Victim Offender Interaction Theory Coined by Marvin Wolfgang - Essay Example

Criminologists developed the term victim precipitation, which refers to murders that result from provocations by the victims. People act on purpose, before doing something; one makes a decision a process that involves the effective coordination of all the senses within the human system. It therefore becomes practically impossible to kill strangers or people, One can be a stranger but his murderer must obtain some prior information maybe from his contractor incases where one is paid to kill the other. In brief, Wolfman argued that murders result from interactions and the actions of the victims. Some murder victims instigate the conflicts that eventually result in their deaths (Simon &Yochanan, 1996).

Tedeschi and Richard Felson who avow that the interaction between the victim of murder and his murder is normally to blame borrow the ideas of Wolfman to develop the theory of coercive actions. School bullies are among a group of victims who purposely coerce others into violent attacks that may result in their deaths. The two assert that in violent attacks, males are normally more likely to injure their victims while females are more likely to be the victims. To this, they allude that gender is never a determinant of violent attacks but physical strength is (Zachary, Patricia &Paul, 1994).

Question 34
With the understanding that people engage in crimes purposely, Ronald Clarke and Derek Cornish developed the rational choice theory, which asserts that people decide to engage in crimes after considering several factors. One of these is the need to maximize pleasure and minimize pain (Zachary, Patricia &Paul, 1994). According to this theory, people engage in crimes that are likely to maximize benefits for them, such crimes on the other hand should present as minimal risks as possible, the benefits thus constitute pleasure while the absence of risks infers reduced pain. Additionally, people are more motivated to engage in criminal activities especially so when some economic benefits are attached to the crimes. Criminals therefore plan their crimes based on the amount of monetary benefits involved, the time it may take to complete the job, and the risk of apprehension (Simon &Yochanan, 1996).

The rational choice theory deduces that crimes are committed after effective planning and that most criminals employ some amount of intelligence to help them minimize the risk involved in a particular crime. With this thinking, law enforcement agencies can effectively curb crime by capitalizing on the identified motivators of monetary benefit, time, and risk of apprehension. By enacting extremely punitive laws against crimes, criminals would reconsider their involvement in acts of crime. Based on these assumptions, possible targets for planned crimes are therefore easily determined, such places as banks, jewelry shops, and superstores among other places that handle a lot of money daily should therefore complicate their security setups or reduce the amount of money they handle. This can be effectively done by referring clients to use plastic money instead of liquid cash. This would therefore minimize benefits while maximizing the risks involved in targeting such places (Adler, Mueller & Laufer, 2010). Read More