Ezzat A. Fattah

Crime and Victimization of the Elderly

I: Crime and the Elderly.- One: Who are the Elderly?.- The Aging of the North American Population.- Gender and the Marital Status of the Elderly Population.- The Plight of Older People in Western Society.- Two: Age as a Criminological Variable.- Explanations of the Decline in Criminality with Advancing Age.- How Much Crime Do the Elderly Commit?.- What Offences Do the Elderly Commit?.- Is the Elderly Criminal an Academic Invention?.- Three: Offences the Elderly Commit and their Explanations.- Explaining Elderly Crime.- What Role do Mental Disorders Play in Geriatric Criminality?.- Examining Specific Offence Patterns.- Conclusion.- Four: The Elderly Offender and the Criminal Justice System.- The Elderly Offender in the Hands of the Police.- Prosecutorial Discretion and the Processing of Old Offenders.- Diversion of the Elderly Offender.- The Elderly Offender in Court.- Five: The Elderly Offender in Prison.- Incarceration and Older Criminals.- Negative and Positive Effects of Imprisonment on Elderly Inmates.- Problems of Elderly Offenders In a Prison Setting.- Six: Responding to Elderly Criminality: Sentencing, Punishment, Prevention.- A Tenative Typology of Geriatric Offenders.- Sentencing the Elderly Offender.- Punishment and the Elderly Offender.- Preventing Elderly Crime.- Bibliography: Part I.- II: Victimization of the Elderly.- Seven: Age as a Victimological Variable.- Elderly Victimization: Cultural Images.- Age and Victimology.- The Victim as Decision-Maker.- Data on Elderly Victimization.- Summary.- Eight: General Patterns of Elderly Victimization.- The Findings of Victim Surveys.- Fraud and the Elderly.- Explaining General Patterns of Elderly Victimization.- Conclusion.- Nine: The Cost of Elderly Victimization.- Estimating the Costs of Victimization.- The Empirical Investigation of Victimization Costs.- Coping with the Costs of Victimization.- Summary.- Ten: The Indirect Cost of Elderly Victimization.- What is Fear of Crime?.- Fear of Crime Among the Elderly.- The Correlates of Fear of Crime.- Fear of Crime Among the Elderly: Some Theoretical Issues.- Conclusion.- Eleven: The Mistreatment of the Elderly in Domestic Settings.- The Problem of Elder Abuse and Neglect.- Patterns of Elder Mistreatment.- Explaining Elder Mistreatment.- Summary.- Twelve: Crimes Against the Elderly: Policy and Planning.- Crime and Victimization Policy.- Elder Mistreatment: Policy and Problems.- Politics and Policy: What Should be Done?.- Bibliography: Part II.

Victims and Victimology: The Facts and the Rhetoric

The paper traces the history of the young discipline of victimology and the transformation it underwent with the advent of victimization surveys. The surveys revealed striking similarities between the offender and victim populations. Examples of these similarities are given and their possible explanations are discussed. The empirical findings on crime victims are contrasted to the rhetoric of victim advocates. An attempt is made to explain the emergence of the victim cause as a political issue and the ensuing crisis in victimology. A call is made for separating science from politics and for differentiating the role of the scholar from that of the lobbyist. This leads to a distinction between scientific and humanistic victimology and to the possible way in which a clash between the humanists and the scientists could be avoided.

The Plight of crime victims in modern society

Acknowledgements - Notes on the Contributors - PROLOGUE: ON COUNTING VICTIMS - A Comparison of National Crime Surveys R.Block - ON SOME NEGLECTED TYPES OF VICTIMIZATION - Victims of Abuse of Power: The David/Goliath Syndrome E.A.Fattah - Victims of Extreme State Terrorism R.Corrado - Victims of Terrorism: Dimensions of the Victim Experience E.E.Flynn - The Victimization of Canadas Natives: The Consequences of Socio-Cultural Deprivation C.T.Griffiths et al - ON WOMEN AND CHILDREN AS VICTIMS - Women as Victims L.Vaughan-Evans et al - Victimhood of Battered Women: Psychological and Criminal Justice Perspectives D.Dutton - Victimological Aspects of Child Abuse E.A.Fattah - Child Abuse and the Courts: Finnish and Swedish Experiences M.Korpilahti - ON RESPONSE TO, AND CONSEQUENCES OF, VICTIMIZATION - Victim-Offender Dynamics in Stranger to Stranger Violence: Robbery and Rape R.Block - The Needs of Crime Victims I.Waller - Crime Reporting and Services for Victims E.Ziegenhagen - ON SERVICES FOR CRIME VICTIMS - Compensation by Offenders in Canada: A Victims Right? A.Thorvaldson - Legal Aid to Crime Victims S.Hillenbrand - Victim-Witness Programs S.Hillenbrand - Family Violence and Changing Ideologies in the Shelter Movement T.Peltoniemi - EPILOGUE FOR A CHARTER OF RIGHTS FOR CRIME VICTIMS A.Normandeau - Index

Some reflections on the victimology of terrorism

Abstract Literature on terrorists and terrorism is abundant, but very little is written on the victim. Whether the studies are published by psychologists or political scientists, by psychiatrists or sociologists, data on the victim are conspicuous by their absence. There is hardly any mention of how victims of terrorism are chosen, their characteristics, the role they play, if any, in preparing or triggering the terrorist acts, their behavior during the ordeal, and their postvictimization condition.1 The dearth of the empirical data renders the systematic study of the victims of terrorism particularly difficult. This paper presents a series of reflections on some victimological aspects of terrorism and offers a number of suggestions for future research.

Recent Theoretical Developments

In the 1930s criminology was the subject of a scathing critique by Michael and Adler (1933) (see Chapter 7). Half a century later, Albert Reiss Jr. (1981b:3) reminded criminologists that: The body of knowledge that we think of as criminology owes more to models and theories from psychology and sociology than from any other discipline. Criminology, to be sure, has not lent itself to any single theoretical formulation within those disciplines, though there have been fashions in theories of crime.

Crisis in American criminal policy

During the preparation of this issue, which compares developments in crime and criminal justice in the US and Europe, a letter of Christian Pfeiffer to General Attorney Janet Reno came across our desk. The letter (dated t994) can be seen as a criminological informed cri de coeur about American criminal policy. Although the author is fully responsible for style and contents of the letter, this voice of worry can be heard at other places and in other occasions. After ample discussion the editorial committee decided to publish the letter, if we could trigger comments on it from other criminal justice experts. This was the case. We are very happy to publish the letter together with five comments from American and European colleagues. In this way we hope to stimulate discussion and communicat ion on preferred directions and solutions in criminal justice policy, which is in coherence with our editorial aims.

Early Speculative Explorations

Throughout the Middle Ages, humans were perceived as selfish by nature and irremediably bad. The individual had to be severely contained and restrained, to be protected against natural selfishness, and preserved from temptation.

The Thorny Issue of Defining Crime

The term ‘crime’ is as central to criminology as the term ‘society’ is to sociology. Criminology may be loosely defined as ‘the study of crime’ or as ‘the science of crime’, and a definition of crime is therefore essential for our understanding of what criminology is all about. A definition of crime is also necessary for determining who is a criminal, and for delineating the subject-matter of criminology.

The Criminal: Conventional and Unconventional Views

The term criminal, as currently used, has a strong pejorative connotation. It is a value-laden term, which conveys, more than most other terms used to designate those who violate the law, society’s hatred, contempt, and disapproval. In recent years, there has been a tendency in criminological literature to replace the term ‘criminal’ with more neutral terms such as ‘offender’, ‘perpetrator’, ‘law breaker’, ‘law violator’, ‘transgressor’, and so forth.

The Formidable Challenge of Measuring Crime

The general public is generally under the impression that crime can be easily and reliably counted in much the same way that inches of rainfall or snow, hours of sunshine, traffic or labour accidents, are counted. And although people may occasionally exhibit some scepticism regarding crime figures or crime rates they are usually unaware of how difficult it is to measure the real incidence of crime and have little or no knowledge of the wide gap that separates official crime statistics from true crime figures.