Figure 5.1

Curiosity and concern about victims has been around to some extent since the beginning of criminological studies. Upon the adoption of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, crimes were redefined as being hostile acts directed against the authority of the state, which was further defined as the representative of the people. In this view, committing crimes was considered a threat to the social order posed by those who broke laws. Prosecutors representing the public interest and acting on behalf of the government and society, assumed the powers and responsibilities which previously had been exercised by victims (Karmen, 2007).

It was not until the late 1950s that a focus began to develop on a more professional level. This focus intensified following the uptick in street crimes in the 1960s (Feucht & Zedlewski, 2019). A President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice Task Force on Assessment was created, with resultant findings printed in 1967 entitled The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, that marked a definitive beginning in the history of the discipline of victimology.

In Chapter 2, the reader was introduced to three primary sources of criminological data evaluated by practitioners in the discipline. The three sources are (1) the Uniform Crime Report; (2) the National Crime Victimization Survey; and (3) the various Offender-Based Self-Report Surveys. These sources afford the victimologist important information in order to better grasp the reality of crime levels and resultant victimization. The tools include: raw numbers of crimes, rates of occurrence, patterns where discernable, trends and profiles. However, the self-report surveys, providing information from offenders, are considered somewhat less reliable due to the potential for bias, concealment, exaggeration by offenders, etc. (Joliffe & Farrington, 2014).

Despite being afforded the luxury of these statistical reports and surveys, the picture of victimization is not yet entirely clear. This is due in part to the acknowledged existence of a “Dark Figure of Crime”–that crime which, for whatever reason, is not reported (VanderPyl, 2024, 2.3 section). Further, even if criminal behavior or events are documented and reported, not all crimes fall within the eight crimes that are indexed as part of the Uniform Crime Report. Biases potentially exist in the documentation and reporting of crime (Langton et al., 2012). These biases can include:

• Anecdotal stories or extrapolated facts regarding a violator and/or the victim;
• The limited personal experience of the officer, investigator or reporter;
• False impressions of the victim which may be formed when crime is investigated;
• Unintended or misleading media depictions of the crime scene or the victim;
• The vested interests of “stakeholders”–local government, schools, businesses, etc.;
• Myths about crime and its outcomes which are popular, widely held, but inaccurate.

Examining examples of victimology occurring today, the reader will see an array of the traditional forms of crimes being perpetrated against others. An emerging area of victimization concerns crimes against the transgender population. In 2019, the American Medical Association noted an “epidemic of violence against the transgender community” (Madara, 2019, para. 1), who are “over 2.5 times more likely than cisgender people–those whose gender identity aligns with the sex they were designated at birth–to experience violence” (as cited in Mandler, 2022). While regional variations of impact are evident, an Everytown report also cites “dangerous gun bills” and legislation passed at the state level invoking a record number of anti-transgender bills. The result is “an environment ripe for deadly gun violence fueled by hate” (2020/2024, para. 11). Another sad outcome relates to suicide rates where 40% of trans youth reported attempting suicide in their lifetime (James et al., 2016). With six out of every ten suicides in the U.S. involving a firearm, the “epidemic of firearm suicide could have a disproportionate impact on transgender and adolescent members of the LGBTQ+ community” (Everytown, 2020/2024, para. 13). In a survey geared to study gender identity disparities in criminal victimization in 2017-2018, it was found that transgender people experienced 86.2 victimizations per 1,000 persons, compared with 21.7 victimizations per 1,000 for persons in the cisgender category (Flores et al., 2021). Coincidentally, households having a transgender person had nearly twice more incidents of property-related victimization than their cisgender homeowner counterparts. In Washington state in particular, transgender people are victimized at an alarming rate compared to the general population (National Center for Transgender Equality, 2017).

5.2.1 REPETITIVE VICTIMIZATION

Some crimes perpetrated are “one-offs”, such as crimes of opportunity or happenstance. In other cases, a person or a place may be revisited, leading to repetitive victimization. Some examples include:

• Recurring victimization occurs when a person or a place such as a business, school, park, etc., is victimized more than once by any type of victimization.
• Repeat victimization occurs when a person or a place is victimized more than once by the same type of crime or victimization.
• Re-victimization is seen when a person is victimized more than once by any type of victimization. This victimization occurs across a wide span of time: months, years or even from childhood into adulthood. The re-victimizing may come about as a fleeting thought, a smell, certain music or sounds, or some other triggering event.
• Poly-victimization is a term generally used for childhood recurring victimization, when a person has experienced multiple forms of victimization such as a child enduring beatings from a parent, then being sexually abused by a neighbor.
• Near-repeat victimization occurs when a place is victimized in the near vicinity to a place that was previously victimized. This can occur during such events as “porch-pirate” thefts (where delivered packages are stolen off porches or driveways) that occur on the same street in a neighborhood.

Figure 5.2

One of the worst mass shootings in the United States occurred at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Hotel complex in Las Vegas in October 2017. A sniper on the hotel’s 32nd floor and in possession of a modified rifle fired over 1,000 rounds in ten minutes, directed at concert-goers at an outdoor venue. In all, 59 people were killed and at least 527 were injured, making it one of the most horrific mass shooting events in history (Hutchinson et al., 2018).

What makes this event and its aftermath somewhat unique is the litigation that followed. Individual and class action lawsuits were filed by victims and survivors against Mandalay Bay Resort and Hotel, regarding security and a failure to protect its clients (Hassan & Li, 2019). Less than one year later, the hotel’s owner, MGM Grand International, filed a countersuit naming over 1,000 victims in the shooting as defendants (Haskell, 2018). Asking for no money, the hotel owner was asking for change of venue for the litigation (to be heard in federal court as opposed to state court), and in an effort to be shielded from liability. What is lost in all of this is the recurring victimization which occurs–first from the physical and mental trauma incurred at the shooting event, then the impactful questioning immediately following, and finally, from subsequent courtroom testimony after being sued as a victim by the hotel.