When we are talking about crimes, it is difficult for us not to share sadness with those victims.  They were hurt both physically and psychologically, and some of them even lost their life. We always said that victims were innocent and did nothing wrong. However, what if the victims themselves were also a huge effect to those horrible crimes more than just being at a wrong place at a wrong time? In 1941, German criminologist Hans von Hentig made a series of hypothesizes about the role of the victim in someone committing a crime. Comparing to people’s original thought that victims were randomly chosen at first by criminals, Hentig believed that ‘a logical, scientific and systematic pattern could be found in the victimization’ (Criminology: The Essentials). And he also believed that studying it could prevent more crimes to happen and more victims to be hurt in future crimes.

The most popular theory based on the specific study on victimization is presented by Hentig – Victim Precipitation Theory. The basic premise is that ‘victims may initiate, either actively or passively, the confrontation that leads to their victimization’ (Siegel, Brown and Hoffman, 2006).  H.L. Dietrich also provides its further explanation as ‘Active precipitation occurs when the victim behaves aggressively or provocatively or even is the first to attack.  Passive precipitation occurs when victims unknowingly threaten or encourage the offender. ’ So generally, this theory is talking about victims surly did something that initiated or stimulated the following crimes that happened to them; Victims strongly linked back to criminals and crimes.

As the most well-known theory, victim precipitation theory was the basis of researches and experiments of many following victimologists. (Of course there were also many victimologists who tried hard to disprove it) For example, in 2002, Schaffer and Ruback started a project about ‘Violent Victimization as a Risk Factor for Violent Offending Among Juveniles’. After thorough consideration of how to control all other variables and keep the result as accurate as possible, they decided to let students from 80 high schools and 52 paired middle schools, in grade 7-12, fill in a questionnaire. At the meantime, a subsample, stratified by grade and gender, was selected for in-home interviews, ‘which included information about family composition and dynamics, substance use, criminal and delinquent activities, and violent victimization’ twice in year 1 and year 2. And the result would be their basis of analyses. So what they did next was examining any relationships between violent victimization and violent offending in both years. The analyses supported their hypothesis as students who had been offenders were more likely to be victimized and students who had been victimized were also more likely to committed violent crimes, just like what the table 2 shows to us. (Their analyses were much more thorough, you can check here for it)

So in their final conclusion, they pointed out that the percentage of year 1 victims who committed a violent offense in year 2 as 52% was significantly higher than the percentage of year 1 non-victims who committed a violent offense in year 2 as 17%, so violent victimization is an important risk factor for subsequent violent offending. They also pointed out that violent victimization and violent offending share many of the same risk factors, including previous violent victimization and offending, use of drugs or alcohol, being male, depression, and having a high level of physical development. (As shown in the following diagram)

Although Schaffer and Ruback tried really hard to control any possible effects from unwanted variables to their observational experiment, there were still many problems. The critical one should be the dataset of their analyses was based on those questionnaire that filled in by juveniles about violent victimization and violent offending- there were not some very good histories. They had many reasons to hide and not report them in the questionnaire even they knew the questionnaire was anonymous. It was also possible that some students might report some violent offending that actually never happen for fun or self-pride. Those possibilities inevitably affected the accuracy of the following analyses.

So can we believe the victim participation theory or the whole hypothesis that the role of victim is important in a crime? I will say yes for now. Problems in Schaffer and Ruback’s experiment could only affect its accuracy but almost impossible to be able to turn over the conclusion. So I believe more deeply working and studying in victimization is good for polices and other jurisdictions to prevent future crimes happen and protect us. Furthermore, we should still try to design an experiment with less problems to furtherly support the theory and help preventing crimes.

Resource:

‘Criminology: The Essentials’ by Anthony Walsh

‘Violent Victimization as a Risk Factor for Violent Offending Among Juveniles’ by Jennifer N. Shaffer and R. Barry Ruback

‘Victimology: An Emphasis on the Lifestyle-Exposure Theory and the Victim Precipitation Theory as it Applies to Violent Crime’ by H.L. Dietrich