Week 4

This week we looked at old-school victimology and asked whether it had any insights for us now. The key point I drew from classical victimology was that victims (i.e. most victims) were seen as different from 'us', and as being part of the problem of crime. Specifically, victims were seen as involved with 'their' offender (the 'victim-offender dyad'); as provoking the offence ('victim precipitation'); as pathological ('victim-proneness'); and as marginal (the 'subculture of violence').

We don't believe any of this any more. Or do we?

What came out when I went on to look at 'lifestyle' and 'routine activities' approaches to victimology is that ideas of victim-proneness and violent subcultures haven't entirely gone away. The difference is that victimologists don't regard anyone as pathologically 'victim-prone' any more - but some victimologists do argue that victims make themselves 'victim-prone' by behaviour that exposes them to criminal groups and dangerous situations. There is a big difference between the two: classical victimologists would say that 'victim-prone' individuals and members of a 'subculture of violence' need to be treated as a problem in their own right; 'lifestyle' victimologists would say that those people need to take greater care and stop getting into risky situations. The key assumption they share - unlike the feminist and radical schools, which we'll look at next - is that crime is a marginal problem in a functional society: society is basically OK apart from this problem of crime at the margins.

In the seminar we focused on victim precipitation and came to the conclusion that it's not very useful as a way of thinking about crime: the victim may have said or done some bad or stupid things, but the offender chose to commit the offence and is still entirely to blame for it. This is even true where the offender was previously the victim and is retaliating against years of abuse.

(Or is it? Tough one.)