Victim precipitated homicide

Every criminal happening consists of two participants, offender, and victim. Mostly criminal

behavior of the offender is an influential factor. This is reason researchers are paying attention in

developing understanding victim account in crimes. Marvin Wolfgang was first person shedding

light on offender-victim relationship particularly during homicides. He introduced the term of

Victim precipitation homicide first time. Homicide means killing a human being due to any

reason. Victim precipitation homicide means victim play any role in the incident causing

homicide incident to happen. Killing can be intentional and non-intentional in nature. (Petherick,

2014)

Victim precipitated is an important theory in criminology introduced to analyze ways of victim

interaction with possible criminal which leads to the crime being committed. Victim precipitated

homicide is an incident of homicide where the victim played an important role. This role can be

verbal, physical or emotional. The victim is the first person who uses any force against his

subsequent killer. Victim precipitated homicide theory is especially applicable where the victim

is a direct contributor to criminal incidents. (Ferguson, 2009)

Very few homicide incidents happen with complete planning and intentional motives. In most

cases, situational anger serves as the active cause of crime. Situational rage is a sudden snap at a

situation, dialog, or incident where mind sudden activates the defensive mode. Situational rage is

commonly witnessed on the road while driving. Situational rage causes homicide on road easily

like hitting due to rage. Situational or accumulate rage is especially known is a case of domestic

issues, where one person strikes first and second kill in other in self-defense. Rage kill
intellectual mind, victim provoke offender verbally or by physical activity to the level of causing

homicide. (Pesta, 2011)

Violent Street Crime versus Harmful White-Collar Crime is a very detailed article by Michel

(2016) that compares direness and graveness white collar crimes. violent street crimes like

murder, rape, theft, abuse, etc are considered a crime but the general public does not consider

corruption, fraud as severs crime. This article by Michel (2016) writes about public attitudes

related to white collar crimes within a time period of the 20th century. Public always

underestimate the severity of the white-collar crime, even in 21st century despite all information

criminal prosecution is still avoided. Even many studies proved violent street crimes pose minor

harm as compare to average level white color crime.

Researchers developed a short questionnaire about types of street crimes (i.e. assault, robbery,

homicide etc) and nine types of white collars crimes for the latest study of National White-Collar

Crime. Selected white color crimes were identity theft, hacking, false advertisement of the drug,

insurance overcharge, embezzlement, market rigging, and counterfeit sales. The public considers

most severe crime in which someone gets hurt or killed directly as compare to crimes that caused

monetary loss (Huff et al. 2010). This behavior is evident in mainstream media too, street crimes

are posed so much negativity in tv shows but white collar crimes are assessed according to

monetary effects (Barlow & Barlow, 2010).

In the end, we can conclude that every intellectual and sane person expect the public to realize

that white-collar criminals can be capable of huge loss but still that loss will portray them kinder

and gentler offenders in comparison of street criminals. (Perri, 2011)

References

Barlow, D. E., & Barlow, M. H. (2010). Corporate crime news as ideology news magazine

coverage of the Enron case. Retrieved from

http://files.embedit.in/embeditin/files/4gX7VfNILz/1/file.pdf.

Huff, R., Desilets, C., & Kane, J. (2010). National public survey on white-collar crime.

Retrieved from http://crimesurvey.nw3c.org/docs/nw3c2010survey.pdf.

Pesta, R. E. (2011). Provocation and the point of no return: An analysis of victim-precipitated

homicide (Doctoral dissertation, Youngstown State University).

Ferguson, C., & Turvey, B. E. (2009). Victimology: A brief history with an introduction to

forensic victimology. B. Turvey & W. Petherick (Coords.), Forensic victimology: examining

violent crime victims in investigative and legal contexts, 1-32.

Michel, C. (2016). Violent street crime versus harmful white-collar crime: A comparison of

perceived seriousness and punitiveness. Critical Criminology, 24(1), 127-143.

Petherick, W. (2014). Applied Crime Analysis: A Social Science Approach to Understanding

Crime, Criminals, and Victims. Elsevier.