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International De Victimologie
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Année 1, Numéro 2, Janvier 2003 JIDV.COM
ARTICLE
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Victimization as Process Part I: Crime, Victimization & Everyday Life |
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Par Douglas D. KOSKI [1] & John
STUART BATCHELDER [2] |
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1- Visiting Professor
& Research Scholar, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang City, Hebei
province, P. R. China ; Deputy Director, National Center for the Advanced
Study of Social Forces, New York, NY., United States of America. 2- Associate Professor, |
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RESUME A pragmatic victimization reduction
objective is to identify warning signals for victimization. If certain people are at high levels of
future risk, crime prevention resources—capable guardians among
them—can be used by those people to produce prominent reductions. Criminal victimization
comes in various forms. Predatory victimization, like all
criminal victimization, has at least three
measurable components : a motivated offender, a suitable target or victim and
often, however, it has a “fascinating third party, one that is not even
there” (Felson 1998 at 53), who needn’t even be human, who makes victimization possible—or at least makes the
offender’s job easier. MOTS-CLES Criminal
victimization – motivated offender – suitable target –
capable guardian - prevention |
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Retour au sommaire du JIDV 2003 1 (2) |
Criminal
victimization comes in various forms. In
most of us, the form that arouses the greatest fear is a violent, interpersonal
attack by a stranger or someone we barely know.
Such a predatory, face-to-face encounter is the least common category of
victimization—making up about 10-12% of all such events—but is the one we hear about most about
through the mass media. It
is also costly, not only by the fear it evokes, but also in the emotional and
financial toll it takes on its victims. In short, when we hear the word
“victimization,” interpersonal predatory victimization is what we
generally think about and precisely what we want to avoid.
Predatory
victimization, like all
criminal victimization, has at
least three measurable components. As
above, the two with which we are most familiar is a motivated offender
who may seek, but at minimum somehow comes into physical contact with, at least
one suitable target or victim. Often, however, it has a “fascinating
third party, one that is not even there” (Felson 1998 at 53), who
needn’t even be human, who makes victimization possible—or at
least makes the offender’s job easier.
This third party is a capable, but absent,
guardian: a policeman in the next block, a never installed
motion-detecting light, or my best friend’s childhood dog.
If we pause to think, “What
makes up criminal victimization?” we may tend to focus—some might
say dwell—on the criminal offender.
The stereotypes that surround this person may or may not parallel the
characteristics of all violent predators, but neither are they entirely
atypical. Generally he embarked on his
criminal “career” or life trajectory (path) into crime at an early
age (see, e.g., Blumstein and Cohen 1987; Laub and Lauritsen 1993; Sampson
and Laub 1993, 1988). More often than
not, his life began in an emotionally charged unstable environment. There he experienced repeated severe physical
abuse, emotional trauma, and showed signs of “hypermasculinity”
engendered by the absence of a father (see,
e.g., Amato and Gilbreth, 1999; Henrich, 1999; Ishii-Kuntz, 1994; Koski,
1996; McLanahan and Garfinkel, 1989; McLanahan and Sandefur, 1994; Munroe and
Munroe, 1992; Werner 1979).
Already physically, emotionally and nutritionally
neglected, as a preteen he began to drink alcohol and to obtain and use illegal
narcotic substances, perhaps partly attributable to his abuse and/or in an
attempt to “self-medicate” (Norden, 2001). This reckless consumption may have occurred
together with—or at least with the acquiescence of—a surrogate
father or other non-biologically related male that served as his role model.
In
addition to persistent addictions, he may have suffered other
psychophysiological maladies to include prolonged enuresis (bedwetting), and
has a history of truancy, fire setting and animal cruelty.
He and his mates were mutually aggressive, and if he developed any
“romantic” interest this relationship too was peppered with
violence because by then he was no longer a victim, but that to which Dilulio
(1995) has referred as a “superpredator” to whom violence is a
normal part of any close relationship (Dilulio 1995; compare Simons et
al. 1998, 1995; Wells and Rankin 1991; Wilson 1995).
In short, his life has followed a predictable cycle of
childhood abuse, early onset drug abuse, possibly self mutilation / tattooing,
a history of suicide attempts and trauma “so severe that he is unable to
think [his] way out of it and break the cycle” (Norden, 2001; see generally Blau and Blau, 1982; Blumstein and
Cohen, 1987; Christie, 1994; Farrington, 1995; Glueck and Glueck, 1950; Koski,
1998, 1996; McLanahan and Garfinkel, 1989; McLanahan and Sandefur, 1994;
Sampson and Laub, 1993, 1988; Wells and Rankin, 1985; Wolfgang et al., 1987, 1972; Wolfgang ,1958; Wright and Wright, 1994).
The
criminal act for which he is first imprisoned is not his first criminal
act. Despite his history he will not
claim justification or excuse through “mental disease or defect”
(the “insanity defense” in many jurisdictions) for at least two
reasons. First, he may risk spending
more time institutionalized than if he enters a guilty plea, even to the
maximum sentence authorized under law for his crime. Second, he is diagnosable only as a substance
abuser and “personality disordered,” and these are rarely
constitute a “mental disease or defect” sufficient to excuse crime.[1]
When
he was aged ten many of us would have felt regret for his circumstances, but
today he is big enough, and brutal enough, and frankly scary enough for most of
us not to care. If we do care,
rehabilitation is usually ineffective—he is “damaged
goods” beyond repair in most people’s view, even his. Prison will neither deter nor reform him
because prison feels comfortable to him.
In all but the most extraordinary circumstances, he is ultimately
released.
Like most other convicts he “lacks imagination
when it comes to relocation” (Koski, 1998) so he will find himself back
on the same streets, among the same people taking the same drugs, making the
same mistakes and troubling the same police as before; and like most other
convicts he will recidivate (re-offend) at a rate from 60 to well over 90
percent (Bureau of
Justice Statistics Special Report, 1989, 1987; Koski, 1996 and sources cited
therein). While he spends his
free time—and to him, all time is free time—committing crimes, he
lacks the skills and mental acuity necessary to plan and become successful at
it. He defines himself—as do the social
workers, substance abuse counselors and prison officials that surround
him—not simply as a loser, but as a double loser that failed even at
crime (US News & World Report, 1975).
Not only is this person the least amenable to change,
he is also the component that has the least bearing on the outcome of a
criminal—more properly a victimization—event. He is necessary, but not sufficient for
criminal victimization to happen.
Because he has less real control over the merger of the three components
in time and social space, our perceptions of his importance—and the
amount of energy and resources directed his way, may, depending on one’s
point of view, be misplaced. Moreover as
noted, such efforts are at best reactive, not proactive.
Since his
life experiences may include events like single- or multiple- offender forcible
rape victimizations, which in turn may foretell profound lifelong debilitating
effects both for himself and for his victim(s) (see, e.g., Atkeson et al., 1982; Berger,
1981; Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1997; Burgess and Holmstrom, 1978; Ellis,
1983; Ellis et al., 1981; Golding, 1996; Goodman et al., 1993; Katz,
1991; Koski, 2002; Maguire,
1991; Ruch and Chandler, 1983; Ruch and Hennessy, 1982; Ruch and Leon, 1983;
Ruch et al., 1980; Sales and Shore, 1984), we find it
productive to suggest a way by which to help remove one or both of the
remaining components from the picture.
In addition to an offender, predatory victimizations—robbery,
rape, nonsexual assault and homicide among them—also require a suitable
target, that is, a victim. At a minimum,
then, direct-contact predatory victimizations include at least one motivated
offender who comes into direct physical contact with at least one victim. These two elements are necessary to
interpersonal victimization, and also sufficient.
The answer
to the question, “Who
specifically is likely to become a victim of a crime?” may be a
surprising one. In research conducted
between 1948 and 1952, Marvin Wolfgang (1958) concluded that most crimes of
interpersonal violence are intra-racial; committed by people close in age and
of the same gender (usually male); and more often than not, between parties
known to one another—reinforcing later findings that most crime,
especially violent interpersonal crime, is perpetrated by people who are not
strangers to their victims. So despite
that we have narrowed the focus to stranger attacks, the larger and more
accurate scene is closer to Weis and Milakovich’s (1974) assertion that
one has more to fear from “whoever may be waiting for them at home than
anyone they are likely to meet in the streets, however dark and ill-lit they
may be.”
Several decades after Wolfgang
published his findings, researchers Lauritsen and Davis-Quinet (1995) extended
his and other analyses, which involved the distribution of offending—very few offenders
account for the vast majority of crime—to an analysis of the distribution
of victimization. The old joke that “Every 20 seconds
someone is burglarized in this country, and she is getting sick of it,”
turns out not so funny: some victims account for a disproportionate number of
victimization incidents, and previous victimization tends to predict future, or
repeat victimization. [The
“joke,” see Farrell and Pease (1993), is designed to
represent a state of “incidence concentration” in which a single
victim gets all the crime; see also, e.g., Farrell (1995).]
Lauritsen and Davis-Quinet
introduced two concepts they believed help to explain this. “State dependence” refers to the
hypothesis that prior victimization increases future risk because the initial
victimization experience alters something about the individual. “Heterogeneity” refers to the
hypothesis that prior victimization predicts future risk not because the
earlier victimization incident has changed the individual, but because the
individual possesses some unidentified knack, or propensity for victimization.
As it turns out, not all victims are
alike, that is, some people tend to become victims of some types of crime but
not others. Although different crimes
are associated with different risks, here is a look at those who are generally
at high victimization risk:
* young people
* males
* single people
* people who live alone
* people who work or go to
school—as opposed, for example, to retired people
* people who drink lots of alcohol
* people who go out a lot at night
* past (repeat) victims, as above
* people who themselves commit crimes
(Felson 1998 at 72).
One may notice that:
(1) These same things are associated
with people that offend, which helps to explain the last factor, that sometimes
people who are victimized are similar to (or even the same) people who
offend. This is a concept denominated
the “victim-offender link”: see, e.g., Hewitt 1988; Koski,
2003; Pokorny 1965; Riedel and Zahn 1985; and
(2) Under many of these
circumstances when a person becomes a victim, they are often seen as something
less than an “ideal” victim by the police, prosecutors, judges, the
public, the media, juries and sometimes even themselves (Bell et al.,
1994; Black, 1971; Block and Block, 1992, 1980; Bondurant and Donat, 1999;
Borgida, 1981; Borgida and Brekke, 1985; Borgida and White, 1978; Brandl, 1993;
Branscombe et al., 1996; Brekke and Borgida, 1988; Bryden, 2000;
Christie, 1986; Dietz and Byrnes, 1981; Estrich, 1995, 1987; Fischer, 1997,
1991; Kahneman and Miller, 1986; Kalven and Zeisel, 1971, 1966; Koski, 2003,
2002, 2000a, 2000b,1999; LaFree 1989, 1985, 1981; Lerner 1970, 1965; Lerner and
Matthews, 1967; Lerner and Simmons, 1966; McShane and Williams, 1992; Matoesian, 1993; Mitchell et al., 1999; Myers and LaFree, 1982; Note,
1968; Rubin and Peplau, 1975, 1973; Ryan, 1971; Shaver, 1985, 1970; Smith et
al., 1976; Stanko, 1981; Sudnow, 1965;
Suffet, 1966; Taslitz, 1999; Testa and Livingston, 2000; Testa and
Collins, 1997; Ullman et al., 1999; Ullman and Siegel, 1993; Vera
Institute of Justice, 1977; Walsh, 1986).
This “blaming the
victim,” as it was termed by William Ryan (1971) in his classic book of
the same name, seems to hold across groups as diverse as worshippers in
synagogue killed by random explosion; stranger and acquaintance rape victims
male and female; poor people; minority group members, including black people,
Spanish-speaking people, and aboriginal people; differently-abled people; and
survivors of tragedies, as in “survivor’s sickness.”[2]
As
noted, our preventative perspective suggests that a decrease in victimization
can be effected by changes in the everyday routines of potential victims, based
on the expectation that victims will become so when there is a suitable target
(above) unprotected by any capable guardian (below). It neither explains why people blame victims
for their misfortunes nor does it assume that potential victims have an
obligation to avoid any particular behavior.
Paraphrasing Felson’s (1998 at 179) explanation of its advantages,
they include:
(1) efficiently reducing crime at low cost;
(2) avoiding political controversies by giving all
people—after all, everyone is a potential victim—an equal right and
chance to participate;
(3) assisting the victims that need it most, for
example, repeat and potential repeat victims; and
(4) helping everyone think more clearly about crime by
accurately assessing its attributes.
The
preventative approach outlined here assumes that the motivation to commit
crimes and the number of people available to commit them remains relatively
constant. The celebrated observation by
sociologist Emile Durkheim over two centuries ago—that in every human
society there are always those willing to commit crimes, and for a variety of
reasons only some yet specified—is no less true today. This is the motivated offender.
Next,
victimization rates may decline apart from any changes in, or even speculation
about structural or cultural conditions.
For example, poverty is persistently called a driving force behind
crime, but sociologists disagree about whether poverty itself produces
crime, or whether the fact that only some people are poor elevates
crime. Fortunately, we need not today
resolve that discussion. This is because
criminal victimization can be reduced even without changes in any macro-level
conditions that may (or may not) motivate the offender.
Elaborating
on an observation made by Schwendinger and Schwendinger (1986 at 262) Koski
(1998) states:
In
everyday city life [crime] appears to emerge almost spontaneously without any macroscopic economic
and political determinants [as] choices freely made by youngsters. Even though severe economic, political and
ideological constraints are often operating behind the scenes, the profound
changes in these adolescents’ lives just ‘seem to happen’
because they are following the rules of the street.
In
other words, while crime may be driven by large socioeconomic forces beyond our
view, it doesn’t appear like that most of the time, when most of the time
we have other things to think about.
Here I am a suitable target, but free to make choices that
make me less so.
In this way, we remove from our perspective—and
more importantly from our reality—both the offender’s point of view
and the offender’s ability to inflict harm. We can visualize the preventative formula as
follows:
_fichiers/image001.gif)
Figure 1: Criminal Event Figure 2: Non-criminal Event_fichiers/image002.gif)
_fichiers/image003.gif)
_fichiers/image004.gif)
_fichiers/image005.gif)
_fichiers/image006.gif)
Potential, but non-victim
In Figure 1,
we see the grouping in social time and space all three elements of a
victimization event. In Figure 2, while all elements are
present they do not converge. We have
already seen that there are things different about the potential (but
non-victim) in Figure 2
from the victimized person in Figure
1. That is, some people at
greater victimization risk than others.
But it is so by reasons in addition to the habits of people.
Specifically, we note a third possibility pictured
below: a capable guardian is present, or appears sometime during
the victimization event, or doesn’t leave when needed—when it might
not be too late to prevent the otherwise occasioned harm.
The pictured guardian is nonhuman; this is by intent,
as many capable guardians are simple but effective nonhuman, sometimes
inanimate devices.
Figure 3: Non-criminal Event_fichiers/image007.gif)
_fichiers/image008.gif)
_fichiers/image009.gif)
Potential,
but
non-victim
Capable Guardian
Is crime
prevention complicated, outside this simple context? No.
Mayhew (2000a, 2000b) wanted to design a way to protect taxi drivers,
who are generally high-risk people. So
she developed a typology of eight risks to driving a cab, to include picking up
customers who appear inebriated, and those who hail from the street rather than
calling ahead. Based on these risk
factors she developed a list of avoidance strategies, or new routines, to
include the obvious—like not picking up customers that hail from the
street or who are drunk—and simple new inexpensive technologies such as a
ten-dollar flashing emergency light mounted atop each cab.
In Part II
of this series, reviewed is our “meta-analysis” of research studies
that have identified, over a period of nearly forty years, risk factors
associated with acquaintance rape. By
comparing what we found out about acquaintance rape risk factors with what
women do—and with what they might do otherwise—we have begun to
develop a typology of ordinary routines to help women avoid rape by someone
they know. In the next part we focus on
alcohol use as a risk factor and its relationship to rape victimization.
A
pragmatic victimization reduction objective is to identify warning signals for
victimization. If certain people are at
high levels of future risk, crime prevention resources—capable guardians
among them—can be used by those people to produce prominent
reductions. If we found out that a lone
woman really was burglarized every twenty seconds, we would doubtless
call her house a “hotspot” and station the police there
permanently.
Sociologists
increasingly understand the mechanisms that “cause” crime. That does not mean that effective crime
control measures cannot assist those in greatest need today. Victims need not wait until researchers have
solved—as Winston Churchill put it in another context—the
“mystery inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma” of criminal
victimization, its causes and control.
Once high-risk groups and prosocial—that is, less
“victimogenic” activities—are identified, individuals are
free to pursue or ignore these as they see fit.
What we have developed here is but a
broad outline; it is a relatively new but practical perspective. A promising step, which we take up next, is
to move beyond thinking about crimes perpetrated by strangers to thinking about
the considerably larger number perpetrated by people we know. Intellectualizations about the
“criminogenic” nature of societies, the sources of evil within them
and the motivational bases therefore probably are less fruitful than simply to
conclude that bad things happen—not just crime but additional health
threats. Like exercise and a good diet,
personal engagement in managing victimization risk may help to avoid meeting
with it.
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droits réservés - Journal International De Victimologie