Forensic Psychology For Dummies (70 page)

Lack of public sympathy:
The general public are less likely to be concerned over such victims and so may be unwilling to come forward with information that may help the police.

Associated drug and alcohol problems:
Many, probably most, street sex workers have alcohol and/or drug dependency, which makes them desperate to obtain money to maintain their addiction. This encourages them to take risks relating to where they go and with whom. If under the influence of drugs or alcohol, they’re probably less able to defend themselves or remember the details to report to the police.

A well-known vulnerability:
Criminals are aware of these vulnerabilities and so may prey on street sex workers, which is why they’re the favourite victims of serial killers.

Criminals can also start out as victims. With violent crimes – especially physical and sexual abuse – very often the offender was the direct victim of such assaults within a family or institutional setting when young. Therefore, helping victims as discussed in Part V is often an important way of reducing the cycle of crime from one generation to the next (take a look at the nearby sidebar ‘A criminal who started out as a victim’).

Establishing who’s at risk of repeat victimisation

Many of the conditions that make certain people more at risk of being a victim of a crime than others (check out the earlier section ‘Identifying the victims’) don’t go away after a crime has happened. As a consequence, some people are unfortunate enough to experience repeated crimes over a relatively short period of, say, a year. Yet, although this fact seems obvious, only in the last decade has law enforcement recognised such susceptibility and developed a direct policy for tackling it. This repeat victimisation really comes from criminology studies of general patterns of crime, but forensic psychologists do take the possibility into account when working with offenders or victims.

Studies show that more than one in ten people who suffer a crime, such as burglary, are likely to experience a similar crime within 12 months, if they don’t take direct efforts to reduce the risks. In fact, the chances of suffering another similar crime are greatest in the days and weeks immediately following the original crime.

Efforts by the police and local authorities to reduce the future risk of crime need to take account of the following factors that make people particularly prone to repeat victimisation:

Living in an area where many criminals live or where they visit.

Having chaotic lifestyles or leisure activities that put them at risk of crime, such as spending a lot of time out late at night, getting so drunk that you don’t remember where you’ve been.

Displaying a lack of concern to control the crime, as sometimes happens with theft from shops or petty vandalism.

Crimes that are part of destructive relationships – most notably domestic violence which I examine in Chapter 14 – continue as long as the relationship does, or some outside agent intervenes to stop the violence.