NCJ Number
225283
Date Published
2008
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This chapter examines factors that have contributed to the criminal justice system’s focusing on crime victim‘s actions as factors in causing crimes to occur ("victim blaming"), with attendant mitigation of the offender’s criminal responsibility for the crime.
Abstract
Victim blaming is consistent with a set of beliefs regarding a just world in which actions produce consequences deserved by the actor. This belief implies that everyone has control over their lives and that victimization can be prevented if individuals take appropriate precautions and behave in certain ways. This belief system does not take into account that crime is often random, predatory, and unpredictable, such that even the most careful individual can become a crime victim. Victim blaming is also based on the view that for every crime threat there is a means of prevention if potential victims will only educate themselves and adopt recommended prevention measures for specific crimes. Also, victim blaming occurs because it is much easier to analyze the victim’s behavior and how it created the opportunity for the crime in some way rather than attempting to understand the motivations and impulses of the criminal. Further, focusing on the behavior of the victim as a presumed rational and law-abiding individual makes their behavior more amenable to rational critique and change. The offender, on the other hand, is viewed much like the animal who attacks a human who presents himself/herself as an available target because that is what predatory animals do. Assuming that crime is inevitable and that victims are responsible for finding ways to prevent and defend against it ignores that criminal victimization emerges from multiple factors that must be addressed by multiple socioeconomic and political institutions as well as individuals. 1 table and 31 references