SOC2104 Student No: 700023991

Victimology Essay
Evaluate the impact of two social characteristics upon criminal victimization (e.g. age,
gender, ethnicity or socio-economic position etc.)

Criminal victimisation is the act by which an individual can su er harm, injury, or death
through a criminal o ence, for example, an individual may become a victim when they have
experienced theft, sexual assault or homicide. The term victim is widely debated throughout
criminological literature and history and discussions still remain today about who falls into
the category. Nils Christie in 1986 introduced the idea of an ‘ideal victim’ who is an individual
that when e ected by crime is given the status of victim immediately and the most sympathy
(van Wijk, 2013). Christie gave six attributes to the ideal victim including that they are ‘weak’
and ‘good’ and that the o ender must be ‘big’ and ‘bad’. While these attributes still in uence
media coverage of criminal victimisation, victims are not limited to the selection of ‘tick-
boxes’ he states. Many other factors must be included when considering who can be a
victim and how they’ve become one. In this essay I will explore two key social characteristics
on how and to what extent they impact criminal victimisation looking at both male and
female aspects of gender and the variation of ethnicity on violent crime in addition to
discrimination.

Police data, national statistics, and a plethora of studies show that men are twice as likely
to be a victim of violent crime (Dignan, 2005) with men aged 16-24 being the largest
demographic to receive hate crime in 2018 (Voice, 2019). While men are more likely to be
victims of violent crime, they also commit more violent and sexual crimes than their female
counterpart (Walklate, 2001) which, engaging in violence, in turn can lead the o ender to
become the victim (Dignan, 2005). Men are more likely to be victims of certain crimes such
as violence and cybercrime but they are also more likely to be in a position to be victimised
as they spend more time on the internet and have a lower perception of risk (Lévesque et al.,
2017). This illustrates how gender impacts victimisation by creating gendered activities and
opportunities that have certain types of crime associated with them. Men can therefore
assume the victim status more easily with violent crime or homicide as it is associated with
other male statistics. Men are more frequently the perpetrators of domestic violence but can
also be the victims. There is a lack of research on male domestic violence victims due to
societal assumptions about masculinity and the inability to report incidents (Newburn, 2017)
as men are told by society that they don’t t the ‘ideal victim’ type of weak or good as they
should be strong and they commit more crimes than women (Carrabine et al., 2020). Men
have weaker support systems than women which enables them to become secondary
victims easily when their signi cant other is sexually assaulted or raped as they often
struggle to manage emotions whilst also expected to support their partner (Smith, 2005).
This contradiction in male expectations to support but not be supported, emphasises female
victimisation value but diminishes the value of male victimisation. The support company
Voice receive a disproportionate number of female calls in comparison to the male
population proportion in crime statistics (Voice, 2019) suggesting gender has an impact on
victimisation by creating gendered stereotypes and expectations that cause men to be
considered victims less often than women by society, police, and themselves.

Women, own the other hand, are more likely to be a victim of sexual violence, domestic
violence and theft from a person (Newburn, 2017) and account for 94% of all completed
rapes but only report 36% of them to the police (Smith, 2005). UK law states that only
women can be raped (both men and women can be sexually assaulted and it is socially and
academically accepted that men can be raped too) which may account for the statistical
di erence in police reports, favouring female victimisation as women more readily t the
‘ideal victim’, but men fall prey to sexual assaults as well, just not as high of a rate. Despite
falling victim to rape at a higher rate, women aren’t always given the victim status as some
people believe the victim could have engaged in behaviour that was more reasonable and
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 SOC2104 Student No: 700023991

less provocative (Walklate, 2001) and that she is therefore to blame. Victim blaming can be
considered an additional form of victimisation as it reduces the victims worth as an individual
and adds layers of guilt and shame to existing negative emotions caused by the o ence.
Gender, therefore, can impact victimisation by easily removing the victim status when the
victim is involved in sexual crimes and can worsen the impact on individual. Women are also
victims to domestic violence which is underreported by police statistics and is considered
part of the ‘dark gure of crime’ but the CSEW gives a good insight nding that 5.7% of
adults aged 16 to 59 have been a victim of domestic abuse in 2021 (O ce for National
Statistics, 2022). Women may nd themselves in the position to receive higher rates of DV as
gendered activities such as being the ‘housewife’, results in more time at home and more
availability to be abused and those that experience DV are more likely to experience more
than one type of abuse at home (Newburn, 2017) which opens them to more victimisation or
re-victimisation. Additionally, if a victim is involved in a court case in regards to their abuse, it
may re-victimise the individual due to backlog issues, being grilled on the stand and made to
relive certain details, or seeing their o ender again can trigger them. Being female,
consequently, increases the chance of sexual criminal victimisation and re-victimisation.

In addition to gender, race and ethnicity is another important social characteristic to

explore. Data, such as the BCS, shows that those of a mixed ethnic background have the
highest rate of victimisation and even with other factors taken into consideration have a
signi cantly higher risk of victimisation than other ethnicities (Newburn, 2017). Throughout
the western world is it evident that there are racial di erences in access to education, health
services, social services, and legal institutions (Callanan, 2012) which can lead to groups of
ethnic minorities to gather in geographical areas such as council estates and here they are
disproportionally victims of crime by three times as much (Dignan, 2005). The risk of
becoming a homicide victim for black people is six times higher than a white person
(Newburn, 2017) and a study done in the Californian Flatlands area showed that while the
homicides of white people (1%) was proportionate to the white population, the proportion of
black victims (66%) was not (Douzet, 2012) illustrating the uneven distribution of violent
crime towards black people. ‘Racially aggravated o ences’ were only added into law in 1998
(Newburn, 2017) as the tackling of racism as a societal issue is still developing today. Racism
has often been downplayed in history with speci c victim status denied to the Jewish
population after World War Two as ‘everyone was a victim’ and racially motivated opinions
only gave the Jewish population claim over victimhood after years (van Wijk, 2013)
emphasising how ethnic minorities do not t the ideal victim type based on biased
stereotypes. Race, therefore, can impact victimisation by forbidding ethnic minorities from
automatically claiming the victim status while simultaneously increasing the risk for them to
become a victim. The existing distrust in police by ethnic minorities due to failures in policing
to not discriminate most likely assists the tensions between the two groups and illustrates
how black people have a higher fear of crime and becoming a victim (Callanan, 2012).

In addition to being a victim of violent crime, ethnic minorities are more likely to be victim of
the criminal justice system. While discrimination is deemed illegal by the Equality Act of
2010, ethnic minorities are disproportionately a ected by stop and searches with 52.6 for
every 1,000 black people compared to 7.5 stop and searches for every 1,000 white people
(GOV.UK, 2022). Some analysis of data on the topic suggests that there is no bias in stop
and searches due to sample numbers but other smaller studies conducted have proved a
large disproportion in the number of African-Caribbean cases comparatively to white cases
in the UK (Newburn, 2017). The death of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 opened an investigation
into the UK Police and the results exhibited clear signs of institutional racism in the criminal
justice system and new laws and policies were put into place to ensure all racist incidents
were reported by police (Carrabine et al., 2020) which in turn allowed ethnic minorities to
gain victim status easier. However, race still acts as a barrier to victimisation claims and an
accelerant to victimisation rates as racism still exits in the CJS today just less overtly. Black
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 SOC2104 Student No: 700023991

people were incarcerated at a seven to one ratio in comparison to white people in a 2011
analysis of incarceration rates and the rate of disproportionate incarceration rose even higher
with those from rural areas (Barnum et al., 2013). The disproportionate levels of ethnic
minorities in prison compared to proportions in the general population illustrate how the
criminal justice system victimises ethnic minorities by unjustly imprisoning them, making
them a victim of the system. The ‘three strikes’ law in California, again, disproportionately
a ects ethnic minorities as racial stereotypes and assumptions, as well as institutional
racism, creates a disproportionate arrest rate for ethnic minorities which in turn leads to
higher imprisonment rates when they gain three strikes for low level o ences (Douzet, 2012).
In addition, while in prison ethnic minorities are more likely to be discriminated against with
poor verbal treatment, abusive physical treatment, and lacklustre health treatment with more
ethnic minorities being a ected by sickle cell anaemia that is not given enough care within
prison systems, and moreover likely to die in custody (Newburn, 2017). Therefore, race
impacts victimisation by increasing the risk of mainstream crime against the individual but
also increasing levels of victimisation within the system believed to help them.

While there are many factors that contribute to criminal victimisation, race and gender are
key to the debate as they are factors that are a permanent feature for the individual and
clearly show signi cance in data such as the BCS. De ning a victim will remain an ongoing
discussion in criminology and therefore gender and race have varying impacts on both
de ning the victim and levels of victimisation within each characteristic. Men are evidentially
victimised more but women sit within the ‘dark gure of crime’ so are likely to be victimised
more than is estimated. Gender roles play a crucial role in crime type and therefore what
crime they will be a victim of, but as time moves forward society is slowly improving the
support systems in place for female victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse. Race,
however, still continues to present itself as an issue within the criminal justice system with
disproportionate victim cases of ethnic minorities existing today. To further this discussion it
would be bene cial to look at the cross-sectionality of both gender and race on victimisation.

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