Introduction: According to Karmen, (2013, p. 2) Victimization is an asymmetrical interpersonal relationship that is abusive, painful, destructive, parasitical, and unfair. While a crime is in progress, offenders temporarily force their victims to play roles (almost as if following a script) that mimic the dynamics between predator and prey, winner and loser, victor and vanquished, and even master and slave. Many types of victimization have been outlawed over the centuries-specific oppressive and exploitative acts, like raping, robbing, and swindling. But not all types of hurtful relationships and deceitful practices are forbidden by law. It is permissible to overcharge a customer for an item that can be purchased for less elsewhere; or to underpay a worker who could receive higher wages for the same tasks at another place of employment; or impose exorbitant interest rates and hidden fees on borrowers who take out mortgages and use credit cards; or to deny food and shelter to the hungry and the homeless who cannot pay the required amount. Historically, the Latin term victima was used to describe individuals or animals whose lives were destined to be sacrificed to please a deity. The English word “victim,” like its French counterpart “victime,” is derived from the Latin word “victima,” which was originally used to signify a living being offered in sacrifice to the gods. It did not necessarily imply pain or suffering, only a sacrificial role. In the nineteenth century, the word victim became connected with the notion of harm or loss in general (Spalek, 2006). In the modern criminal justice system, the word victim has come to describe any person who has experienced injury, loss, or hardship due to the illegal action of another individual, group, or organization (Karmen, 2004). The term victimology first appeared in 1949, in a book about murderers written by forensic psychiatrist Fredric Wertham. It was used to describe the study of individuals harmed by criminals (Karmen, 2007). The modern meaning of the word has undergone considerable changes and is now used in a wide variety of contexts. One of the common usages of the word is to designate a person who suffers from the injurious actions of other people, things, or events. The literary meaning of the word "victim" is intimately linked to the emotional and psychological reactions the word evokes. While the word "criminal" is likely to arouse one's indignation, disapproval, and moral condemnation, the word "victim" inspires pity, sympathy, compassion, and commiseration. The criminal and the victim are usually perceived as opposites: black and white, night and day, evil and good, guilty and innocent, Cain and Abel, Goliath and David. Today, victimology refers generally to the scientific study of victims and victimization, including the relationships between victims and offenders, investigators, courts, corrections, media, and social movements (Karmen, 1990). According to Fattah, (Fattah 2000, 24), the study of victims and victimization has the potential of reshaping the entire discipline of criminology. It might very well be the long awaited paradigm shift that criminology desperately needs given the dismal failure of its traditional paradigms: search for causes of crime, deterrence, rehabilitation, treatment, just desserts, etc. Van Dijk has proposed that there are currently two major types of victimology (1999): general victimology and penal victimology, with major differences stemming from the definitions used to identify victims. General victimology studies victimity in the broadest sense, including those that have been harmed by accidents, natural disasters, war, and so on (Van Dijk, 1999). The focus of this type of victimology is the treatment, prevention, and alleviation of the consequences of being victimized, regardless of the cause. lnteractionist (or penal) victimologists, on the other hand, generally approach the subject from a criminological or legal perspective, where the scope of study is defined by criminal law. According to Van Dijk (1999, p. 2) “the research agenda of this victimological stream combines issues concerning the causation of crimes with those relating to the victim's role in the criminal proceedings,” where victims are only those who become such as a result of a crime. Generally speaking, this type of victimology advocates for victims, for their rights or in relation to certain types of prosecutions. There remains a level of ignorance regarding the nature and even existence of victimology across the professional spectrums that intersect with the subject. Most notably this occurs within the criminal justice system itself, which tends to be populated by those without a scientific, behavioral, or research background. A primer is therefore necessary. The purpose of this brief explanation/discourse, therefore, is to provide a brief history of victimology as it has evolved in relation to systems of justice until modern times, as a precursor to the development of forensic victimology as a subspecialty. It will then close with discussions on the rationale for the investigative and forensic use of victimology. If readers have not yet studied the Preface, now would be a good time to go back and do so.
History: It is important to acknowledge where the field of victimology originated and how it has developed. To that end, this section involves a general overview of the victim's role in various systems of justice throughout history. It will conclude with a more specific rendering of the contributions of selected victimologists, subsequent research, and its impact on the discipline. The concept of victim study as it relates to legal conflict is not new. In fact, it has been around for centuries in various forms. For example, Jerin and Moriarty (1998, p. 6) contend that there are three distinct historical eras defining the victims' role within justice systems: the golden age, the dark age, and the reemergence of the victim.
The Golden Age: In the so-called golden age, which Jerin and Moriarty suggest existed prior to written laws and established governments, tribal law prevailed. In much of tribal law, victims are said to have played a direct role in determining punishments for the unlawful actions that others committed against them or their property. It was reportedly a time when personal retribution was the only resolution for criminal matters. As such, victims actively sought revenge or demanded compensation for their losses directly from those who wronged. The victimological literature has often been the product of advocates interested in victim rights, legal reforms, and various liabilities, as opposed to those interested in objective study for the advancement of scientific knowledge. Therefore, some of the terminology used has been less than scientific and even partial. It is presented here purely in an effort to maintain the historical record.
History of Victimology
1990 Creation of the Cleary Act
1984 Federal legislation for victim compensation
1982 The President's Task Force on Victims of Crime
1981 April President Reagan creates first victim’s rights week
1971 Amir reports some victims precipitate their rape
1968 Schafer creates a new victim classification system
1965 California begins compensating victims
1956 Mendelsohn outlines victim classification process
1948 Hans von Hentig takes first look at victims
1931 First Uniform Crime Reports
Some victimology terms
Active precipitation: situations in which the victim directly provokes the offender.
Capable guardians: individuals whose presence or proximity discourages offenders from committing crime. These can be police, security, family members, or regular citizens.
Deification of the victim: the tendency to view the victim as lacking flaws.
This can happen after a violent crime, when investigators are given reports that victims were saintly in every aspect of their lives.
High-exposure victims: people routinely exposed to the possibility of suffering harm or loss.
Lifestyle theory: argues that some people are more prone to victimization because their behavior, habits, or customs expose them to a greater frequency of contact with crime and criminals.
Likely offender: one who is motivated to offend due to a variety of factors, including availability and vulnerability of victims, fantasy, and so on.
Low-exposure victims: people infrequently exposed to the possibility of suffering harm or loss.
Medium-exposure victims: people sometimes exposed to the possibility of suffering harm or loss.
Suitable targets: victims or objects that offenders perceive to be susceptible to their modus operandi.
Passive precipitation: when a victim exhibits some personal characteristic that unknowingly threatens or encourages the attacker.
Principle of homogamy: suggests that individuals are more exposed to the possibility of victimization if they frequently associate, or come into contact with, members of demographic groups containing high numbers of criminals.
Prostitute: any person who engages in sexual activity for payment.
Routine activity theory: examination of victim-offender interaction by considering the spatial and temporal structure of routine legal activities.
Situational exposure: harmful elements experienced by the victim resulting from the environment and personal traits at the time of the victimization.
Victim exposure: amount of contact or vulnerability to harmful elements experienced by a victim in everyday life as a consequence of biological and environmental factors.
Victim precipitation: the extent to which a victim plays a role, either knowingly or unknowingly, in his or her own victimization. Precipitation can be passive or active.
Vilification of the victim: viewing or casting certain victim populations as worthless or disposable by their very nature.Victim selection refers to the process by which an offender intentionally chooses or targets a victim. Each offender has h/her own selection criteria, which satisfies h/her specific needs. The need for a victim can be primary to the purpose of the offense (the offender’s motive) or it can be ancillary. Put another way, a particular victim can be the whole reason for the offense, or the victim may be chosen by other criteria as an object, selected for verbal and behavioral scripting into an offender fantasy. The major factors that can influence this decision-making process (which are not mutually exclusive) include the following.
Availability - refers to a particular victim's accessibility to the offender. It is related to the concept of offender exposure.
Location - refers to the victim’s particular locality in contrast to the offender's. It is often a function of both offender and victim activities and schedules and is also related to the concept of offender exposure.
Vulnerability- refers to the offender’s perception of how susceptible a particular victim is to their method of approach and attack. It is also related to the concept of offender exposure.
Relationship - refers to victims who are selected by virtue of being in a relationship with the offender (spouse, parent, family member, coworker, friend, roommate, therapist, teacher, etc.).
Symbolic criteria - refers to victims who are selected by virtue of sharing characteristics of those in a relationship with the offender (spouse, parent, family member, coworker, friend, roommate, therapist, teacher, etc.).
Fantasy Criteria - refers to victims who are selected by virtue of having traits that a particular offender views as desirable or necessary for the satisfaction of a particular fantasy. The nature of those desirable or necessary traits will be borne out in the victimology and the offender signature behavior. Remember that each of these can be, but is not required to be, an influence on the offender's decision to choose or target a victim. The criminal profiler must determine what selection criteria are at work for the offender at hand, as evidenced by a convergence of the behavioral evidence. This is best borne out in a thorough comparison of victimology and offender motive (determining who the victim really was, in light of what the offender believed he or she was doing with that victim in that crime scene).
What is the Stockholm Syndrome?
Penal couple A situation in which both parties bear some responsibility for the development of a victim-offender relationship and the suffering that results.
Maximalist view - An alarmist perspective that assumes the worst and calls for drastic measures to address a crisis
Minimalist A skeptical point of view that assumes many statistics are inflated and that their interpretation by maximalists exaggerates the true scope and seriousness of the crime problem.
Prevalence rate A research-based estimate of the proportion of the population that has ever experienced a particular type of victimization during their lifetimes up to that point in time; as distinct from cumulative risk or lifetime likelihood, which is a prediction about future events.
Some Victim Types: Classic typologies of victims (Von Hentig, 1948; Mendelsohn, 1956; Fattah, 1967) have been repeatedly discussed and critically evaluated in the victimological literature.
The born victim; Cultural types - Each/every culture creates its own popular stereotypes of offenders and victims. Society’s attitudes and reaction to actual offenders and actual victims are shaped by the extent to which they fit these images and stereotypes. The "ideal victim" is one such stereotype.
The ideal victim (Christie, 1986) The Culturally Legitimate Victim
Appropriate Victims Impersonal victims
Disposable/expendable, worthless, and deserving victims
Disposable/expendable victims Worthless victims
Deserving victims Structural types
Structural and cultural vulnerability often coincide and are difficult to distinguish or to separate. That is why several of the structural types listed above overlap with the cultural ones. But although the victimization of some structural types may be condoned or tolerated by the culture, the victimization of other structural types can be considered a cultural taboo. Young girls, for example, may be considered structural types in incest victimization, although incest is strongly condemned by the culture.
Behavioral types - Provoking, precipitation victims: The existence of a provoking victim type has been acknowledged for a very long time. Modern criminal codes recognize provocation by the victim as an extenuating circumstance that reduces a murder to manslaughter or makes a criminal homicide an excusable one.
Consenting, Willing, Inviting, Soliciting, and Participating Victims - Contrary to popular conception, criminal victimization does not always take place against the will or without the consent of the victim. Ever since crime came to be regarded as an offense against the Sovereign (and later against the State and society), the nonconsent of the victim is no longer a prerequisite for the constitution of the offense, not is the consent of the victim necessary to bring charges against the offender and to pursue the case until conviction.
Criminological types - One-time, occasional, recidivist, and chronic victims - The German psychiatrist Reimer Hinrichs (1987) was the first to use the label “chronic victim.”
Recidivist and chronic victims are of particular importance to victimological research as they can shed light on the factors and variables associated with certain types of criminal victimization, and they can enhance our understanding of the notions of proneness and vulnerability.
Who are the victims of crime? “The victim” is a social construction. We all deal in a conventional wisdom that influences our perception of the world around us. This wisdom allows us to characterize the victims of crime. Moreover, it defines for us just who is the victim in any situation. What this also means is that alternative victims can be constructed. Why we conceive of some persons as victims and others not as victims is a consequence of our commonsense assumptions (Quinney, 1972, p. 321).
Why Study the Victim?
Since the dawn of scientific criminology, criminologists have tried to find out why some individuals become criminal while others do not. They have conducted countless studies to discover whether criminals are different in any respect from noncriminals. An equally interesting and thought-provoking question is, Why do some individuals become victims of crime while others do not? Is criminal victimization a random occurrence? Is it due simply to chance factors, misfortune, or bad luck? Do victims of crime constitute a representative sample, an unbiased cross section of the general population? Do victims of crime differ in any way from nonvictims? How do offenders select their targets, and how do they pick their victims? But the study of victims of crime is by no means limited to these questions. There are many others for which research is seeking answers. The following are just a few examples:
- Why are certain individuals or groups of individuals more frequently victimized than others? Why are certain targets, such as individuals, households, or businesses, repeatedly victimized? How can the differential risks and rates of victimization be explained?
- Are certain persons or targets more prone and more vulnerable to victimization than others, and, if so, why? What is the nature of this proneness, and what are the elements of this vulnerability?
- Are there born victims, predestinate victims, predisposed victims? Are there recidivist victims? Are there victim stereotypes as there are criminal stereotypes?
- Are there specific characteristics or specific behaviors that enhance the risks and chances of 'criminal victimization, that are responsible for, or conducive to, becoming a victim? And, if so, what are these characteristics and these behaviors, and what role do they play in the etiology of victimization?
- Is there such a thing as victim-invited, victim-induced, victim-precipitated, victim-facilitated criminality? Do some victims promote, provoke, or trigger their own victimization? Do potential victims emit nonverbal signals, signaling their vulnerability to would-be assailants through gestures, posture, and movements?'
These questions and many others raise a number of issues and research topics that are quite different from those that have been the main focus of research in traditional criminology. Although the scientific study of the criminal is more than a century old, the systematic study of the victim is still in its infancy. And yet, it seems axiomatic that to analyze the crime phenomenon in its entirety and in all its complexity, equal attention has to be paid to the criminal and the victim. One can cite several reasons why the study of victims of crime is essential, indeed indispensable for a better understanding of the phenomenon of crime:
- Motives for criminal behavior do not develop in a vacuum. They come to be through drives and responses, reactions and interactions, attitudes and counter-attitudes. In many cases, the victim is involved consciously or unconsciously in the motivational process, as well as in the process of mental reasoning or rationalization in which the criminal engages prior to the commission of the crime.2 In some instances the motives for the criminal act develop around a specific victim. An examination of the place a victim occupies or the role the victim plays in these processes is necessary to understand why the crime was committed and why a particular target for victimization was chosen.
- The commission of a crime is the outcome of a process where many factors are at work. In most cases, crime is not an action but a reaction (or an overreaction) to external and environmental stimuli. Some of these stimuli emanate from the victim. The victim is an important element of the environment and of the criminogenic situation that gives rise to the crime.
- Often the criminal act is not an isolated gesture but the denouement of a long or brief interaction with the victim. In such cases it is not possible to fully understand the act without analyzing the chain of interactions that led to its perpetration. It would be futile to examine and analyze the offender's act in isolation from the dynamic forces that have prepared, influenced, conditioned, or determined it, and equally futile to dissociate it from the motivational and situational processes that ended in its commission.
- Current theories of criminal and deviant behavior, whether attempting to explain causation or association, offer only static explanations. Since criminal behavior, like other forms of human behavior, is dynamic, it can be explained only through a dynamic approach where the offender, the act, and the victim are inseparable elements of a total situation that leads to the crime.3
- The traits approach, which seeks the genesis of criminal behavior in the characteristics and attributes of the offender, is a simplistic approach. It needs to be replaced by a complex model of total interactions. Theories of offenders' attributes, personalities, or social background and conditions, do not explain why other individuals who have the same traits, same personality type, or same, or similar, upbringing do not commit crime or do not persist in a criminal career. They fail to explain why the offender committed a particular crime in a particular situation at a given moment against a specific victim. The traits approach either ignores or deliberately minimizes the importance of situational factors in actualizing or triggering criminal behavior.4 The study of victims, their characteristics, their relationships to, and interactions with the victimizers, and the study of their motivational and functional roles in the pre-victimization and victimization phases offers a great promise for transforming etiological criminology from the static, one-sided study of the qualities and attributes of the offender into a dynamic, situational approach that views criminal behavior not as a unilateral action but as the outcome of dynamic processes of interaction.
- As Anttila (1974) points out, the study of the victim has a general informational value. It provides information on the frequency and patterns of victimization and thus allows the measurement of risk probabilities and the establishment of risk categories (high, low, and medium-risk categories). It also provides valuable information on proneness to victimization, fear of victimization, response to victimization, and the consequences and impact of victimization. Such knowledge is essential for the formulation of a rational criminal policy, for the evaluation of crime-prevention strategies, for undertaking a social action aimed at protecting vulnerable targets, for increasing safety, and for improving the quality of life.
- The victim has a strong impact on criminal justice decisions, particularly those of the police and the courts.5 In most cases it is the victim who decides whether or not to mobilize the criminal justice system by reporting or not reporting the offense. Furthermore, the characteristics, attitudes, and behavior of victims, and their relationship to the offender, have a significant bearing upon the decision of the police to proceed in a formal or an informal way. In the latter case, victim-related factors can largely affect the final outcome. The study of the victim leads not only to a better understanding of the functioning of the criminal justice system but also to improving the decision-making processes within the system. Enhancing victims' involvement in the process and establishing the modalities of such involvement requires a better understanding of the role victims currently play in criminal justice.
- In order to fulfill society's better obligations to the victims of crime, and in order to be able to help, assist, and make the victim whole again, it is necessary to gain a thorough knowledge of the consequences and impact of the crime on those who are victimized. Moreover, an adequate knowledge of the various needs of victims of different types of crime is a prerequisite for setting up efficient victim services such as victim assistance and compensation programs. A better understanding of victims’ perceptions of, and attitudes to, the criminal justice system, the reasons for not reporting victimization, and the reasons for their refusal or unwillingness to cooperate with the system are essential to improving attitudes and enhancing cooperation.
- Modern criminology is paying more attention to, and placing more emphasis on, the concept of opportunity? The commission of many crimes is believed to be largely a function of the opportunities to commit those crimes. Opportunities, in turn, are viewed as being greatly influenced by the behavior of potential victims. The collective behavior of potential crime victims may have a strong impact on crime rates, and variations in those rates may be explained, at least partially, through differences or changes in victim behavior. For this reason, a better understanding of the attitudes and behaviors of the victims holds great promise for crime prevention. Victim-based prevention strategies have several advantages over the traditional offender-based ones. The former aim at hardening the targets, making the commission of crimes more difficult and less profitable. The role of potential victims in this environmental approach is a primary one.
As useful as the study of crime victims may be, it is not without its dangers. Anttila (1974) points out two potential dangers in victim-centered research:
A real danger is the possibility that interest will simply shift from the individual offender to the individual victim. Individual-centered research, in its narrowest sense, takes into account offender and victim independently. More sophisticated research also considers the interaction process and the general situational factors. But even then, if the problems related to society in general and to the volume of criminality are disregarded, the research results tend to be of little importance for decision making.
The growing interest in victim-centered research may lead to overemphasis on the types of criminal behavior in which there is an easily identifiable individual victim. This implies a concentration of research efforts on traditional types of crimes, such as assaults, larcenies, and sexual offenses. Some large groups of crimes seem to be neglected altogether, only because there are no easily identifiable victims (Anttila, 1974).
In addition to the problems inherent in or associated with, general criminological research, the study of the victims of crime has to overcome certain problems of its own.
Defining the Victim: Despite the frequency with which the word "victim" is used, it is not that easy to define victims or to answer the question, Who is a victim of crime? Recognizing the difficulty, the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics (United States, 1981) points out that for some crimes, such as rape or murder, it is quite clear who has been victimized. But for other crimes, such as welfare or insurance fraud, embezzlement, public corruption, or vagrancy, the victim is less clearly defined. To show how elusive the concept may be at times the Bureau gives the following examples: (1) Crimes in which corporate funds are taken may ultimately be paid for by shareholders. (2) Welfare fraud is absorbed by the taxpayers. (3) Public corruption may affect the trust of the general public toward officeholders. (4) For crimes of property in general, the economic loss involved may be absorbed by the crime victim or may be covered partially or entirely by insurance.
The victim in a literary sense: The English word “victim,” like its French counterpart “victime,” is derived from the Latin word “victima,” which was originally used to signify a living being offered in sacrifice to the gods. The modern meaning of the word has undergone considerable changes and is now used in a wide variety of contexts. One of the common usages of the word is to designate a person who suffers from the injurious actions of other people, things, or events. The literary meaning of the word "victim" is intimately linked to the emotional and psychological reactions the word evokes. While the word "criminal" is likely to arouse one's indignation, disapproval, and moral condemnation, the word "victim" inspires pity, sympathy, compassion, and commiseration. The criminal and the victim are usually perceived as opposites: black and white, night and day, evil and good, guilty and innocent, Cain and Abel, Goliath and David.
The victim in a legal sense: In law, the victim is the injured party, the person who suffers prejudice, damage, or loss as a result of a criminal act. The criminal law uses a purely objective criterion to determine who is the victim and who is the offender. The person who perpetrates the material act or omission is, in the eyes of the law, the offender, while the person who suffers the harmful consequences of the act or omission is the victim. Criticizing this superficial and unsubtle distinction, Hans Von Hentig (1948) wrote:
Most crimes are directed against a specific individual, his life or property, his sexual self-determination. For practical reasons, the final open manifestation of human motor force which precedes a socially undesirable result is designated as the criminal act, and the actor as the responsible criminal. The various degrees and levels of stimulation or response, the intricate play of interacting forces, is scarcely taken into consideration in our legal distinctions, which must be simple and workable. (p. 438)
Von Hentig adds that what the law does is to watch the one who acts and the one who is acted upon. By this external criterion a subject and object, a perpetrator and a victim are distinguished. In sociological and psychological terms the situation may be completely different, and in some cases, affirms Von Hentig, the two distinct categories merge, while in others they may be reversed. In other words, the legal conceptions of “criminal” and “victim” give prominence to material facts, while ignoring the psychological particulars of each case and the subjective attributes of the parties involved. Criminology, on the other hand, takes into account not only the objective but the subjective elements as well. Hence, the criminological conception of the victim does not always correspond to the legal one. Von Hentig (1948) stressed this difference as follows:
The law considers certain results and the final moves which lead to them. Here it makes a clear-cut distinction between the one who does and the one who suffers. Looking into the genesis of the situation, in a considerable number of cases, we meet a victim who consents tacitly, cooperates, conspires or provokes. The victim is one of the causative elements ... (p. 436)
The point Von Hentig makes is that the legal designations of criminal and victim do not always correspond to the actual roles both parties have played. Since criminology and victimology are interested in real and not assumed behavior, in actual and not presumptive roles, we may even go further than Von Hentig to suggest that objective research into the interaction leading to the crime proceed independently of the simplistic and superficial labels and designations of criminal and victim.
The victim in a criminological sense: Although the word “victim” is one of the staples of the criminological language, and although it was used to coin the term “victimology,” its real criminological meaning remains unclear and its utility remains in doubt. Just what does the term, as used in criminology and victimology, mean? Is it a label, a stereotype? Is it a state, a condition? Is it meant to assign a status, a role to the one so described? Is it a self-perception, a social construction, an expression of sympathy, a legal qualification, a juridical designation? And just how useful is the term “victim” to criminology?
If the victim designation is a label, and a debasing one at that, then we may ask whether it should have a place in the scientific language. While the label “criminal” has been widely criticized, the use of the label “victim” seems to generate few, if any, objections or criticism. Labeling theorists have decried the stigma, degradation, and stereotyping attached to the label “criminal” and have pointed to the danger of the person being so labeled identifying with the label. Victimologists, on the other hand, seem all too willing (even anxious) to use the label “victim” in a wide variety of contexts. It might well be that the designation is useful (or necessary) for legal purposes. However, the utility of the label, like that of other labels, for research and policy purposes is rather doubtful. The dichotomized nature of the criminal law requires that acts be divided into crimes or non-crimes or that the participants be assigned the status of criminal or victim (Christie, 1977). More neutral, objective, and value-free terms (such as those used in civil or tort law, for example, litigants) seem more appropriate and more useful for social science research. It is certain, for instance, that the concept of precipitation would have escaped a great deal of the criticism it received had it not had the emotional term "victim" attached to it.
In a paper on critical victimology, Walklate (1990) suggested that the concepts of criminal and victim might not be the most useful ones with which to proceed in the policy arena. We should also question the utility of these concepts for research purposes. One negative consequence of the present indiscriminate use of these labels is to perpetuate the popular stereotypes of the crime protagonists and to reinforce the notion that criminals and victims are as different as night and day. The readiness with which these labels are currently applied ignores the complementarity and the interchangeability of the roles of the victim and offender. Using these labels overlooks the fact that today's victims may be tomorrow's offenders and that today's offenders may be yesterday's victims (see Chapters 5 and 6). There seems to be little, if any, justification to apply these black-and-white labels simply on the basis of one discrete incident of victimization occurring during a brief period of time, be it a year or six months, which is what victimization surveys, national or local, actually do. Yet any call to abandon such labels, whose use is firmly entrenched, is bound to encounter fierce resistance and will even require changing the name of the discipline of “victimology” itself. Still, we hope to have succeeded in showing that these value-laden judgmental labels serve no useful research function and thus can be easily replaced by more neutral designations, such as “participants to the conflict,” “parties to the dispute,” “protagonists,” and so forth.
This neutral terminology has several advantages over the pejorative labels of “criminal” and "victim." First, it represents a much needed return to the notion of crime as a conflict (Christie, 1977; Kennedy, 1990) and the notion of conflict as an interaction. The criminal law is interested in actions; criminology should be more concerned with interactions. As Kennedy (1990) points out: Fundamentally, penal law looks more into acts than into interactions - which removes the negotiated feature of civil disputes from penal or criminal ones. Claiming becomes a process of defining an offender and a victim. But this transformation of the dispute does not deny its origins in conflict or the negotiation over punishment that occurs after the criminality is established. (p. 35). Second, the proposed judgment-free terminology reemphasizes the artificial nature and the arbitrariness of the distinction between crime and tort, and between criminal and civil law. A third benefit is to avoid the negative consequences (particularly the stigma) of labeling and to avoid the real danger of the participants' self-identification with their labels. Fourth, as sciences of observation and explanation, criminology and victimology need to use a guilt- and blame-free language and to abstain from using terms or labels that imply a priori value-judgments. The normative designations of "criminal" and "victim" imply such a judgment and therefore preempt a thorough and objective investigation into the real and actual roles each party played in the genesis of the crime.
Who is the victim of the criminal law? As mentioned above, not every crime has a direct, tangible, easily identifiable victim. Acts that are prohibited and made punishable by penal law may thus be classified, according to the type of "victims" involved, into several categories.
Crimes against specific victims: Most conventional crimes are committed against specific, individual victims referred to in law as the wronged, injured, or harmed party. This party can either be a natural person, juridical persons (a corporate body), or an animal.
A natural person is a human being, whether alive or dead. Certain offenses, such as homicide, assault causing bodily harm, rape, and so forth, can only be perpetrated against a natural, live person. Dead persons may also be the victims of some offenses, such as in the case of desecrating dead bodies or tombs.
Modem penal law equally recognizes the existence of juridical persons, that is, a number of natural persons grouped together in some form of association and having rights and obligations distinct from those of the individual members. The law acknowledges that juridical persons can be the victims of crimes committed against patrimony, honor, and so forth. In general, juridical persons may be public corporations (the State, provinces, towns or cities, public institutions, and so forth), private corporations (businesses, companies, syndicates and unions, societies and associations, and so forth), or international organizations (the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the Red Cross, and others). A large part of the so-called "white-collar crime" is committed by juridical persons. Libel, theft, and embezzlement are a few examples of crimes committed against corporate bodies. The State itself is the victim in crimes of treason, espionage, armed insurrection, and so forth. The specific victim may also be an animal as, for example, in the case of bestiality or cruelty to animals.
Crime against non-specific victims: All criminal offenses, whether against specific individuals or not, are supposed to be harmful to one or several social, political, legal, or religious institutions. Yet, there is a whole category of offenses that, by their very nature, are not directed against a specific person, natural or juridical. In such cases, the victim is merely an abstraction, for it is not a definable, identifiable individual who is wronged or who suffers the injurious or harmful effects of the offense. Public order, public morals, public health, public economy, the courts, and religion are all institutions protected by the criminal law, and, as such, they may be considered the nonspecific victims of certain offenses. Public peace is the abstract victim of offenses such as the acts of propagating false news or rumors likely to cause fear among the people, or acts of inciting people to disobey the law. Public economy and public confidence suffer from the acts of producing counterfeit money, forged public bonds, forged official documents, seals, and so forth. Public authority is collectively victimized in cases of rebellion, escape of prisoners, defilement of public monuments, and the like. The constitution is the abstract victim in cases where the administrative and judicial statutes are violated or in cases of conspiracy by government officials.
Crimes against a potential victim: Between crimes committed against specific or individual victims and crimes committed against abstract, nonspecific victims there is an intermediate category comprised of offenses against a potential victim. In such cases, the offense is not perpetrated against a specific individual. Nobody is actually harmed, though the dangerous nature of the act implies a threat of potential harm to an, as yet, undetermined victim. Such is the case with illegal possession 6f offensive weapons, dangerous driving or driving while the faculties are impaired (for example, as a result of alcohol consumption), the manufacturing of noxious products, and the sale of dangerous or harmful substances. In all these cases, the offense is determined by the perpetration of the act, even if no actual harm has resulted from it.
Crimes without victims: In some cases there is no victim, only two offenders who jointly perpetrate the prohibited act. This is the case, for instance, of incest between two consenting adults. In some jurisdictions (and this had been the situation in Canada until the criminal code was amended in 1969), the law prohibits homosexual acts and other sexual “deviations” among adults. The two parties involved may be charged and convicted. If, in any of these incidents, one of the two individuals involved is a consenting or willing minor, the criminal law establishes a legal presumption in his or her favor, thus assigning him/her the designation of victim. This legal presumption of victimization is established by law in favor of the minor, regardless of the facts of the case and the actual roles of the two parties in the commission of the offense . In other cases, the offender and the victim may be united in one person. This is the situation Von Hentig (1948) refers to as the "doer-sufferer": an individual who combines the roles of victim and offender. The wounded party in duels and suicide attempts and individuals who mutilate themselves or get another to mutilate them to escape compulsory military service are all doer-sufferers liable to different sanctions in most jurisdictions. In recent years, some social scientists, particularly Edwin Schur (1965, 1969), have drawn attention to what they call crimes without victims or victimless crimes. It seems paradoxical that acts are made criminal by the law when they have no victim. And it is certainly in contradiction to the popular concept of crime, which in the public mind is always associated with the idea of a criminal and a victim or with an individual who transgresses and another who suffers. Yet, as mentioned above, an act deemed harmful, dangerous, or threatening need not have a real or specific victim to qualify as a criminal offense. Still, there are certain offenses that cannot be easily classified in any of the previous categories. In such cases, there may be no discernible harm, and if the act involved any harm at all it is primarily harm to the participating individuals themselves. Rather than being harmful, dangerous, or injurious, the behaviors in question are simply immoral or sinful acts. Rubin (1971) defines victimless crime as "behavior not injurious to others but made criminal by statutes based on moral standards which disapprove of certain forms of behavior while ignoring others that are comparable." And Packer (1968) views victimless crime as "offenses that do not result in anyone’s feeling that he has been injured so as to impel him to bring the offense to the attention of the authorities.” Schur (1965), who used the term "crime without victims" as a title for one of his books, defines the concept as referring essentially to "the willing exchange, among adults, of strongly demanded but legally proscribed goods or services.” Schur feels that the concept should be limited to those situations in which one person obtains from another, in a fairly direct exchange, a commodity or personal service that is socially disapproved of and legally proscribed. He contends that in these situations there is not, in the usual sense, a direct and clear harm inflicted by one person against another. Thus the core of the victimless crime situations lies in "the combination of an exchange transaction and lack of apparent harm to others” (Schur, 1965, p. 171). Naturally, it can be argued that those so-called “victimless crimes” do cause some harm, of one kind or another, to one or more individuals. Schur (1969) accepts the argument that in each of the situations covered by the concept of victimless crime there may be someone who is, in some way, victimized. Thus the drug addict, the unborn fetus, and the prostitute may be viewed as victims of the drug peddler, the abortionist, the client, or the provider of organized prostitution. But he maintains that "because of the transactional nature of the offense, there is no victim in the conventional sense of a citizen complainant who will seek to initiate prosecution and give needed evidence to law enforcement authorities” (Schur, 1969, p. 195). It should be noted that the various categories outlined above are not mutually exclusive. Such a grouping is primarily intended to show how vague and loose the designation “victim” is. It is also meant to demonstrate that the existence of an individual or a specific victim is not the sole criterion that guides the legislator in criminalizing a given behavior.
The born victim: In the early days of criminology, Lombroso claimed that criminals are born. And in the early days of victimology some claimed that there are born victims. In 1941 Von Hentig (1941) suggested that "if there are born criminals, it is evident that there are born victims, self-harming and self-destroying through the medium of a pliable outsider" (p. 303). Von Hentig was simply reiterating what Aldous Huxley (1928) had already claimed in his famous novel Point Counter Point. Huxley (1928) argued that "there are born victims, born to have their throats cut, as the cut-throats are born to be hanged. You can see it in their faces. There's a victim type, as well as a criminal type." Another pioneer in victimology, Ellenberger (1955), a psychiatrist, believed that born victims do exist. He wrote: In summary, we contend that there are individuals, probably in great numbers, whom one could consider as 'born victims', in the sense that they attract criminals, not so much by external circumstances or fleeting event, but by reason of a permanent and unconscious predisposition to play the role of victim. (p. 277).
These views might have been acceptable at a time when determinism was still in vogue. At present, however, the concept of the “born victim,” in the sense of an individual doomed by birth to become the target of criminal victimization is, like the concept of the born criminal, universally rejected. In contemporary victimology, the fatalistic notion of the “born victim” is replaced by other probabilistic concepts such as predisposition, propensity, proneness, and vulnerability to victimization. It is argued that while few individuals may become victims by pure chance or through chance encounters, others tend by reason of structural or behavioral characteristics (such as life-style) to get themselves in situations or interactions likely to lead to criminal victimization. Still others may invite, induce, provoke, precipitate, or attract victimization
Cultural types: Each culture creates its own popular stereotypes of offenders and victims. Society’s attitudes and reaction to actual offenders and actual victims are shaped by the extent to which they fit these images and stereotypes. The "ideal victim" is one such stereotype.
The ideal victim (Christie, 1986): As used by Christie (1986), the term “ideal victim” does not refer to the person (or category) who most perceives himself or herself as a victim. Nor does it describe those who are in the greatest danger of being victimized or most often victimized. By an ideal victim Christie means a person (or category of individuals) who, when hit by crime, are most readily given the complete and legitimate status of being a victim. The ideal victim, writes Christie (1986), is as follows: A sort of public status of the same type and level of abstraction as that for example of a “hero” or a “traitor.” It is difficult to count these ideal victims. Just as it is difficult to count heroes. But they can be exemplified ... the little old lady on the way home in the middle of the day after having cared for her sick sister. If she is hit on the head by a big man who thereafter grabs her bag and uses the money for liquor or drugs - in that case, we come, in my country, close to the ideal victim. (pp. 18-19). The victimized "old lady" in Christie's (1986) example acquires the status of an "ideal victim" by means of at least five attributes:
1. The victim is weak. Sick, old or very young people are particularly well suited as ideal victims. The victim was carrying out a respectable project - caring for her sister. She was where she could not possibly be blamed for being - in the street during the daytime. The offender was big and bad. The offender was unknown and in no personal relationship to her (p. 19).
Christie (1986) gives a contrasting example of a far-from-ideal victim: a young man hanging around in a bar who gets hit on the head by an acquaintance who then takes his money. He points out that ideal victims need - and create - ideal offenders. The two are interdependent. The more ideal a victim is, the more ideal becomes the offender. The more ideal the offender, the more ideal is the victim. Ideal victims do not necessarily have much to do with the prevalence of real victims. Most ideal victims are not most frequently represented as real victims. The real victims are the negation of those who are most frequently represented. In all official counts, notes Christie, the man in the bar is a much more common victim than the “little old lady.” However, ideal victims are very much afraid of being victimized. There seems to be a strong relationship between the qualities that qualify a person for becoming an ideal victim and having a particular fear of being the victim of crime, particularly violent crime. Many among the real victims, on the other hand, do not fear, probably because they have more correct information regarding the real risks. They hang around in crime-exposed areas, but they know, by personal observation, that crime is only a minor phenomenon in these areas compared to all other life-activities that go on. The ideal victims, the “little old ladies,” get their information through the mass media. They have no personal control of the information conveyed. They get a picture of an area - an existence - where crime is the major activity (Christie, 1986, p. 27).
The Culturally Legitimate Victim: The concept of the culturally legitimate victim was first used by Weis and Borges in 1973 to describe victims of rape. They point out that socialization and especially sex-role learning exploit males and females and produce victims and offenders. The authors suggest that a male-dominated society, where most positions of power and influence are occupied by men, tends to establish and perpetuate the idea of the woman as a legitimate object for victimization. In such a society, social processes prepare the woman for her role as a potential victim and provide the procedures to make her a socially approved or legitimate victim for rape. The culturally legitimate victim is a broad type, and it is possible to identify several subtypes, that is, groups whose victimization is encouraged, condoned, tolerated, and not condemned by the culture. We will discuss below some types which are culturally regarded as appropriate targets for victimization.
Appropriate Victims: Cultural as well as subcultural norms designate certain individuals or groups as appropriate targets for victimization. In primitive societies, in youth gangs, and in other self-contained groups marked by inner solidarity, violence against members of the out-group is tolerated and sometimes encouraged, while violence against members of the in-group is strongly condemned. The normative system governing these societies or groups designates the out-group members as legitimate targets for victimization. A national survey of attitudes toward violence in the United States found that excluding people from groups to which one feels related can serve as a rationalization that justifies violence toward them or that makes violence inflicted on such people more easily accepted (Blumenthal et al., 1972; Conklin, 1975). In most jurisdictions, and this had been the case in Canada until the law was changed, forcible sexual intercourse with one's wife is not a criminal offense and is excluded from the code's definition of rape. The wife "raped" by her husband is a culturally legitimate victim. The concept extends to other forms of violence in the family. Despite growing concern over child abuse, children continue to be considered legitimate targets for the use of physical force in the process of training and upbringing. Also, until recently, husband-wife violence was often regarded as legitimate by the police and the courts. Even now, the unfaithful wife exemplifies the culturally legitimate victim in many cultures, and the husband who kills his adulterous wife is either exempted from punishment or treated with extreme leniency. Writing in 1969, Goode reported that, not long ago, courtroom practice in Texas supported the outraged husband who killed his wife and her lover when he caught them in flagrante delicto. And on Sunday, February 21, 1988, the investigative television program "60 Minutes" aired a segment on wife-killing and wife-mutilation in Brazil. The program showed actual cases of Brazilian husbands who slew, burned, or mutilated their wives with impunity. The program made it abundantly clear that female spouses in Brazil are culturally legitimate victims. In other words, they are "fair game" to their husbands.
Impersonal victims: Impersonal, nonspecific, and intangible victims, such as the government, large corporations, and organizations, are considered by many as appropriate targets for victimization. Victimizing them is subject to fewer (if any) moral restraints and arouses less guilt than victimization directed against a personal, identifiable victim. The impersonal and diffuse character of the victim and its intangibility .evoke little moral resistance in the person contemplating the victimization. Sykes and Matza (1957) wrote: Insofar as the victim is physically absent, unknown, or a vague abstraction (as is often the case in delinquent acts committed against property), the awareness of the victim's existence is weakened. Internalized norms and anticipations of the reactions of others must somehow be activated, if they are to serve as guides for behavior; and it is possible that a diminished awareness of the victim plays an important part in determining whether or not this process is set in motion. (p.668)
The idea of stealing from or cheating the government or a large organization raises fewer moral scruples than the idea of cheating a person or stealing from a family. In his study of crime and customs of the Hungarians in Detroit in the early thirties, Beynon (1935) found that certain coal-stealing gangs received a sort of social approval in the Hungarian colony. The reason for approval had nothing to do with the material act or its perpetrators but with the victim. The coal was stolen, not from some individual, but from the property of an impersonal, unknown railroad company, which translated, in their thinking, to the absentee nobleman in their home country from whose woods their parents used to gather firewood. The conversation between the researcher and the recording steward of a Hungarian church in Detroit illustrates well how impersonal victims are perceived as appropriate targets. In answer to a question Beynon (1935) asked about his fuel for the winter, the steward replied: We buy only stolen coal. It costs us $3.00 a ton which is less than half what we pay the coal dealers. The boys come and take our orders in the afternoon and then steal the coal at night from the cars on the railway tracks. Do you think it is wrong to steal coal or to buy stolen coal? No, of course not. You see, it is this way, stealing coal is different from other stealing. If I would take five cents of your money, that would be real stealing. You are a man just like me. I know you. I have never in my life stolen like that. No honest man would. Only the gypsies steal from other people that way. But coal stealing isn't like that at all. Why? The coal stands. there on that railroad tracks [sic}, and we never see the man who owns that railroad. It is an estate of some kind just like the estates in Hungary. Why should not the poor people get their coal from it? (pp. 763-764). Smigel and Ross (1970), who studied bureaucracies as victims, suggest that the size, wealth, and impersonality of big business and government are attributes that make it seem excusable, according to many people, to steal from these victims. Such popular attitudes are behind a modem preventive technique used by certain American enterprises in an attempt to personalize the victim, thus evoking pity and compassion in the potential offender. Thus, in certain motels in the United States a sign is placed in each room that reads, “If any towels are missing when you leave, the maid cleaning the room will be responsible for them.” Smigel and Ross see such a notice as a device to deter theft by evoking sympathy for an individual rather than for a bureaucracy.
Disposable/expendable, worthless, and deserving victims: What characterizes these three subtypes of culturally legitimate victims is society's attitude and reaction to their victimization. Normal public attitude to criminal victimization, in which a fellow citizen and human being suffers tangible injury, harm, or loss, is one of sympathy, compassion, and commiseration. The victimization of individuals belonging to these subtypes, however, does not evoke any of these positive feelings. In other words, nobody feels sorry for the victim. There is no outcry of indignation and little, if anything, is done to pursue those responsible for the victimization or to bring them to justice. When this occasionally happens, the sentence of the court is, more often than not, an acquittal or one of extreme leniency. Although these three subtypes of cultural victims are similar in many respects, they may still be distinguished from each other. The main difference between them lies in cultural stereotypes and social attitudes and in the way they are perceived and treated by the normative system of society.
Disposable/expendable victims: The attitude to “disposable victims” or “expendable victims” is one of hostility and antagonism bordering on hate, and their victimization is often welcomed with a sigh of relief. This is the lot that, in the past, was reserved for witches. At present, it is reserved for criminals and outlaws. Since they are disposable, they may be readily sacrificed and used as scapegoats to deter others or to show that society really means what it says when it threatens to punish those who commit crime. Whatever victimization they suffer, especially while they are behind bars, causes no uproar or even concern among the general public, who couldn't care less what happens to them. Their complaints, if ever heard, fall on deaf ears, as if they are not entitled to the same kind of protection the rest of society enjoys. Disposable/expendable victims are, to use a term coined by Spitzer (1975) in another context, “social junk.” That is why, whenever they are killed, whether by legal execution or by other inmates, the general reaction is one of “good riddance.”
Worthless victims. As a result of deeply anchored prejudices, our culture defines certain groups and the members of those groups as worthless. These are mostly people who are living in society but who are not really part of it. They have chosen their own life-style, which the majority does not approve of, and have decided to live on the margin of society. They have their own subcultures that neatly separate them from the rest of society. Social attitudes to “worthless victims” is one of contempt and their victimization is usually met with tacit approval. They are society's outcasts: homosexuals, prostitutes, pimps, drug addicts, vagrants, skid-row residents, and so on. The slang words used to describe them, such as “faggot,” “queer,” "whore,” “narc,” and “hobo,” reflect well the disdain society has for them and shape the general reaction to their victimization. Their status as outcasts renders them reluctant to seek the protection of the police or even to report their victimization. They are therefore regarded by potential criminals and juvenile gangs as easy targets who may be victimized with impunity. The general perception of their "worthlessness" also explains the laxity in solving their cases once they are victimized.
Deserving victims. These are victims who, through their dishonest, inconsiderate, deceitful, or reckless behavior, are seen as deserving their victimization. The popular judgment, passed when they are victimized, is one of “he only got what he. deserved.” This epitomizes society's attitude and reaction to this type of victim. Deserving victims fit both the cultural type and the behavioral type, depending on which criterion one uses for typologizing them: the behavior of the victim or society's attitude. The social attitude to deserving victims is one of indifference coupled sometimes with secret admiration for their victimizer. Their victimization is not met with the proper action but rather with inaction and, occasionally, with inner satisfaction. The perfect example of the deserving victim is the victim of a con game or some other type of swindle who was trying to steal, cheat, or realize some dirty profit but who finally got fleeced. Deserving victims are characteristically “dirty hands” victims or “guilty” victims. Because of this, their victimization, rather than evoking pity, sometimes elicits this comforting but wicked feeling that the “dirty bastard” finally got what he deserved. In the Oscar-winning movie The Sting with Paul Newman and Robert Redford, the elaborate con scheme revolves around a typically “deserving victim,” whose manners, arrogance, and dishonesty render him so antipathetic to those watching the movie that his victimization is met not with sympathy for the “sucker” but with applause.
Before we delve into the theories of victimization as discussed in the two books, we should be reminded that none of the books mention or examine/discuss the biogenic explanations of criminal behavior as a prelude or having any form of association with victimization/victimology. In fact, victimology does not concern itself with either the etiology (predisposing factors) or the epidemiology (how widespread) of crime and criminal behavior. It is rather concerned about or with the socio-cultural milieu, circumstances of offenders and the characteristic of offenders and victims. The question: why people become crime victims or the role of victims of crime in their own victimization, is very paramount in victimological studies. Hence, theories of victimology are sociological and spatial/environmental/geography rather than biogenic. For those of us who may have little background and knowledge in criminology and criminal justice, especially criminological theories, perhaps, it is appropriate that we recap the broad schools of criminology. There are three broad “recognized” schools in criminology. Within each school are several theories, perspectives and approaches. The schools are the Classical School; the Positive School - biogenic/biological; and the Sociological School (The Chicago School). Some distinguish between biological positivism and sociological positivism. Except a few books, most textbooks of criminal justice and criminology fail to mention the very first “school,” the Demonological Argument. So, in effect four broad schools can be identified within criminology. Moreover, most criminological literature and experts fail to mention the paradigm shifts within criminological thinking over the centuries. What is a paradigm and what is a paradigm shift? A paradigm represents a definite shift in orientation but less than a “scientific revolution.” According to Kuhn (1974) a paradigm shift is a dramatic change from past orientation. Most theories or orientations in social science can be considered to be paradigm shifts, however less dramatic. Although criminologists agree that Cesare Lombroso (Bk.: Criminal Man, 1876) is the father of modern criminology, it was rather the French anthropologist, Paul Topinard (1789) who first coined the term criminology. Lombroso was the first use the “Scientific Method” to study crime causation. For a discussion of the Scientific Method, refer to the work of Francis Bacon. The Scientific Method was first used by Auguste Comte to examine social issues. Comte called this new approach to the study of social issues/problems, “Positive Science” because for the first time he used the methods for the study of the natural sciences to study society. Comte coined the term Sociology and argued that this new discipline was the last attempt to unravel societal problems. For Comte, society has evolved from magical through metaphysical to positive thinking. Comte’s thinking was not different from most social theorist who also argued that society moves from simple to complex.
Mechanical (conscience collective) to Organic solidarity/division of labor Durkheim
Gemeinschaft to Gessellschaft Tonnies
Sacred to secular Becker
Apollonian to Dionysian Benedict
Folk to Civilization Redfield
Primary to Secondary Cooley
Family to Compulsory Interaction Sorokin
Simple to Complex society Maine
Simple to techno-bureaucratic Weber
The demonological explanation of crime fell into disuse after a paradigm shift that was largely brought about by the Enlightenment philosophers. This school, popularly referred to as the “Classical School,” was spearheaded by Cesare Bonesana, Marchese di Beccaria (1764) and Jeremy Bentham, etc. This paradigm shift was premised on the idea that human beings seek pleasure and avoid the pleasure-pain principle. This metaphysical explanation of crime causation was based on deductive and inductive reasoning, rather than science. According to this proposition, humans are rational and seek to the best in life and strive to avoid pain. Human beings are rational it means they take decisions conscious of the repercussions or ramifications that go with it. They are aware of what they are doing – aware if they act contrary to the existing norms – both conduct and legal or aware if they uphold these norms. Since humans are rational and conscious of their actions, they must be punished if they break the law. In other words, The Classical School explained that crime is the result of choices people make. Therefore, those who choose wrongly or those whose choices are against the law must be punished. Punishment must, however, serve as deterrence for the offender and anyone who might want to break the law. According to this school of thought, which became known as the “Classical School,” punishment should not be excessive and arbitrary – fit the crime. Punishment must be swift etc. Lombroso’s theory of atavism or born criminal, however, kicked against this reasoning and instead proposed that contrary to the Enlightenment postulation that human beings, most especially criminals are rational and therefore must be punished, criminals are rather sick and as such need treatment. According to Lombroso, the born criminal, who is insensitive to pain, is born with certain body malformations which predisposed him to commit crime. There is nothing a born criminal can do to stop committing crime. The body malformations include a scanty beard, tattooed body, pugnacious jaw, receding forehead, flat nose, etc. The born criminal is a throwback, or a person who belonged to the previous ape generation etc. the best way to deal with the atavist is to treat h/her. This led to such treatments as castration (actual and now chemical) and lobotomy, etc. It also led to the eugenic and many other theories and movements. The born criminal idea was severely criticized by most scientists, mostly social scientists from sociology. The result was emergence of the Sociological explanations, prominent among which was the Chicago School. Broadly, the sociological school is interested in the role of the social structure in crime commission. According this school, it is rather the in-build social inequalities that results in people deciding to commit crime. Prominent within this school are: Chicago’ social disorganization - social ecology & cultural transmission etc; anomie/strain; labeling; etc. Broadly, the three schools of criminology are the Classical School, the Biological School, and the Sociological/Chicago School.
Criminological theories could generally be grouped into three. These are:
1. Macro theories are broad in scope and deal with the epidemiology or the prevalent of crime. They are best characterized as those which explain the social structure and it effects. The sociological theories. Social and structural pathologies of society - the structure, economic or distribution of wealth, opportunity e.g. anomie, conflict theories. IE macro theories look for social pathologies of society or the social structure
2. Mezzo-theories are theories in between micro and macro. This includes the social psychological theories of learning, association, observation, imitation etc.
3. Micro-theories - are mainly concerned with the etiology/causes of crime. These are based on the assumption that a particular way of characterizing society is best. That characterization is used directly to explain how people become criminals (etiology). The focus is on individual pathologies - biological and anthropological explanations of crime and crime.