Week 3: The 'Ideal Victim'

This week we looked at Nils Christie's paper "The Ideal Victim".

Christie argued that we have a lot of preconceptions about what a victim ought to be like. The result is that how much recognition we give to actual victims of crime depends on how closely they fit the model of the 'ideal victim'.

An 'ideal' victim is vulnerable, relative to the offender; blameless, relative to the offence (they didn't do anything to make it happen); weak enough to be somebody who people want to look after; but not so weak, socially speaking, as to be overlooked completely.

An old woman mugged by a young man fits the description of an 'ideal victim'; a young man mugged by another young man doesn't (not vulnerable enough, and generally not different enough from the offender).

A woman attacked on her way home fits the description; a woman attacked outside the back door of a nightclub at 3.00 a.m. doesn't (not blameless enough - what was she doing there?).

An old man whose purse is stolen with his pension in it fits the description; a CEO whose wallet is stolen doesn't (too powerful to need us to look after him).

Lastly, an old man attacked at random on a Friday night fits the description - but if it's an old homeless man, he doesn't (too powerless to have any claim on our sympathies).

Needless to say, these aren't recommendations of how we ought to think, but descriptions of how (perhaps) we do think. And if we want people to take somebody seriously as a victim, we do tend to emphasise how weak they are and how virtuously they were acting at the time of the crime. This makes it possible to draw a nice clear line between the victim (weak, innocent and one of us) and the offender ("a dangerous man coming from far away" in Christie's words).

Of course, the "weak innocent victim"/"big bad stranger" model is very far from being typical of actual crimes. Most victims aren't totally innocent and virtuous in their conduct (why should they be?), and most offenders aren't predatory strangers. So the more we think in terms of the 'ideal victim', the harder it is to see actual victims of crime, and actual offenders, for what they are.

When you're thinking about actual victims of crime, and the ways in which they may have been failed by the criminal justice system, it may well be worth thinking back to the 'Ideal Victim' - and how it's used to limit the support and sympathy that's given to actual victims.

The 'Ideal Victim' - despite the name - is not an ideal. It's a standard that some victims meet, but many don't; in fact, probably most victims don't meet it. And we shouldn't ask them to.