Positivist Victimology: A Critique
| DOI | 10.1177/026975808900100102 |
| Published date | 01 September 1989 |
| Date | 01 September 1989 |
| Author | David Miers |
| Subject Matter | Article |
International Review of Victimology, 1989, Vol. 1, pp. 3-22
0269-7580/89 $10
© 1989 A B Academic Publishers—Printed in Great Britain
POSITIVIST VICTIMOLOGY: A CRITIQUE
DAVID MIERS
Cardiff Law School, Cardiff CF1 1XD, UK
ABSTRACT
This article traces the development of two main theoretical accounts of victimisation. The
first of its two parts is an intellectual history of positivist victimology. In its attempt to
define victimisation by an examination of those held to be victims, positivist victimology
has traditionally pursued three major concerns: the identification of factors in individuals
or their environment that conduce to a non-random risk of victimisation, a concentration
on inter-personal crimes of violence, and the identification of victims who may be held to
have contributed to their victimisation. The article argues that each of these concerns
suffers from serious difficulties which have inevitably limited the potential of positivist
victimology to explain the everyday social process of identifying and responding to
victimising events. The second part argues that this process performs a central role in social
life;
it is a principal means by which societies maintain their values and identify the limits of
non-compliance with them. Critical victimology argues that as the process of labelling
individuals as victims involves a statement of values, it is essential to analyse how, when and
why some who sustain injury are labelled victims, and others not. The article draws on work
within social psychology to explain the main parameters of these decisions.
INTRODUCTION
The principal aim of this article is to trace and to evaluate the
emergence, development and current status of attempts to define and to
analyse the subject of study - victims of crime. The narrative falls into two
main sections. The first is an account and a critique of positivist
victimology. The second, which is published in a later issue of the Review,
develops one particular criticism which argues for a more radical
conception of the social process of labelling individuals as victims.
Positivist victimology has traditionally concentrated on two aspects of
victimisation: the identification of characteristics inhering in individuals
that make them especially susceptible to victimisation, and the identifica-
tion of particular crimes and of relationships between victims and
offenders which might suggest some causal responsibility in victims for
their victimisation. Both inquiries continue to be conducted for predictive
and for preventive and remedial purposes; the identification of those
characteristics of the victim's environmental, cultural and personal
circumstances that may conduce to higher than randomly distributed rates
of victimisation remains a principal feature of victim surveys. Both these
and their associated inquiries may be regarded as the central tenets of
positivist victimology; that is, a victimology that assumes a consensus of
4
norms and values which readily allows us to identify victimisation (or at
least some sorts of it, typically personal and household crime) when it
occurs, and that treats the process of victimisation as a variable whose
components are describable in terms of generalisations based upon
statistical or other empirical evidence. The standard questions of positivist
victimology are: what socio-cultural factors are most likely to produce
victims, and why are some people repeatedly victimised? These questions
are answered by examining the values, beliefs and behavioural patterns
displayed by victims; by analysing how victims differ from non-victims and
by trying to identify those factors that increase a person's susceptibility to
victimisation. The enterprise involves, in short, an attempt to explain
'victimisation' by an examination of those held to be victims.
The process of victimisation can alternatively be considered from a
somewhat different perspective. In the analogically close context of the
study of deviance, Becker (1962) argued that it would be analytically
fruitful to conceive of individuals and their deeds not as intrinsically
deviant or compliant, but to conceive of deviance or compliance as
properties assigned to individuals during complex processes of interaction.
In the same way victimisation can arguably be better understood if it is
viewed from an interactionist perspective. 'The victim', wrote Quinney
(1972;
p. 314), 'is a social construction'; our conventional wisdom shapes
our perception of the world, and defines which persons are to be regarded
as victims and which are not. An interactionist perspective would
therefore ask: under what circumstances is a person most likely to be set
apart as a victim; how is a person cast into the role of victim and what
actions do victims and those who so label people take in consequence of
this act of social typing? To be a victim is thus to occupy a social role, in
much the same way as those who are blind (Scott, 1969), mentally ill
(Scheff,
1966) or sick (Parsons, 1951); a role which defines those
expectations (though these may be controversial and uncertain in scope)
that will be held both by the victim and those labelling him.
This conception of the process of victimisation both answers some of
the problems that positivist victimology has experienced when trying to
define its scope and claim to scientific status, and also raises a number of
other questions. The former is accomplished substantially by a reformula-
tion of the questions to be answered. Thus, when at a general level
victimologists have disagreed over the question, 'what objects of harm are
properly to be included within the scope of victimology?', an interactionist
perspective will formulate the question differently: 'under what circum-
stances can individuals or groups of individuals (including entire ethnic or
national groups), animals, plants, or even values or ideals become
victims?' What are the social processes by which such groups are selected
and identified as 'victims', and why are they so labelled? To describe a loss
or injury sustained by a person (or other object) as a victimising event is a
purposive activity; like all classifications it attributes to discrete events
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