Criminal Justice

1. People who commit crimes are often also the victims of crimes. There are many reasons for this. Address at least 3 of the reasons as to why this occurs according to Balkan.

ANSWER

Victim-Offender Overlap

There is an overlap in the relationship between the offender and the victim. More often than not, one will find that the offender was once a victim of crime. Most victims of crime do not become offenders, but most offenders have been victims. The exact numbers of victim-offenders have not been documented, but the victim-offender overlap is prevalent in the general population. Scholars have not yet agreed on why victims are at risk of becoming offenders because the issue is complex and varies depending on the demographics, the type of victimization, and the crimes committed (Beckley et al., 2018). There are, however, several theories that try to disseminate the relationship between victimization and later offending. All these theories have one common theme, which is offending is learned through victimization.

The first theory is the intergenerational transmission of violence theory. This is also known as the social learning theory. In this theory, aggression and offending are passed down through generations. For example, suppose a child is brought up in a violent home where the parents fight and the children are victims of violence. In that case, the child has a high probability of becoming aggressive and committing a crime through aggression in the future (Beckley et al., 2018). The child was victimized as a child and was being a victim of violence led the child to become an offender. The victim becomes the offender in this situation and, therefore, the relationship between victimization and offense. Another example of a victim becoming an offender is whereby a child is a victim of poverty. The child is brought up in a corrupt country and growing, but they learn that they are poor because some leader stole from them. As young adults, they are bitter because they feel they could have had a better life if they had been given a chance. The young adult decides to revenge and steal from the people they think took what was rightfully theirs. At one point, the young adult was a victim of corruption, and now they are the criminal.

According to a report from the Balkans, the vicious cycle of crime stopped as soon as the borders were open for honest trading. Doing so reduced crime because if the borders are open and people can trade honestly, then there is no need to smuggle or steal and that further eradicates the need to revenge. Sometimes the offenders are usually taking revenge on the people who victimized them first. Revenge is another reason that the victim ends up committing a crime. Some people are victimized, and the justice system does not work for them. Once they feel like justice was not served, they decide to do it themselves, leading to them becoming criminals. Once again, in this scenario, the victim becomes the criminal.

The strain theory implies that offending is sometimes a coping response to being exposed to violence. Children who are exposed to abuse at home are more likely to become offenders. In this, the offender either learns about being an offender from being a victim or decides to ignore all the negative consequences of their behavior, leading to criminality and victimization (Beckley et al., 2018). Children raised in abusive homes are likely to be violent and abusive in their marriages because they learned about the violence from their victimization experiences. Victims of abuse are often abusers.

References

Beckley, A. L., Caspi, A., Arseneault, L., Barnes, J. C., Fisher, H. L., Harrington, H., … & Moffitt, T. E. (2018). The developmental nature of the victim-offender overlap. Journal of developmental and life-course criminology, 4(1), 24-49.