Week 4: Responsibility and Participation

Consider this scenario: A woman walks home from a bus stop each night. Normally, she secures her purse in her backpack, but this night she forgets to do so. The purse hanging from her arm is snatched by a thief who has been active in the neighborhood. To say the robbery was the victim’s fault would be considered victim blaming—after all, it is not unreasonable to expect to safely carry a purse in public, and it is the thief who chose to commit the crime. Still, how can one consider the role of the victim without wrongly assigning blame to that victim?

Another victim role is participation in the judicial process to influence an outcome, perhaps through a victim impact statement. Or the victim may be called upon to participate in ways that align with the prosecution or defense.

This week you address two important issues, victim responsibility and victim participation. You explore how victims can change their behaviors to avoid becoming victimized. Also, you examine the effect that victim participation can carry within the criminal justice system.

Learning Objectives

Students will:

Analyze opportunity for crime and criminals

Distinguish between criminal opportunity, victim responsibility, and victim blaming

Apply strategies for avoiding victimization

Analyze the effect of victim participation in the judicial process

Analyze the effect of victim impact statements on sentencing

IN THIS ASSIGNMENT, PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO ALL HIGHLIGHTED DETAILS TO BE ABLE TO COMPLETE THIS ASSIGNMENT. IT WILL NEED TO BE 300 TO 400 WORD COUNT ADDRESSING ALL THE DETAILS HIGHTLIGHTED BELOW. YOU WILL CHOOSE ONE OF THE CRIME TYPES AND WORK OFF OF IT TO COMPLETE THIS ASSIGNMENT. ALSO MAKE SURE YOU REFERENCE YOUR WORK AS WELL I HAVE ADDED A SAMPLE PAPER TO HELP YOU TO BUT YOUR WORK TOGETHER

Discussion: Responsibility

Reflect on this week’s introduction and the theories covered in Week 3. Now, imagine that you are a law enforcement professional given the task of speaking to a community group about how to minimize the risk of becoming the victim of a crime increase in that community. Your goal in this Discussion is to detail some strategies that members of your community can take to reduce criminal opportunity. However, one important goal is to not inspire victim blaming in your community or to stray into aspects of victim blaming yourself.

To prepare:

Imagine that you are a law enforcement officer tasked with addressing your community about an increase in a type of crime. Your instructor will assign you to one of the following crime types:

Burglary during the summer months

Online identify theft

Aggravated assault near subway stops

Reflect on how you would address and educate your audience about the criminal opportunity that has been presented due to certain actions in the community.

Post a response to the following, written as if your audience is your community:

Explain how victims in your community may contribute to opportunity for the crime type you were assigned.

Explain how this relates to the concept of victim responsibility but differs from victim blaming.

Support your explanations by referencing this week’s learning resources and explaining how certain concepts related to victim and offender responsibility apply.

Provide one strategy to avoid victim blaming while still explaining how to avoid creating opportunity for criminal activity.

1. RESPONSIBILITY

2. VICTIMS IN THE COMMUNITY

3. VICTIM RESPONSIBILITIES VS. VICTIM BLAMING