Decades ago, victims of crime were considered to be in a wrong place at a wrong time whenever they became victims of crime. However, theories today explain that an individual can be the reason for the crime himself or herself. Prior literature and research studies developed theories of victimization that explain the relationship between victims and the criminal act. Studies showed that victims could also play a part in the crime (Degarmo, 2011). For instance, lifestyle theory argues that there are certain lifestyle exposures that increase criminal offenses while there are other lifestyle exposures that reduce criminal offenses.
An individual that is single, lives in the urban areas and associates him or herself with …show more content…
Passive precipitation is a situation whereby an individual possesses characteristics that expose him or her to victimization (Degarmo, 2011). For instance, an individual may discuss his job activities and the rise in pay as well as how his lifestyle will change to people. His story will spread to people who engage in criminal activities, and the result is, he will fall as a victim of criminal activities due to his characteristics. On the other hand, active precipitation is whereby an individual proactively induces criminal activities. For instance, a woman can dress in such a way that the dressing mode is provocative, and she ends up being raped. In such cases, there is usually a relationship with the criminal offender or instances of provocative actions.
A third victimization theory is the deviant place theory (Ngo & Paternoster, 2011). Deviant place theory suggests that exposure to dangerous places increases the risk of an individual being victimized. For instance, an individual that continuously walks at night in streets known to have high criminal activities will be a victim of victimization easily. The best solution in such a case is to relocate to an area that is less …show more content…
Victim precipitation theory is divided into passive and active precipitation theories (Ngo & Paternoster, 2011). Passive theory suggests that individual characteristics may expose oneself to victimization. In this case, we are not told that Carla was advertising her lifestyle of living in urban areas or the amount of money that she had. Carla only visited her boyfriend, Casey and took the methamphetamine to sell to her clients. Secondly, since Carla was involved in drug trafficking, we are not told that the area where Casey lived were frequent cases of conflict among the drug traffickers. For this reason, we cannot conclude that the fact that Carla was selling drugs resulted in victimization due to fear of loss of power as a drug