Victimology Psychology of the Victim Investigative Perspective

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Victimology Psychology of the
VictimInvestigative Perspective

• Ciarán OKeeffe
• Office GLA014, Telephone ext. 3639
• Office Hours Monday 1-2, Thursday 1-2

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Victimology Risk Assessment

• Victim profiles help provide context, connections
  investigative direction.
• What are the offender needs that victim
  selection satisfies?
• Turvey 1999106.
• Avoid deification or vilification of the victim.

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Victimology Risk Assessment

• Create a time-line to determine the point at
  which the offender acquired the victim
• Place he/she attacked the victim
• Visibility of the attack location need for
  familiarity
• was victim acquisition dependent on a routine or
  schedule indicative of surveillance?
• Does the route/place of acquisition put the
  victim or the offender at high or low risk?
• Investigate the obvious - examine all
  connections relationships - especially the
  first if known crime.

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Victimology Risk Assessment

• Undertake a psychological autopsy including
  discovery history which is
• a detailed victim history, habits personality
  to determine state of mind of a person before
  death or event of interest.
• Specific attention is given to wounds, the state
  of mind mental health history of the victim.

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The Victim Risk Assessment

• 1. Examine the victim-offender relationship in
  terms of the risk involved
• for the victim the exposure to the possibility
  of suffering harm or loss -
• for the offender resistance, intervention by
  others, capture, ID harm.
• 2. Risk assessment is not blame assessment
  seeks to establish the level of relative
  perceived risk the offender took to acquire a
  victim(s).
• 3. A victim history helps assess the victims
  perception of risk but the profilers assessment
  is an objective opinion about their exposure to
  harm.

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The Victim Risk Assessment

• Victim categories
• high and low risk victims
• victims general lifestyle risk levels
• victims personality interaction with the
  environment
• Incident risk levels
• victims state of mind hazards of the
  environment at the time of contact.
• Factors enhancing victim risk
• state of mind
• time location of occurrence
• number of victims
• drug abuse.

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The Victim Risk Assessment

• Offender risk overcoming obstacles
• high low MO risk
• degree of skill, planning precautions - high
  risk victims are not always low MO risks
• incident risk
• the offenders perspective

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Profiling Victim resistance

• Victims respond to an offender according to their
  own experience understanding this requires a
  full victimology
• victim compliance
• passive resistance
• verbal resistance
• physical resistance
• response to sexual force