Victimology: Victim Precipitation, Facilitation and Provocation

By relying on victimology theories and research, I will explain the role of victims in influencing crime in Mauritius. Therms of victim precipitation, facilitation and provocation are also explained in this essay. To begin with, victimology is the science that study victims. Victimology studies how someone become a victim that is how someone become a prey to the offender. Victimology also studies the process, incidence, effects and prevalence of victimisation. Also victimology studies how the criminal justice system assists victims and how society deals with crime. Victim is someone who has been prejudice to some else act, that is someone who has been harmed or injured or have been the result of someone action in some way or the other such as in a crime, theft, accident, violence, ill treatment or by someone words. According to the child protection act of 1994 in Mauritius, 'harm is defined as physical, sexual, psychological, emotional or moral injury, neglect, ill- treatment, impairment of health or development'. According to UN, 'victim is defined as persons who are individually or collectively, have suffered harm, including physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, economic loss or substantial impairment of their fundamental rights, through acts or omissions that abuse of power'. In Mauritius, there are assistance given to victims such as psychological assistance. The identity of these victims are as far as possible remain confidential so that the society does not re victimised the victim especially in cases of rape and sexual offence.

Tree Types of Theories to Explain Crime Processes

When a crime is committed, the one who is the most at lost is the victim. Such as in a case of theft, it is the victim object that are stolen or in cases of sexual offence, it is the victim that has to bear the trauma the whole life thus affecting the victim day to day life activity. In cases of students, the victims are not able to progress in their studies which reflect the bad effect in their life. Furthermore some victims are not able to get the desired justice as the culprit uses some defence which make them acquired the minimum sentence. The offender often tell the police in their statement that it is the victim that has provoke the offender to act. According to victimisation theories, there are three types of theories that were developed. These are victim precipitation, victim facilitation and victim provocation.

Victim precipitation is defined as to how or to what extent, the victim encouraged the offender to commit a crime. One common example that we can see most often in Mauritius is; a drunk man provokes a fight either by using verbal abuse or physical blows which result in a fight where the drunk man gets beaten or injured in the fight. Thus the drunk man is the one who precipitate the offender to commit the crime.

Victim facilitation occurs when victim unintentionally makes it easier for an offender to commit a crime. For example, due to the carelessness of a person who leaves his car without locking it in a place where there were reported car theft very often, is bound to get his car car stolen.

Victim provocation is when a person does something to incite another person to commit an unlawful act. Without this, there would have been no offence committed. Example is, a lady walking alone in a high crime area at night might be an easy target for theft and sexual assaults.

If the Victims are Really Innocent?

Sometimes victims behaviour and action are mechanism that are encourage the offender to commit the crime. According to me, there should be campaign organise by the government to sensitise the population about how theft is committed and how the offender waits for such opportunities to commit the crime. if the victims takes their precaution, the rate of theft would decrease. According to crime, justice and security statistics, Mauritius, in year 2019 the theft rate per 1000 population was 8.9 and for year 2020 the rate was 8.5. although the rate has decrease, an overall offence rate per 1000 population has increased from 35.6 in year 2019 to 43.8 in year 2020.

Victims plays an important in the criminal justice system as without the victim, there would no crime reported. The primary criminal justice system consist of the police. If a crime is committed, the first place that the victim has to go is the police. The police will take the victim's statement about the incident and it is the police that will lodge the case to the court. The police will only apprehend the accused and present him to the court. The second criminal justice system is the court.

It is the court that punished. The punishment delivered by the court to the accused is based on the crime committed. The more serious is the crime, the more severe punishment the accused gets. The court will study all the evidences and witnesses presented to the court by the police. Based upon the evidences that the court will decide if the accused is the culprit or not. For the harm that the victim has got from the offender, it is the court that will punished the culprit. The court alone can punished someone who has done an illegal act and nobody else can punished him. After the court has decided on the punishment and delivered the verdict, if the accused is innocent, he will be free to go. But if the accused is sentence to prison, he will be send to prison. The reason for punishing a person is to serve as example to other person so that they do not commit an offence. The third criminal justice system is the prison. In prison, the culprit are confined till their sentence are over.

Statistics for crime committed are available at the police, because the first place where a crime is reported, it is at the police station. The problem is that not victims are willing to report a crime. For example in cases of domestic violence, the wife would not want to report her husband but instead may seek the help of police just to talk and reasoned or warned the husband but the case is not reported. Therefore such statistics are not always true. Some victims does not want to report the crime because they are afraid of how the society will react. Some are not willing to go to court because of the time the court takes to deliver justice. Also the statistics may be false because several theft in a house may be counted as one count.

In Mauritius often offenders especially sexual offenders are the one that are close to the victim. So they know the behaviour of the victim and they know if the victim would report the crime or not. Many times the victim does not report the crime on the first instance. But if the offender is committing the act often, then they victim under the mental pressure may report the crime or may commit suicide. The offenders know that they will not have problem if they act as such this is why they committed the offence.

Victims who are able to report a crime because they are ashamed of what the society will say, they often laps into the drug or they can themselves start to commit crimes. Example, a person who has worked hard to buy a mobile phone only to find that it was stolen, may simply steal a mobile from another person just to recover the lost.

Conclusion

To conclude, victims play an important role in the criminal justice system. The victim can influence an offender to commit a crime as well as the manner of the victim can be motive for the offender to commit the act as the offender know that the victim will not report the case. Sometimes we can see that the victim himself start to commit illegal acts such as drug use and to have money to buy drug the victim can steal. Thus the victim can increase the rate of crime in Mauritius as well as can help to decrease the rate if only they report the crime at the first instance and start the awareness of such crime to their neighbourhood. The victims especially sexual victims must have moral support from relatives and organisations and prevent them from being re victimised.

References

1. Wolfgang, M. E. (1957). Victim precipitated criminal homicide. Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science, 48(1), 1-10.

2. Schafer, J. R., & Navarro, J. N. (2004). Police injury and the theory of victim precipitated homicide. Homicide Studies, 8(3), 201-221.

3. Felson, R. B., & Cohen, L. E. (1980). Human ecology and crime: A routine activity approach. Human ecology, 8(4), 389-406.

4. Wright, R. A., & Decker, S. H. (1994). Burglars on the job: Streetlife and residential break-ins. Northeastern University Press.

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5. Schneider, M. C. (2009). Provoking the crime of rape: Evaluating the legal response to victim behavior. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 99(1), 213-260.