Victim Precipitation Criminology

498 Words2 Pages
Victim precipitation refers to those victims who hang out with the offender that commit crimes against them. Another definition of victim precipitation refers to “the theory of criminology where the victim of a crime is believed to have provoked or incited the criminal acts of the offender (the person who committed the crime),” according to Jacoby. This theory is mostly associated with such crimes as homicide, rape, assault, and robbery. The concept of “victim precipitation” was first introduced in the article Victim Precipitated Criminal Homicide by Marvin Wolfgang, a 20th century criminologist. Wolfgang described the theory as relating to those specific murders where the victim had been identified as using physical force first. Victim precipitation relates to why and how crime happens. Most theories focus on the actions of the offender but victim precipitation on the other hand focuses on the interaction between the offender and victim. This theory views the victim as an active participant in the crime. For instance, this could happen two ways: first, the victim is the participant in the crime that acted first and second, the victim encourages the offender to commit the crime. These are two primary factors of the…show more content…
In some cases, provocation exists but doesn’t legally help to mitigate an offender’s responsibility. In such cases, the victim was threaten during a robbery and attempted to prevent the robbery from happening, they didn’t take the robber serious, scared the robber so bad that he/she killed the victim. An example of a victim precipitation case which shows homicide patterns are: “During a lover's quarrel, the male (victim) hit his mistress and threw a can of kerosene at her. She retaliated by throwing the liquid on him, and then tossed a lighted match in his direction. He died from the
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