Types of victims and types of personal victimization: general characteristics

Victimization is a person’s predisposition to be a victim. At the same time, there is a difference between social predisposition, where the likelihood of becoming a victim depends on the crime situation in the region, as well as psychological victimization, when characterological and personality traits acquired as a result of upbringing or psychological traumas received contribute to provoking behavior.

The victim's victimization due to psychological factors has been seriously criticized by many authors and is practically discredited in jurisprudence, where only one party bears responsibility for the crime committed. To prove this, facts are cited that the victim’s behavior is perceived as a provocation exclusively by the criminal and is not objective. That is why this concept is not used in court cases of murder and rape, but has a place in practical psychology. It makes sense to talk about victimization when a person has an increased likelihood of getting into trouble, which is caused by various internal reasons.

What is victimization behavior

The concept of victimization was introduced in the science of victimology, which studies the behavior of victims and criminals. Special behavior, at the verbal and non-verbal level, forces criminals to almost unmistakably choose certain individuals for their victims. For example, if a rapist shows aggression towards several women, then he will continue his actions only with the one who cowers in fear, remains silent, tolerates inappropriate behavior, tries not to attract attention, and at the same time looks scared. Those who immediately fight back, engage the public in interaction and make it clear that such actions are unacceptable are most likely to be left alone.

Currently, the concept of victimization implies not only a greater likelihood of being attacked by another person, but also verbal abuse, humiliation and the frequency of exposure to unpleasant and traumatic situations such as accidents, accidents, choking doors or frequently breaking appliances. Suffering from military operations and natural disasters fits here; a person looks like a magnet that attracts failures.

Like any concept, victimization has its own distinctive features and characteristics. Such people are characterized by unstable emotional reactions and a distorted perception of their own feelings, which ultimately leads to the formation of an external locus of control.

A victimized person will take a passive position in his decisions and will largely seek guidance, taking a subordinate position. Submissiveness, combined with suggestibility and low self-esteem, creates favorable conditions for gradually becoming a chronic victim in the future, even if such episodes have not happened in a person’s life before.

Peculiarities of upbringing that do not imply the development of caution form a frivolous style of behavior, the inability to distinguish between dangerous situations, and, accordingly, the ability to stand up for oneself or leave the area of ​​unfavorable developments in time.

The socially approved qualities of diligence and conscientiousness, in their extreme manifestation, form a position always ready for submission. Moreover, the more a person has to obey others in life, the more difficult it is to refuse and resist him when there is a real need, thanks to the developed strategy of behavior. Such people argue that it is easier to submit to the rapist and avoid beatings, to withstand beatings from your husband and thereby allow him to calm down, to complete a week's work quota in two days to the detriment of health, but to maintain the favor of colleagues. There are many rationalizations, but the result is the same - a person suffers and continues to suffer.

Victimization comes in different directions and degrees of severity. In general, such a couple is inherent in any person, and in a healthy version it is responsible for the opportunity to sacrifice one’s interests for the sake of further gain. However, being a personal characteristic, victimization is considered a pathological trait and requires psychological and sometimes psychiatric correction.

The concept and subject of criminological victimology

Criminological victimology is the study of the patterns of emergence, existence and development of victimization - the likelihood of certain individuals and groups to suffer from socially dangerous attacks; behavior of crime victims, their personal characteristics; methods of protecting citizens from criminal threats.

Among the teachings about the victim - victimology (from the Latin "viktima" - victim) - social (studying victims of unfavorable conditions of socialization), procedural (establishing the legal status of the victim in civil and criminal proceedings), forensic (considering the victim in the aspect of improving tactics and methods crime investigation) - criminological victimology stands out.

The central concept of victimology is the victim, the figure of which grows out of ritual practice, meaning a gift to otherworldly forces. With the advent of the state and law, a victim is a person (family or clan) who suffered physical, material, moral harm, and therefore received the right to compensation (including in the form of blood feud). In the Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power (adopted by UN General Assembly resolution 40/34 of November 29, 1985), the term “victims” refers to persons who, individually or collectively, have suffered harm, including physical or mental injury , emotional distress, property damage or substantial impairment of their fundamental rights as a result of an act or omission that violates the applicable national criminal laws of States signatories to the Declaration, including laws prohibiting criminal abuse of power. According to the Declaration, a person may be considered a victim, regardless of whether the offender has been identified, arrested, tried or convicted, and regardless of the relationship between the offender and the victim.

The term “victim” includes, as appropriate, close relatives or dependents of the immediate victim, as well as persons who were harmed while attempting to assist victims in distress or prevent victimization.

In domestic criminology, a victim is a person or group of persons who may suffer (potential victims) or have suffered (real victims) from crimes. Victims of a crime can be not only individuals, but also legal entities, as well as groups of people who were directly harmed by the crime, members of their families, close people, relatives, and dependents of the primary victims. Victim of a crime is a procedural concept. In accordance with Art. 42 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, a victim is an individual to whom a crime has caused physical, property, or moral harm, as well as a legal entity in the event that a crime causes damage to its property and business reputation.

The subject of criminological victimology covers victimization as a socio-legal phenomenon; factors causing it; the personality and behavior of the victim before, at the time and after the commission of the crime; victimization; measures aimed at ensuring the safety of citizens in crime situations.

The study of victimization involves the establishment of objective and subjective factors that determine the likelihood of becoming a victim of crime, and the circumstances influencing its increase and decrease. In this regard, individual (individual), group (groups of persons identified by a certain characteristic) and mass (crowds, participants in a spectacular show, area population, etc.) are of interest.

The criminological aspect of studying the personality of crime victims is to identify a set of characteristics that affect the likelihood of becoming a victim of criminal attacks. The description of biological and socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, education, occupation, nationality, health status, birth defects, etc.) indicates those conditional social groups whose representatives are more likely to be victims of crime. Characteristics of socio-psychological characteristics (attitude towards the criminal, social roles performed, social status) make it possible to understand the motivation for the behavior of victims. Analysis of moral and psychological properties (value orientations, habits, psychological state, etc.) makes it possible to answer the question of why this or that person (group of persons) became a victim of a crime.

Studying the actions of the victim before the crime occurs allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the reasons for the crime committed, and to establish random and natural connections between behavioral characteristics and the criminal act.

The study of the victim’s behavior at the time of the commission of a crime makes it possible to trace the victim’s typical reactions to a criminal situation, to evaluate his “contribution” to the committed act, including from a legal point of view.

Analysis of the behavior of the victim after the commission of a crime is of interest because the position taken by the victim in relation to legal and moral responsibilities may have a certain impact on the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies in preventing and solving criminal attacks.

Criminological victimology studies victimization - the process of transforming a victim from potential to real, which has its own patterns, determined by both subjective, personal properties and objective circumstances. In this regard, of particular interest are the features of victim behavior, in which the victim naturally becomes a victim of a crime, the relationship between the criminal and the victim, as well as victimogenic situations. Criminological victimology develops methods and procedures for diagnosing an individual’s victimization and predicting the likelihood of being a victim of a criminal event at a given time and place.

The subject of criminological victimology includes the development of measures (various in nature and level) aimed at protecting potential victims from socially dangerous attacks, reducing the level of victimization in the state and society, preventing victim behavior, ensuring the safety of citizens from criminal threats, and rehabilitating crime victims.

The ideas of victimology go back to ancient times and are embodied in ancient Greek mythology (the myth of King Oedipus, who represents the “fatal victim”), biblical tales (the judge of Israel Samson represents the type of “arrogant victim”), fiction (the depraved old man and the disgusting comedian Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov personifies the “natural sacrifice”). Man has always assessed the threats posed by the dangerous actions of other people and taken them into account in his life, erecting fortress walls, arming himself, choosing a travel route, hiring personal guards, etc. In this sense, victimology is the oldest practice of survival of the human race.

The ideas of criminology were first given a scientific character by Hans von Genting, who in 1948 published a book with the eloquent title “The Criminal and His Victim: Studies in the Sociobiology of Crime. The contribution of the victim to the genesis of the crime." These ideas were subsequently developed by Benjamin Mendelsohn in the article “Victimology”, published in the journal “International Review of Criminology and Police Technology” (1956), and by Marvin Wolfgang in the monograph “Types of Homicide” (1959). The pioneer of domestic criminological victimology was L. V. Frank, who published the monograph “Victims of Crime and Problems of Soviet Victimology” in 1977.

Causes of victimization

Victimization of the victim is manifested in the commission of actions leading to dangerous or negative consequences. Self-preservation instincts, intended for the reverse function, do not work at the moment or appear conditionally, for example, only at the verbal level, and are absent at the behavioral level. Several main reasons lead to such deformations.

Initially, this is a personality type that outlines a passive-subordinate position. These are the majority of victims, and their behavior looks like fulfilling the demands of the aggressor. Perhaps they will not be fulfilled completely or slowly, but, nevertheless, the person obeys.

The second personality type is the provocative one. Such people unconsciously seek to attract attention to themselves or are not aware of the consequences of their actions. Vivid examples of provocative behavior are counting large sums of money in an unfavorable public place (at a train station or in a crime-prone area in the evening), sexualized behavior that goes beyond the boundaries of flirting, etc.

Upbringing and experiences of childhood psychotrauma contribute to the appearance of a victim complex. The highest risk of developing victimized behavior is in victims of violence who received no help and support, who did not receive psychotherapy, or who were all close to them who took the side of the rapist and blamed the victim for what happened.

Children of victimized or dysfunctional parents (various types of addiction, low level of social culture, high level of aggressiveness, etc.) do not form an adequate assessment of the situation, and they build relationships with the world like their parents’ family. Such a child may be extremely surprised that in other families no one is ever beaten; in addition, the concept of punishment becomes so necessary that, having matured, a person begins to provoke violence from those who were not inclined to do so, due to his own increased level of anxiety.

Involvement in various antisocial groups, oddly enough, also shapes the behavior of the victim. It is worth noting that not only bright groups that violate the general order influence the formation of the victim’s position, but also any society. Teachers with emotional burnout do not teach children to resist aggression, but pour out negativity on children; the peer group may be of a low social level and bully those who are different. The more acts of violence are perceived by the immediate environment as the norm, the greater tolerance is formed in the individual.

Victimblaming

The concept of victimization is used only in Russia. In European countries and the United States, it is considered unacceptable to believe that the victim herself may be to blame for the crime. There is such a thing as victim blaming - the tendency to blame the victim for what happened to her.

Vivid examples of victim blaming:

1. The police do not accept a statement from the raped girl, they order him to be taken away, they say that she herself is to blame and provoked the rapist.
2. Supporting the criminal, not the victim. For example, a wife brought her lover home, the husband saw this and killed her. The public pities the man, but not the victim of his crime.
3. People are looking for what the victim did wrong, where she could have screwed up, and what she did to deserve such an act.
4. Accusation of stupidity and carelessness of people who transfer money to scammers or use dubious services.
5. When a man becomes a victim of domestic violence, he is accused of weakness and is no longer considered a “man.”
6. If a child is the victim of a crime, he may be accused of arrogance and licentiousness, and go over the methods of upbringing in the family.
7. The victim of a robbery may be accused of excessively showing off his wealth or new purchase.

Europeans and Americans, for example, do not blame a girl who has become a victim of violence for being outside the house alone in the dark, or for being dressed provocatively. In their opinion, only the criminal is to blame.

What do you think, can the victim be indirectly or partially to blame for the crime, or is it only the criminal who is to blame? Let's discuss this topic in the comments.

Types of victimization

Being a multidimensional concept, victimization is divided into types.

Most often in criminology and psychology they talk about individual victimization, which implies a high probability of a particular individual becoming a victim, despite the fact that objectively this could have been avoided.

It is this type that is most associated with personal psychological traits, injuries received and characteristics of upbringing that shape the individual’s inadequate reaction. Such personal victimization is activated under appropriate circumstances, but instead of choosing safe behavior, the future victim unconsciously chooses a provocative line of behavior. In girls, this can manifest itself by staring into the eyes of strangers or trying to catch a car on the highway at night. Men boast about their material savings in the company of criminals or try to sort things out by physically resolving a conflict with a clearly stronger opponent.

A love of extreme sports, an unjustified desire for heroism, returning to the battlefield after being wounded are actions that are consciously chosen by a person, but they initially pose a threat to life. Some explain this by an increased need for adrenaline or a thirst to increase their self-esteem, and indeed such motivation exists, but the scale of sacrifice in this type of people is also increased.

Mass victimization concerns groups of people and has its own gradation, depending on the characteristics of individuals and conditions. Group victimization unites certain categories of the population that have the same characteristics or parameters of victimization (for example, children or disabled people). Object victimization involves the commission of certain types of crimes (theft, murder or rape). Most often, a person is susceptible to one type, that is, someone who is robbed is unlikely to be raped. Subjective victimization attracts various criminals.

The most striking example of mass victimization is Stockholm syndrome, when victims go over to the side of the aggressors. This does not happen immediately; sufficient continuous contact and strong traumatic emotions experienced are necessary, after which, even being held hostage and having received real physical injuries, the victims begin to protect the offenders, sympathize and help them.

Classification

People who become victims are divided into the following types:

• victims of sexual violence;
• women suffering from domestic terror at the hands of their husbands;
• innocent children who become targets of violence due to their unwillingness to stand up for themselves;
• persons suffering from bullying by narcissistic individuals;
• people suffering from Stockholm syndrome (who acquit criminals);
• individuals provoking the attack;
• imaginary victims (persons with a mental disorder who attribute to themselves the qualities of sufferers).

Which categories of the population may become victims:

• children - they are weak, gullible, do not have enough experience and knowledge;
• women - their physical characteristics are inferior to men’s;
• old people - their state of health does not allow them to repel attacks;
• mentally ill people;
• representatives of minorities, immigrants.

How to get rid of victimization

The increased tendency to become a victim is not an innate quality, but accordingly can be corrected. In situations where the frequency and intensity of losses becomes significant, the condition is stabilized with tranquilizers and antidepressants with simultaneous psychotherapeutic correction.

If the situation is not so critical, then only psychotherapy aimed at restoring adequate self-esteem and developing new behavioral strategies is indicated. One of the main tasks is to shift the regulatory role of actions from an external source to an internal one. This means that before you make a decision or follow the advice, request or even order of someone, you need to correlate what is happening with your needs. In a healthy state, a person will not perform actions that cause him harm, no matter who asks for it, even his direct boss. This implies a greater share of responsibility for one’s life and its course. From this perspective, it is no longer possible to blame others for failures that have occurred or to look for excuses for why the misfortune occurred. Finding support in his feelings and decisions, a person himself begins to organize his life in a safe way, calculating the consequences in advance.

The absence of exposure to external manipulation is necessary so that others cannot play on feelings of guilt, pity or inferiority. A girl who knows her strengths and weaknesses is unlikely to agree to the offer “who needs you besides me, sit down.” The ability to refuse in any area of ​​life is excellent training against victimization. The more the skill of tactful confrontation develops, the less chance there is of unknowingly becoming a victim.

It is necessary to start monitoring your own thoughts, because the more an individual feels sorry for himself and appears helpless and unhappy in his own eyes, the more such a state is transmitted to others. In essence, these are also provocations, because if someone complains the first time, they help him, the second time they don’t pay attention, and the third time it can cause very specific aggressive actions.

Distinctive features of victim psychology

People with a loser mentality often suffer from victim syndrome. They are fixated on their own failures and blame others for all the troubles that happen to them. Individuals with victim syndrome feel that they are the only ones so unhappy and unlucky. They see the solution to their problems in only one thing - in complaints about their life and the desire to evoke a feeling of compassion for themselves in others.

What traits do people with a victim mentality have:

• denying one's own mistakes, shifting the blame to others;
• egocentrism, unwillingness to take into account other people's opinions;
• pessimism, excessive suspicion;
• envy of other people's happiness, other people's achievements;
• the need for praise, dependence on the opinions of others;
• the desire to talk about your difficult fate;
• a constant need to make others feel sorry for themselves;
• unwillingness to take responsibility;
• infantilism;
• exaggeration of possible negative consequences;
• the desire to please everyone, the inability to refuse people their requests;
• showing independence in new endeavors, denying any help;
• excessive arrogance;
• self-deprecation for the sake of gratitude.

People suffering from victim syndrome are sometimes not so unhappy. They deliberately demonstrate their suffering to others in order to evoke a feeling of pity in them. This is one of the methods of neutralizing the enemy and a way for them to achieve their intended goals. In this way, you can avoid responsibility and shift the blame to other people. However, if a person accidentally turns out to be a victim of violence, then he, most likely, possessing some trait characteristic of a loser, simply could not cope with the problem and failed to identify the danger in time.

Meaning

The explanatory dictionary gives the historical meaning as the first one. But let’s look at them all to see the whole picture:

1. In ancient religions: an object or living creature brought as a gift to a deity (killed), as well as the offering of this gift (sacrifice). For example: “We have made a sacrifice to the gods, then our journey should be easy.”
2. Voluntary abandonment of someone or something in favor of another, self-sacrifice. Characteristic of high style. “He sacrificed his career for her well-being.”
3. A victim of someone or something. A person suffering from violence, failure, misfortune. For example: “He fell victim to a villainous fate.”
4. The meaning of the noun “donation” is similar. Currently considered obsolete.

What meanings of the word “victim” are most popular now? From the list of positions 2 and 3. The first meaning is relevant only for those who love books about ancient cults and sometimes reread the Old Testament. 4 meaning is hopelessly outdated, so we will work today only with the essential.

Pseudo-victim

After the main part has been completed, it is worth understanding the intricacies. To truly explain the meaning of a definition, you need to understand that sometimes it does not mean what it seems.

For example, a father and son (or daughter) are playing chess, and the parent, having explained the rules, wins several times against a beginning chess player, he wins again and again, but why “accidentally” loses. Why does he need such a sacrifice (what this is is already clear)? From the point of view of education, there are two irreconcilable positions: some parents believe that the child should not give in, because this humiliates his dignity, and others believe that it is necessary to give in, since otherwise the boy or girl will quickly lose interest in the game. Everyone decides for themselves which side to take in this pedagogical debate, but one thing is clear: if you don’t give in once, then the child can really give up everything. In addition, victory will give him strength and confidence and a desire to move on.

Synonyms

We are considering a simple definition, and yet synonyms for the word “victim” will not be superfluous. Analogues always help to understand the meaning better and deeper. The list of replacements is as follows:

• gift;
• victim or victim;
• patient;
• client;
• self-denial;
• sufferer.

As can be seen from the list, there is no full synonym for the word “victim”. You can treat this reality as you like, but the main thing is not to despair. No matter how far the words presented above may be in meaning, they can still be used on occasion.

Origin

According to the etymological dictionary, the word is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic. It contained the verb “to eat,” which meant “to sacrifice.” Scientists see here the influence of the Greek language, for the word geras and the object of study go back to the same basis. By the way, the Greek word means “honorable gift,” because sacrifice was originally understood as “a gift to the deity.”