ABSTRACT
Second, the concept of victimization refers to the ways in which becoming a victim of crime are not evenly distributed in society. In this context victimization is used to refer to the patterning of criminal victimization structured by age, class, gender and ethnicity. Criminal victimization survey data consistently reveal that younger people are much more likely to be victimized than older people; the poor and economically marginalized are much more likely to be victimized than the better-off; people from ethnic minorities are much more likely to be victimized than white people; and, in the context of street crime, men are much more likely to be victimized than women. When the picture of victimization is framed in this way it becomes clear that the young working-class black or minoritized male is more likely to be victimized, especially on the street, than any other category of person. Yet it is also the case that they are the least likely to be viewed as vulnerable to such victimization and most likely to be seen as the perpetrators of such victimization. Thus the empirical patterning of victimization would suggest that young, economically marginal males from ethnic minority groups belong to both ‘victim’ and ‘offender’ categories, often offending against each other.
