations, legislation, and policies.

Pro-Victim Legislation Example

• The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, including the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), funds research and partnerships to address violence against women.

The Original UCR

• Limitations of the original Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program included underreporting, overreporting, memory decay, lying, communication issues, and repeat victimization handling.

NIBRS Improvement

• NIBRS is an improvement over the original UCR program.
• There are cons to NIBRS.

National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)

• The U.S. Census Bureau administers the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).
• The NCVS uses screening questions to identify if someone was a victim of specific crimes, followed by an incident report detailing the victimization.
• Bounding involves keeping households in the same sample for 3 years and interviewing them 7 times in 6-month periods.
• The NCVS advantages include assessing reporting rates, while disadvantages include potential for dishonesty and communication issues.
• The dark figure of crime refers to the proportion of crimes not reported to the police.

Average Victim of Violence (2023 NCVS Data)

• According to 2023 NCVS data, the average victim of violence is slightly more likely to be female, Black, aged 18-34, never married, and with a household income less than $25,000.

Trend in Violent Victimization

• Violent victimization rates have declined since the 1990s.

Routine Activities and Lifestyles Theories

• These theories explain victimization by highlighting how activities and lifestyle factors increase proximity to potential offenders.
• Routine Activities Theory includes a motivated offender, suitable target, and absence of capable guardianship.
• Lifestyles Theory suggests people are more likely to interact with individuals of similar demographics (principle of homogamy).

Neighborhood Context

• 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.

Influence of Peers and Family

• Delinquent peers can increase victimization risk through peer pressure.
• Family factors like lack of supervision and domestic violence can also contribute to victimization risk.

Self-Control Theory and Age-Graded Social Bond Theory

• Low self-control can lead to criminal activity, increasing victimization risk.
• Age-graded social bond theory suggests that turning points like marriage or employment can decrease the risk of offending and victimization.

Victim-Offenders

• Victim-offenders are individuals with histories of both victimization and offending.

Dynamic Causal and Population Heterogeneity Perspectives

• The dynamic causal perspective argues that offending and victimization experiences influence attitudes and behaviors over time.
• The population heterogeneity perspective suggests that victim and offending are related to unchanging personality traits or environmental factors.

Dynamic Causal Perspective and General Strain Theory

• General Strain Theory supports the dynamic causal perspective by suggesting that strain leads to offending, indicating a causal relationship.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)

• ACE scores capture abuse (physical, emotional, mental), neglect (physical, emotional), and household dysfunction (divorce, mental illness, substance abuse, incarcerated parent, domestic violence).
• Higher ACE scores correlate with a greater risk of offending.

Routine Activities and Lifestyle Theories

• Routine Activities and Lifestyle Theories explain victim-offender overlap by suggesting that daily experiences influence both offending and victimization risks.

Self-Control Theory

• Self-Control Theory explains victim-offender overlap by pointing to low self-control traits such as impulsivity and poor emotional regulation.
• Gottfredson and Hirschi describe someone with “low self-control” as lacking the ability to delay gratification, lacking persistence, preferring thrill-seeking, and being self-centered with minimal frustration tolerance.
• Biosocial Explanations
• Biosocial explanations, like genetics, hormones, environmental toxins, and neurological conditions, are examples of the population heterogeneity perspective

Lifestyle Factors in Homicide

• Lifestyle factors explain victim-offender overlap in homicide.
• Pizarro et al. (2011) found that the majority of homicide victims and offenders had a history of violent/weapons offenses and drug arrests.

Bullying

• Bullying is the repeated intentional infliction of verbal or physical injury by a more powerful perpetrator over a less powerful victim.
• Childhood bullying victims have a greater risk for future offending.

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)

• IPV includes physical or sexual violence, stalking, or aggression in a romantic relationship.
• Victim-offender overlap is more likely in situational couple violence and violent resistance.

Prostitution

• Prostitution involves engaging in sexual conduct with another person in return for a fee.
• The gendered pathways perspective explains victim-offender overlap by suggesting that abused young girls may turn to prostitution as a means of survival.

Physical Injury

• Only about 24% of women and 19% of men are physically injured.
• However, injury is more common in non-stranger victim-offender overlaps.

Resilience

• Resilience is the ability to successfully adapt to difficult experiences.
• Understanding resilience helps explain differences in psychological reactions to victimization.

Anxiety and Depression

• Anxiety symptoms include heart palpitations, trembling, and panic.
• Depression symptoms include low self-esteem, prolonged grief, and suicidal thoughts.
• There is symptom overlap between anxiety and depression.

PTSD

• PTSD is a psychiatric condition resulting from traumatic events such as criminal victimization.
• Diagnostic criteria include experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event, feeling fear or horror, and re-experiencing the trauma through flashbacks or nightmares.

Neurobiology of Trauma

• Attempts to relieve pain, blocking out of memories, changes in affect to cope

Potential Negative Self-Image Issues

• Potential negative self-image issues that can arise from victimization could be self-blame, learned helplessness, and self-harm.

Economic Costs

• Economic costs from victimization include medical and mental health care costs, lost productivity, and reduced quality of life.

System Costs

• Fear of crime increases criminal justice expenditure and higher insurance premiums.

Crime Reporting Rates

• Females report violent crimes more often that men
• Black victims report violent crimes more often than White or Asian victims
• Lower income individuals more often than higher income

Reasons for Reporting

• Major reasons to report a crime is if the person believes it is important and to deter
• Major reasons to not report a crime is because it is a personal matter and they don't believe it justifies the resources

Restitution and its Goals

• The goals of restitution include repaying victims, rehabilitating offenders, reconciling offenders, and punishing offenders.

Problems with Restitution

• Problems with restitution orders is that judges fail to impose it due to victims not requesting it, victims failed to document the losses, and victims cannot calculate exact expenses.

How to Increase Restitution

• Ruback (2014) increased restitution repayment reminders increased the likelihood of restitution being paid.

Recurring Victimization

• Recurring victimization is defined as any victimization followed by another.
• There are different forms of recurring victimization.
• Recurring
• Repeat
• Re-victimization
• Poly-victimization
• Near Repeat

BJS Report on Violent Victimization

• Approximately 25% of victims were revictimized, and repeat victims are disproportionately involved in overall victimization.
• There aren't recurring victimization differences in gender
• Younger individuals have a higher rate
• Black individuals have a higher rate
• Intimate partner relationships often have more recurring victimization

Time Course in Recurring Victimization

• Time-course indicates how soon subsequent victimization occurs after an initial incident.
• Revictimization often occurs soon after the initial incident.

Crime Switching v Victim Proneness

• Crime switching is when a person experiences two different types of victimization
• Victim proneness experiences the same type of victimization as previously experienced

Individual-Level Risk Factors

• Individual-level risk factors for repeat victimization include male gender, younger age, unemployment, alcohol use, delinquent peers, PTSD and serious mental illness.

Macro-Level Risk Factors

• Macro-level risk factors are a greater amount of children in household, four or more cars owned, short time residing at address, urban areas, high concentration of single parent household in area

Risk Heterogeneity and State Dependence Perspectives

• Risk heterogeneity states certain risk characteristics may keep themselves at risk
• State dependence: victimization experience and post-incident reactions determine risk of future victimization

Theoretical Perspectives Integrating

• Compounding vulnerability
• Victimization salience
• Negative state dependence

Victim's Rights

• Once ignored by the criminal justice system, these days victims are now given a range of rights.
• It has been given to them through legislation

Victims Rights Legislation

• Notification, participation and consultation, right to protection, right to a speedy trial, rights related to evidence.

Marsy's Law

• Marsy's law covers more in-depth victims rights to confer with prosecution, be notified of his or her rights to be treated with dignity and respect through criminal justice proceedings, it is also a constitutional amendment

Zero Sum Game

• It is the concept of giving more victims rights also takes away rights from the accused

Civil Litigation

• A civil lawsuit is a lawsuit brought about by and between private parties
• Compensates with monetary damages
• The process is that victims have the power to sue and receive monetary compensation
• Benefits: Victims have more control, can be easier to meet the burden of proof
• Disadvantage: Expensive, can be time - consuming, there is no guarantee for monetary compensation

Third Parties

• Victims sue the third parties because they want them to be accountable even though they did not commit the crime directly
• Drawbacks of relying on insurance is that policies must be purchased before to crime, premiums can be high, deductibles are required

State Victim Compensation

• Funds are used to provide financial assistance to victims of crime to cover certain expenses that stem from this victimization
• Eligibility requirements are required to use the funds properly