Introduction
Victimology is the study of victims of crime and the relationships between offenders and the existing criminal justice system. The study of crime victims involves an analysis of crime and criminal behavior by taking different forms. The mainstream of victimology, however, solely focuses on crime victims with an emphasis on awareness and understanding victims. The study measures how crime is handled as well as the role of victims within the criminal justice system. Victimology provides a redress and resolution of problems of crime victims by removing the social confusion probing into various areas of hitherto of negligence. Victimology gives a system of knowledge of victims with the characterization of social, economic and political factors. For example, social division associated with social and economic position inequalities links individuals to crimes. The discovery of the victim has a shift in focus from the offender to the offense and over the past last years, the key features of victimology have changed and influenced the developments of changes in understandings the causes of crime. The paper will analyze the "discovery of the victim," positivist versus the classical schools of thought, changes in understandings of the cause of victimization over time, official versus unofficial data and the different definitions of crime.
Changes to understanding what causes Crime
Social divisions create a framework of crime involvement as they contribute to person's difference in labor, wealth and income. Gender and sexuality divisions play a key role in crime as a person's position in the community adds up to power and prestige. Ethnic and racial division contributes to crime as the ideologies lead to discrimination of the criminal justice system. Masculinity is problematic and influences the uneven distribution of crime across the social spectrum, age, location, gender and socio-economic position (Carrabine, Cox, Plummer and South, 2004, p. 7). The variables account for offending and victimization which is an asymmetrical interpersonal relationship that is abusive, destructive, parasitical and unfair (Karmen 2013, p.3). The confrontations of good and evil dichotomies dramatize the rational existence of offense and offenders, which sums up the key features of crime policy. As a result, victims are the central process of justice because of the offender's actions.
The origin of victimology
The origin of victimology lies in the hands of having provocative crime functions as well as the proneness to committing an offense. The significant changes in the "discovery of victim" create a shift in focus from the offender to the offense as they contribute to the development of changes in the scale of production about crime policy over the last 30 years. The interaction of victims with criminal justice system accounts to the stereotypes of dark figure of crime (Walklate 2013, p.3). The concept of nature and extent of crime results in the violation of statutory and case law. The act of free will reflects deviance calls for a legal and civil response on describing the notions of social injury and social harm. The basis of violating existing laws or committing a crime creates a rational argument on the untangling convoluted relationship of sound legal determination of an offender and a victim (Karmen 2013, p.6). The clashes of shifting the focus from the offender to the offense, therefore, relate to changes in understanding the social divisions as the causes of crime in the society.
Positivist versus the classical schools of thought
Criminal punishment is a turning point and thought to be the rational approach to eliminating cruel public executions designed for offenders. The classical school of thought premised that people formulate decisions and punishment deters the crime (Karmen 2013 p.6). The rational difference of people in pleasure seeking leads to the, acting selfishly and using the inappropriate approach in a given situation. The individuals routinely engage in illegal activities that likely hurt them compared to the law-abiding counterparts. The classical school of thoughts shows that people are deemed as moral creatures who use the unqualified freedom and have the possibility of engaging in illicit activities. As a result, the illicit activities by offenders affect the law-abiding people and a redress of the criminal justice system focus on protecting such individuals. The criminal justice system, therefore, adjudges the accountability of offenders for their wrongful acts.
The positivist school of thought, on the other hand, establishes rational independence on quantification and analysis of criminal behavior. The school of thoughts presumes that the social and psychological changes of an individual incline to the phenomenon of interpersonal violence (Carrabine, Cox, Plummer and South 2004, p. 23). The change in economic cycle contributes social divisions of dangerous class and underclass individuals. The social exclusion and inclusion marginalize and stigmatizes people, which cause the development of different moral standards. Racial degeneration and the model of "survival for the fittest" threatens the outbreed "fit" which leads to the habitual acts of violence (Carrabine, Cox, Plummer and South, 2004, p. 25). People are inherently good, but because of the background and the environment, they become offenders as crime is bound up with conflict, social divisions, and economic interests. The losing of inherence morality changes because of different choices. Positivist and classical school of thoughts, therefore, have the same ideas that criminal behavior is controlled and it is a consequence of human nature.
Official and Nonofficial Sources
The details of crime depend on the sources behind it. The sources include personal experience of being an offender or the experience that one gains by working in a criminal justice system. The official sources of information are those provided by various arms of government; the government has authorized them. These are publications and reports that the government produces or understands of their preparation. For example, in England produces a publication titled "Criminal Statistics" every year (Walklate, 2013 p.31). It is not the only report published. Others include quarterly prison and probations. Each police force also has been producing its report since 1998. These sources are available for public viewing in government offices or even efficiently on the internet. These sources take incidents of reported crimes and what befell the offenders. Similarly, the sources are available in the United States of America. One such source is the Uniform Crime Reporting. The Federal Bureau was given the mandate to collect, publish and archive such data across the country. Official sources of information have their flaws. mainly it is difficult to record all offenses, and not all of them have an offender identified with them.
Other sources of information are labeled unofficial because it uses direct contact with the offender or the victim. The information provided in these cases may not be entirely reliable because people tend to forget, especially when the incidence does not affect them directly. A person cannot remember wholly and accurately (Walklate, 2013 p.39). Sources such as comparison with other incidents may provide wrong information about crime. Personal experience and mediated experience are unofficial sources that solely depend on the judgment of an individual. Television and newspapers are the most common unofficial sources. They provide information about a crime, how it happened. However, the sources are susceptible to partiality. The difference between the official sources and the unofficial sources is the effort that the official sources put to offer a systematic picture of a crime. They provide a statistical approach towards information dissipation. Official information provides a simple way of understanding. The problem associated with official sources is the counting of invisible crimes.
Definitions of Crime
The term crime has different definitions and understandings by different people. The Oxford dictionary defines crime as an act punishable by law, as being forbidden by statue or injurious to the public welfare (Muncie, 1996 p.11). This definition may sound to be straightforward, but it is not as clear as it should. Referring crime to criminal law is common. This definition postulates that an action is considered a crime if it is in violation of the criminal law. The law has actions and behaviors that it prohibits. A crime is a behavior that is in violation of the criminal law. It is not a crime unless it is forbidden by the criminal law. This, therefore, means that if a wrong action is done, it cannot be considered a crime just because it is not in the list of criminal law prohibitions.
Another definition of a crime is in relation to the moral codes of society. Not all actions are reflected in the legal standards; some are acceptable societal norms and standards. In this case, non-conformity, anti-social action, and deviance are considered criminal. Concerning social and moral code, the essential characteristic of a crime is prohibition by the state as an injury to the state (Muncie, 1996 p.12). Ideologically, crime is a matter of pinning the label on an action and providing an underlying socio-political process to it. Crime may also be defined as human conduct that is created by authorized agents in a politically organized society that is used to define the actions that go contrary to the interests of those with power. It mainly serves to maintain the political power relations. The different definitions can be amalgamated to define crime as an infraction of legal, moral, or conduct norms and the interests of the politically powerful (Muncie, 1996 p.16). It is the order social order that determines whether an action is or is not a crime. The official sources of information are those provided by various arms of government while unofficial sources.
Conclusion
Victimology is the study of victims of crime and the relationships between offenders and the existing criminal justice system. The study of crime victims involves an analysis of crime and criminal behavior by taking different forms and solely focuses on crime victims with an emphasis on awareness and understanding victims. Gender and sexuality divisions play a key role in crime as a person's position in the community adds up to power and prestige. Ethnic and racial division contributes to crime as the ideologies lead to discrimination of the criminal justice system. The classical school of thought premised that people formulate decisions and punishment deters the crime while the positivist school of thought establishes rational independence on quantification and analysis of criminal behavior. Official sources of information regarding a crime give help understand the details of the crime as the unofficial sources do. The difference between official sources and unofficial sources are the statistical understanding of the crime that official sources provide. Unofficial sources are susceptible to partiality unlike official sources.
References
Carrabine, E, Cox, P., Lee, M., Plummer, K. " South, N. (2004). Criminology: a sociological introduction: 2nd Edition. London, Routledge.
Karmen, A. (2013). Crime victims: an introduction to victimology. Belmont, CA, Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Muncie, J., 1996. The construction and deconstruction of crime. The problem of crime, pp.5-64.
Walklate, S., 2013. Victimology (Routledge Revivals): The Victim and the Criminal Justice Process. Routledge.
