Theories of Victimization in Criminology Explained

Introduction: The Rise of Victimization Theory

The fields of criminology and criminal justice have historically focused on understanding criminal offending rather than criminal victimization. However, a variety of paradigm shifts, scientific advances, and social and political forces since the 1960s and 1970s provided a foundation from which theories of victimization emerged.

In the latter half of the 20th century, a shift occurred among many scholars toward viewing "crime" as more than just the behavior of an offender. Instead, crime became increasingly viewed as a "system" involving not only an offender but also a target or victim, as well as a time-and-place context that supports or facilitates the victimization of the target by the offender.

Alongside this new paradigm, new sources of information about crime emerged, addressing limitations of data compiled from police reports (reported annually in the form of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program). Specifically, the early 1970s marked the emergence of the National Crime Survey — now called the National Crime Victimization Survey — which allows large amounts of information on crime events, from the vantage point of victims, to be collected and analyzed annually. This national effort set the stage for many subsequent victimization surveys in local communities and on special samples (such as high school students, college students, and women). These various victimization surveys, compared with official police data, allowed researchers to estimate more accurately the incidence and prevalence of crime in society, because they measured crime events whether or not those events were reported to police.

Beginning in the 1960s, a sociopolitical movement sought to provide more attention to victims and their rights within the criminal justice system. In response to this movement, more support services began to be provided to victims, and avenues were opened for enhanced victim involvement in the process of justice — for instance, through victim impact statements.

The confluence of these sociopolitical and scientific shifts was ideal for the emergence of various theoretical perspectives on victimization. These etiological perspectives focused on a wide range of causal influences, from routine daily activities and lifestyles to interpersonal interactional dynamics to broad-based social inequality. The major theories that emphasize these various influences are described in greater detail throughout the remainder of this entry.

Lifestyle-Exposure Theory

In 1978, Michael J. Hindelang, Michael R. Gottfredson, and James Garofalo published their book Victims of Personal Crime: An Empirical Foundation for a Theory of Personal Victimization. This work delineated the sociodemographic correlates of victimization based on an analysis of victimization survey data. They noted that particular subgroups of the U.S. population experienced greater risk of victimization relative to other groups. Specifically, men, younger adults, and African Americans were at increased risk in comparison with women, older Americans, and Whites, for instance.

To account for such trends in victimization risk, Hindelang, Gottfredson, and Garofalo argued that victimization risk was a function of lifestyle. In particular, men, younger adults, and African Americans tended to have lifestyles — including patterns associated with work, school, chores, and leisure — that exposed them to victimization opportunities. The specific features of lifestyles presumed to create greater exposure to crime included time spent in public (especially at night), time away from family or household members, and proximity to or association with high-offending groups. In short, these features of lifestyle shaped the opportunity for individuals to become crime victims.