Toward a Theory of Personal Criminal Victimization (From Criminology Review Yearbook, Volume 2, P 613-646, 1980 by Egon Bitter and Sheldon L Messinger - See NCJ-70397)

• NCJ Number: 70412
• Author(s): M J Hindelang; M R Gottfredson; J Garofalo
• Date Published: 1980
• Length: 34 pages
• Sale Source: Sage Publications, Inc
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Reprinted from Victims of Personal Crime - An Empirical Foundation for a Theory of Personal Victimization, 1978, P 241-274

Annotation

Studies of victims of crime involving direct personal contact (e.g., robbery, assault, and rape) point to significant correlations between victimization exposure and lifestyles associated with different demographies.

Abstract

A theoretical victimization model is proposed as the first step toward constructing a personal victimization theory which is compatible with data about victims of personal crime gathered from victimization surveys and other sources. As conceptualized in the model, variations in lifestyle (the latter defined as a combination of routine daily activities, both vocational and leisure) are attributable to the ways in which persons with varied constellations of demographic characteristics adapt to role expectations and structural constraints. All of these variables are linked with personal victimization exposure. A set of propositions describing the linkages between victimization exposure and lifestyle are concerned with opportunity for offender-victim interaction; the immediate cause of the crime (e.g., the offender's perception of the victim as an appropriate victimization target); the willingness and ability of the offender to use force or stealth to achieve the desired end; and propitious circumstances for the commission of the planned crime. The amount of time a person spends alone, on the street, at night (the likeliest combination of circumstances for personal victimization) and the extent to which victims and offenders are disproportionately male, young, urban residents, black, of lower socioeconomic status, unemployed, not in school, and unmarried). The likelihood of personal victimization increases as a function of the amount of time a person spends with nonfamily members (not necessarily with strangers, however). The ability of individuals to isolate themselves from potential offenders varies with income, but even more with race (e.g., blacks with the same income as whites still have more structural constraints as to where they live). Determinant factors in personal crime victimization are convenience, desirability as a target, vulnerability of the prospective victim as perceived by the criminal, and victim-crime precipitation.