What is a victim? According to Frank Abate, a victim is defined as someone who is “harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action.” (p.1881) According to Steven Gifis the term victim is not a legal term and therefore does not exist and has no applicable definition in legal terms. (p. 528) The urban dictionary defines victim as someone who met Chuck Norris. (urbandictionary.com) Frank Schmalleger defines a victim as someone who suffers direct or threatened harm as a result from crime. (p. G-15) It therefore stands to reason that though crime is well defined, being a victim of crime, directly or indirectly, is more of an abstract term encompassing a wide variety of definitions and relationships to the actual
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Frank Schmalleger presented the broken windows theory within the criminology of place summarizing that when a location is deteriorated people within that area feel a heighten sense of concern for their personal safety while the area experiences a higher crime rate. (p. 163) One could infer that when an area suffers from property crime and the visage of that crime is not repaired and constantly evident to the residents of the area, then more crime is the ultimate result thus incurring more property deterioration making a vicious cycle resulting in a continuously higher crime rate. Oscar Newman developed the concept of defensible space in 1972 which proposes to employ mechanisms which would permit a place to come under the control of the owners by making the location seemingly invulnerable to crime. (Schmalleger, 163) This is not a new theory of defense since the idea of property fortification has existed and been well documented throughout history as evident from the castles in Europe to the Great Wall of China which was erected to prevent invasion by nomadic tribes. Newman’s theories however are a far cry from the motes of medieval England or the Walls of an ancient Chinese dynasty. Newman held that making a location resistant to the victimization of crime through strongly defined areas of …show more content…
An individual’s security is never guaranteed and therefore it upon the individual to ensure their own safety rather than maintaining the expectation that other people or governmental agencies will ensure your safety thus requiring the individual to take responsibility for their own actions to prevent their own victimization. This could be applied to domestic abuse wherein the victim, man or woman, continues to return to their partner despite multiple instances of abuse and neglect. The cycle of abuse is well documented and is commonly seen within domestic situations wherein the couple goes through periods of calm followed by periods of turmoil involving physical or emotional abuse or both which is ultimate followed by guilt and regret before returning to another recurring cycle of turmoil. This cycle of abuse is frequently explained and taught throughout family violence lessons to victims, survivors, victim’s assistance agencies, and law enforcement so that the signs and symptoms of this cycle can be recognized and broken. The truth however is that many victims of family violence recognize their own victimization but refuse to stop it by leaving the situation or pursuing criminal charges to ensure the imprisonment of the guilty party. Case in point, three years ago I responded to a barricaded situation in which a man was holding his wife who had made a distress call to her sister out of state. The sister, in turn
Frank Schmalleger presented the broken windows theory within the criminology of place summarizing that when a location is deteriorated people within that area feel a heighten sense of concern for their personal safety while the area experiences a higher crime rate. (p. 163) One could infer that when an area suffers from property crime and the visage of that crime is not repaired and constantly evident to the residents of the area, then more crime is the ultimate result thus incurring more property deterioration making a vicious cycle resulting in a continuously higher crime rate. Oscar Newman developed the concept of defensible space in 1972 which proposes to employ mechanisms which would permit a place to come under the control of the owners by making the location seemingly invulnerable to crime. (Schmalleger, 163) This is not a new theory of defense since the idea of property fortification has existed and been well documented throughout history as evident from the castles in Europe to the Great Wall of China which was erected to prevent invasion by nomadic tribes. Newman’s theories however are a far cry from the motes of medieval England or the Walls of an ancient Chinese dynasty. Newman held that making a location resistant to the victimization of crime through strongly defined areas of …show more content…
An individual’s security is never guaranteed and therefore it upon the individual to ensure their own safety rather than maintaining the expectation that other people or governmental agencies will ensure your safety thus requiring the individual to take responsibility for their own actions to prevent their own victimization. This could be applied to domestic abuse wherein the victim, man or woman, continues to return to their partner despite multiple instances of abuse and neglect. The cycle of abuse is well documented and is commonly seen within domestic situations wherein the couple goes through periods of calm followed by periods of turmoil involving physical or emotional abuse or both which is ultimate followed by guilt and regret before returning to another recurring cycle of turmoil. This cycle of abuse is frequently explained and taught throughout family violence lessons to victims, survivors, victim’s assistance agencies, and law enforcement so that the signs and symptoms of this cycle can be recognized and broken. The truth however is that many victims of family violence recognize their own victimization but refuse to stop it by leaving the situation or pursuing criminal charges to ensure the imprisonment of the guilty party. Case in point, three years ago I responded to a barricaded situation in which a man was holding his wife who had made a distress call to her sister out of state. The sister, in turn