Law & Ciminology, Victimisation - Essay Example

imple words, no act can be considered a crime, irrespective of how immoral or damaging it may be, unless it has been made criminal by state legislation. This conceptualisation appears straightforward enough. However, it tells us very little about the processes through which certain harmful acts and victims usually come to be identified and recognised as part of the crime problem while others remain hidden. A critical approach to the study of crime and its impact on individuals and society hence requires a reflection on the exact definition of crime, construction of legal conceptions and its victims.

Apparently, victims play a major role in initiating the criminal justice process. Without them, much of the work of the criminal justice process would come to a halt. Shapland (1986) asserts that “the numbers and types of cases entering the system and thereby eventually providing the workload for the courts, prison service and other conventional agencies, appear largely to be determined by the reporting behaviour of victims and witnesses, not action initiated by the police” (p. 210). The fact that only a fraction of crime is reported to and recorded by the police, combined with low clear-up rates, means that only a small proportion of offences ever reach the court.

In all these cases, victim experiences can be prolonged and complex. An incident that occurred in perhaps a few minutes can become the subject of a series of inquiries that may last months or years after the event. Victims who come to court expecting that a trial will be an assertion of their wrongs can find that their probity is on trial as well. In Britain, the role of victims within the criminal justice process is mainly confined to reporting the crime and/or providing evidence. The significance of the victims role in these areas is compounded by the fact that the vast majority of offences come to police attention through a victims report rather than through patrolling activities.