Week 2: What is a victim of crime?

This week's lecture looked at the definition of a 'victim of crime'. We started from first principles - a 'crime' is what happens when you break the law; a 'victim' is somebody who suffers from somebody else's actions - but rapidly made the picture a lot more complicated.

Why did we do this? What's wrong with sticking to the simple definition? Three reasons, which all have to do with the way we usually think about victims.

Firstly, the concept of 'victim of crime' is fuzzy. There isn't a straightforward list of all the 'crimes' in the world; even if there were, there would be room for lots of argument about whether a particular crime should be a crime, and whether a particular legal action ought to be made illegal. A couple of years ago the drug mephedrone (meow meow) was made illegal after having been legally available for several months. Should it have been illegal all along? Why, or why not?

Not only that, there isn't a definitive list of ways in which you can be a victim of a crime. In the case of a murder, we think of the victim's partner as a 'victim' of the crime - what about the victim's friends or workmates? What if the crime isn't murder but a violent assault that leaves the victim disabled? What if it's a burglary that the victim finds particularly traumatic? We feel as if there ought to be a line to draw somewhere, but it's not at all clear where or why.

Secondly, the concept of 'victim of crime' is powerful: to say that somebody's a victim of crime is to say that attention should be paid to them, they're someone with a claim on the rest of us. To say that a particular social problem creates victims of crime is a very powerful way of drawing attention to it. Some people argue that the crimes associated with prostitution are victimless crimes, and that prostitution is only illegal because of moral objections to it. Others say that most prostitutes are victims - of trafficking, of pimps, of drug dealers - and that prostitution needs to be cracked down on for their sake. This way of looking at it is much more likely to get media attention than the first one.

The logic applies to crimeless victims as well as victimless crimes. If I take out an insurance policy that I don't need because of an honest mistake, that's just sad. If the policy was deliberately sold to me by somebody who knew I didn't need it, then perhaps I'm a victim of crime - and something will need to be done. There is always pressure to recognise more people as victims of crime.

Thirdly, the reason why the concept of 'victim of crime' is powerful is that it's symbolically loaded. We don't recognise just anybody as being a victim of crime; it's much easier to get acknowledged as a victim of crime if you match certain characteristics (we'll be looking at those characteristics next week). We seem to have certain expectations of victims of crime; I think what these come from is the revulsion we feel towards the experience of being victimised (turned into a victim). To be made a victim is to have your world turned upside down (we'll be looking at that in a couple of weeks' time). The person who does that to you has to be a monster; and if the offender's a monster, the victim must be... what?

We'll answer that question next week when we look at the Ideal Victim.

As for this week's seminar, it was all about the connection between crime and blame - how we're more likely to think in terms of blame (and hence think that there's a victim) if a law has been broken, and more likely to think in terms of bad luck if no law is broken. I think we all learned something from that seminar, and what I learned is that I need to prepare more material next time. Subsequent seminars will run to fifty minutes minimum, probably. You have been warned.

For now... over to you. Any questions?