Victimization
Name
Institution
Victimization
Introduction
Victimization refers to the process where one is accused of participating in an illegal act (Entail, 2020). The crime problems are so many that they require proper handling for justice to prevail. Researchers have always been tasked with looking for a proper way of solving such cases of victimization to the best way of obtaining justice for both the offender and the accuser. Entail (2020) states that victimization is mostly used to refer to the study that involves investigating the crime scene where there is a victim who will be the main focus during the study. The discussion will focus on the best theory that describes victimization, giving proper reasons that make the theory the best in this field. The discussion looked at the routine activities theory as the best theory to better explain victimization (Reyns, B. W., Henson, & Fisher, 2016).
Routine activities theory
Routine theory, as the name suggests, is a theory that investigates the events of the offender. Culatta (2020) states that other theories mainly focus on explaining why someone committed an offense, but they fail to follow that particular offense’s origin. The other theories also fail to look into some of the factors that man one to commit the crime but only follow the criminal events’ production. The fact that a crime was committed should never be a clear reason to put someone into justice but should follow the real origin of the crime; maybe other possible reasons made the person commit a crime (Culatta, 2020).
The theory organizes the activities in the society that brought about the criminal act. The activities include where people work, the means and time they report and leave their places of work, the type of groups the people socialize with whenever they are free and obtain their goods. Any other activities that they do may explain what their characters are (Hayes, Neal, & Hernandez, 2020). These activities put on investigation under this theory will surely give the victim a picture; they can make the victim participate in criminal activity very easily or drive the person away from criminal activity (Hayes, Neal, & Hernandez, 2020).
Studies show that criminal activities, like any other opportunity, can vary over time, space, and within a group of people. Therefore, these activities always give a clue about the offender’s behavior before the occurrence of the risk (Hayes, Neal, & Hernandez, 2020). Routine activities theory investigates such activities and looks for ways of doing away with such activities that are of high risk when it comes to participating in criminal activities. The move attempts to find a permanent solution to society’s criminal activities (Reyns, B. W., Henson, & Fisher, 2016).
In conclusion, this theory can be considered the best theory in victimization. A good theory is a theory that should not only offer the possible course of an offense but that which tries to look for a permanent solution to the problem (Reyns, B. W., Henson, & Fisher, 2016). Routine activity theory does that.
References
Culatta, E., Clay-Warner, J., Boyle, K. M., & Oshri, A. (2020). Sexual revictimization: A routine activity theory explanation. Journal of interpersonal violence, 35(15-16), 2800-2824.
Entail, V. (2020). Experiencing acknowledgment versus denial of the ingroup’s collective victimization. The social psychology of collective victimhood, 297.
Hayes, B. E., O’Neal, E. N., & Hernandez, C. N. (2020). The Sexual Victimization of College Students: A Test of Routine Activity Theory. Crime & Delinquency, 0011128720954347.
Reyns, B. W., Henson, B., & Fisher, B. S. (2016). Guardians of the cyber galaxy: An empirical and theoretical analysis of the guardianship concept from routine activity theory applies to online forms of victimization. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 32(2), 148-168.