Victimization and Crime Prevention - Essay Example

Victimization and Crime Prevention The whole issue of being a victim involves not only the place where the victimization took place but also the time, the event itself and the reaction of both the victim and other people around. One might react as a victim and at the same time the people around may see that person in a different light, say a victor. A person may have the personality of always feeling like he is a victim where the society does or does not see victimization taking place. It can be noted that the feeling of the victimized person are not that important as compared to what the society feel. Bearing this in mind, it is of essence to identify an ideal victim as that type as a person who is seen by the society as a deservedly a legitimate and a complete victim. The status of being a victim is same as to that of the traitor or a hero. Considering several factors, an ideal victim may be qualified by the following attributions: being sick, very young or old; being on the process of undertaking a very noble project like taking care of her sister; being out in street at daytime; of the offender being bad, big, unknown or who is not of relation to the victim. Taking for instance the case of a young man who have being seriously injured by another person in a bar and his money taken, may not be taken with the same seriousness as to that of an old lady who might have undergone the same ordeal. This is because the young man could be of the same body posture as the offender, the victim could be assumed to have known his attacker and more so being in close proximity to him. In addition the victim would have averted the catastrophe by refusing to make his presence in the bar at the first place. To make the matters worse, by the virtue of being in a night club, may be strong ground of disqualifying the case of the young man as an ideal victim thereby conclude in this scenario that the old lady is a true reflection of what an ideal victim should be. What is coming out clearly here is that the attribute of ‘age’ is carrying more weight in the determination of an ideal victim. This does not mean that when two victims are put alongside, the older the victim the higher the chances of her or him (sometimes) of becoming an ideal victim. In another scenario like that of a young girl who while traveling back home from seeing a seek relative is physically assaulted and in the process raped. If this is compared to a case of a mature woman who faces the same misfortune while coming from a club at night or to put it more correctly, a prostitute who happen to draw the attention of the police by claiming that she has been raped. Of the two cases, it cannot be lost on the part of the society in determining what an ideal case and victim is. It is the young girl who will be considered to be an ideal victim (Christie, 1986). When the spotlight turns to family front, a husband who may be reported to the police of having had raped his wife may not be counted as an offender. This is because there is a belief doing the rounds out there that some women engage in a marriage by virtue of providing services. There are many instances where wives are beaten by their husbands not to mention the ever increasing cases where children face even more brutality on the hands of their so called protectors-parents especially fathers. The argument against battered wives and children becoming ideal victims here is in the sense that, many extended families have extensively shrunk on their part they have been replaced by the nuclear ones. The latter are by no means accommodating the servants and the children are blamed of behaving sexually and provocatively. Men have also come out with strong reasons as to why they do beat their wives (Christie, 1986). According to feminists, children are supposed to be protected by their fathers from those monsters who lurk in the parks and streets. This is to the benefit of the families and the society at large. These criminals once caught they should be kept behind bars for life and the victims taken care of. The man of the house should, make sure that the wife is protected from the intruders who might cause this or that harm to them. But this feminist argument is countered by men ’Weltanschaung’ who claim that their authority in the family should go unchecked. This position many a times have been supported by the authorities when called upon to settle family conflicts, blush them aside claiming that it is a house noise ‘husbrak’ which by far does not make ideal cases. Above these arguments, there are arising argument and counter argument in the support of women as ideal victims. Those who are pro-argument, they are proposing that women should be seen as ideal victim in that they are not as strong as men. The more they are able to report this brutality the more they create the credibility of being counted as ideal victims. On the other hand, the anti-argument says that with material empowerment of women, has created an ideal condition in considering them to having possessing the same strength as men especially when they are in a position of leaving so as not to be beaten. In the old days, old women were accorded some respect for most of them were witches and so they possessed some power of sort. This resorted to them at times being killed by the virtue of their wickedness and so we can conclusively say that they were not ideal victims for they were not weak. Their role has changed and that is why it is very likely for public to be angry towards those people who do hurt them today (Trevor-Roper, 1956). The situation of an ideal victim must be created by an ideal offender. It is also correct to argue that ideal offender is as a result of ideal victim. According to Christie there are three types of unsuitable offenders (1986). The first one is that person who import dangerous drugs in huge volumes and sell it to people who come to suffer after using the drugs. The seller himself does not take the drugs abut he carries on with the drug business purely for profit. But it is very rare to get these type of criminal because majority of the drug baron do use the drug themselves (Bodal, 1982). The second type of the unsuitable offender is that violent one who is familiar to the victim and at times is in an intimate relation to the victim. An ideal offender should be very different from the victim. For example a drunkard who has been assaulted by another drunkard cannot represent an ideal victim/offender. A good example of a third type of unsuitable offender is the Norwegian guards who tortured and killed fellow citizens in concentration camps (Christie, 1952).The guards received these orders from their bosses who happen to be Germans. The guards here are not categorized as ideal offenders because they were known by the people the either tortured or killed (Christie, 1953) Another area of interest is in differentiating ideal victims from real victims. The first difference is that the report of ideal victim is widely covered and talked about than that of the real victim. The other difference as proposed by Balvig is that the real victim are never driven by fear of being victimized because though they are always aware of the area where they can easily be victimized, they take comfort in expecting that the chance of them being victimized is at that time low (1982). There is always manifestation of fear on the part of the ideal victim because they view themselves as the potential victims if the happen to be at crime prone areas (Olaussen1983, p.123). The discussion will now turn it focus on a high profile criminal case of John Wayne Glover. He was born in England in 1932 and after sometime he joined the army. He did not take long before he was discovered to be a small time thug. This did not go down well with his army seniors who recommended that he was not fit to continue being in the army service. So he was relieved of his services on the grounds of being involved with a crime of stealing. At the age of 24, Glover decided to migrate to Australia maybe to start a new life where nobody knew of his past. The first city he settled was Melbourne and later went to stay with his wife’s parent in Sydney a place called Mosman. He had been blessed with two children and he was at the time working at Four and Twenty Pies as a salesman and at times he volunteered at the home of senior citizens. Earlier on he had a troubled relationship with his own mother Freda, who used to bring different men in their house and this maybe led him to start developing hatred towards elderly women. He did not also like his mother-in law. Surprisingly, those he was close to, talked of him as a friendly and trustworthy person. Immediately he entered Australia, he continued with his habit of stealing and he was caught and charged not only of stealing but also of severally assaulting women .He was lucky to escape with bond of good behavior (Kidd, 2010). Case at a point is when a young woman in her mid twenties was attacked as she was passing through dark alley on her way home. It was reported that she had been hit by a blunt object and as she screamed her attacker run away. She was to be later found herself bleeding profusely and her clothing torn. At this time Glover was working for ABC. Many more cases of women being assaulted and at times killed were extensively reported. What suggested that the attacks were carried out by the same person is how all the victims were attacked in the same manner-hit by a blunt object and strangled by their pantyhose. Between 1989 and 1990 attacks towards elderly women increased by a great margin .Margaret Todhunter, an 84-year-old woman was attacked and killed in January of 1989.Later Glover admitted having followed along Hale Road in Mosman. He killed her and took other items and $209 from her purse which he spent at RSL club later that day. The next victim was Gwendoline Mitchelhill who was 82 years old. She was attacked two months later as she entered her apartment in Military Road. Another two months had not passed before Winfreda Ashton who was two years older than Mittchelhill, had faced the same ordeal in the hands of Glover. All these elderly women were wealthy, lived in the same locality and were killed or assaulted in same way with their handbags’ content was taken away (Harvey and Simpson, 2005). On 6th June of the same year, Glover sexually molested Marjorie Moseley in Belrose retirement hospital and she reported the case to the staff at the hospital and the police. Three weeks later Glover visited a nursing home at Lane Cove where she molested two elderly women. He was caught and left after being interrogated by the hospital staff (Hills, 1991). Between the August and October of 1989, Glover assaulted Phyllis McNeil and Doris Cox but he never caught. Joan Sinclair was the last woman that Glover killed before he was apprehended. His trial started in March 28, 1990 and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2005, Glover committed suicide while still in prison. The above scenario can capture what an ideal victim and ideal offender is. All the victims of Glover were ideal victims in the sense that they were old women who were not in any position as strong as Glover and hence they were unable to protect themselves. Another factor that qualifies them as ideal victims is that they did not know the offender prior to their ordeal. The relevant theory which puts the discussion of ideal victim here is the feminist theory. This theory proposes that women are supposed to be protected from the criminals and strangers who are larking out there in the street. This protection is for the benefit of the society. The criminals once caught, they should be thrown to prison where they are supposed to spend the rest of their natural lives. Other women were protected by the police by the act of arresting and imprisoning Glover of which if this did not happen, Glover would have continued to kill and assault more innocent elderly women. The women were taken care of by being taken to nursing hospitals and the nurses there gave them proper medication and diet. On top of this, when they scream or asked for help, the nurses would rush to answer their cries and many times we encounter Glover’s plans being thwarted by the timely arrival of the nurse on duty on the scene of the crime. Criminal justice system and media play a big role in construction of ideal victims. The two have taken a complete different view on who qualifies to be an ideal victim. Old women and children are taken to be innocent, defenseless, and venerable while homeless, drug addicts and young men have to go an extra mile for them to be painted in a more compassionate way as victims (Carrabine et al., 2004). Women and children more often than not attract high media coverage and drive criminal justice practice and policy change drastically (Greer, 2004; Valier,2004). On the other hand the people who are seen as undeserving victims rarely get the media buzz or get not in the criminal justice corridors. When Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells who were both ten years old disappeared in 2002, the media was awash with the news of their disappearance. David Spencer and Patrick Warren, boys of the same age as the two girls, who had disappeared back in 1996, they were not discussed in the media as much as the girls (Jewkes, 2004). To be more precise, Chapman and Wells were discussed 900 times in the first one to two weeks (Fracassini, 2002). Violence and sex crimes are presented much in all forms of media (Presdee, 2000). According to Innes, signal crimes influence the coverage of crime news (2003). Signal crimes are believed to affect witnesses, offenders, victims and the society at large, thus resulting to change of beliefs and behaviors (Innes, 2003).This has made people develop crime of fear due to moral panic created by the signal crime coverage. When in 1993 James Bulger-a toddler was killed by two young boys aged ten, people discussed for a long time the ‘innocence and guilt’, ’purity and evil’ and ‘control and care’ intersecting with the ‘childhood’ concept (Goldson,1997; Scraton,1997). This coverage of signal crimes go a long way in shaping the fear of people towards crime. References Balvig, F 1982, Ungdomskriminalitet med serlig henblick pa retssystemers utvelgelsesmekanismer’Arsberetning 1981 Kriminalistisk Institut,Kohenhavns Universitet, vol 14,no. 18, pp.33-49. Bodal, K 1982,350 Narkoselgere.Universitetsforlaget Christie, N 1986, Introduction to organizations and management in ‘Ideal Victim’ Macmillan, London. Carrabine, E, Iganski, P, Lee, M, Plummer, K & South, N. 2004.Criminology:A sociological introduction, Routledge, London. Christie, N 1952.’Fangevoktere i konsentrasjonsleire’ Nordisk Tidsskrift for kriminalvidenskab, vol 41, no1, pp.439-458. Christie, N 1953.’Fangevoktere i konsentrasjonsleire’ Nordisk Tidsskrift for kriminalvidenskab, vol 42, no1, pp.44-60 Fracassini, C2002’Missing’, Scotland on Sunday, 18 August, p. 8. Greer, C.2004 ‘Crime, media and community: grief and virtue engagement in late modernity’, in Cultural criminology unleashed eds J. Ferrel, K. Hayward & W. Presdee. Cavendish, London. Goldson, B. 1997’Children in trouble: state response to juvenile crime’, in ’Childhood’ in crisis’? P. Scraton, (ed) UCL Press, London. Harvey, S & Simpson, L 2005, Suburban serial killer, Viewed 5 September, 2010< http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/suburban-serial-killer/2005/09/09/1125772682114.html> Hills, B1991, Scums and Scoundrels, Viewed 5 September, 2010 . 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