Cultural Schema Of Crime

Rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence public service announcements are always in our faces. Turn on the TV, take a walk around town – advocacy for awareness is everywhere. However, no one speaks about those who find themselves actual victims of sexual assault and/or violence. Sexual assault is an underreported crime, according to the Justice Department’s National Crime Victimization Survey (Criminal Victimization, 2011). In fact, it is estimated that 60% of these crimes go unreported, and for every 100 rapes… only 3 rapists of those 100 crimes will ever spend a day in prison, according to the Department of Justice’s Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties. These are staggering numbers of lost justice for a violent and psychologically

By placing the blame with the victim, society can feel safe in the false knowledge that they themselves could not be at risk to be victims (Eigenberg). The culture accepts that victims are other people, rather than accepting the responsibility that anyone could be at risk. It is easy to point a finger of blame and shame at the victim for how they lived their life and the choices they made, rather than accept the possibility that society is woven with threads of the morally wrong as well as right. Society must ostracize the victim, in order to keep the majority pure. Crime is seen as something that must be contained, and society must tell themselves the myth that they are in control. Victim blaming is a symbolic sacrifice so that the majority may retain their mantle of

By utilizing the scientific strengths of forensic victimology, it can give our culture the objective lens to promote and utilize available resources and social programs for survivors of crime. By understanding the flawed nature of society, it grants the social structure itself the power and agency to begin to make changes for future generations. It is only through open eyes and the clarity of awareness that justice can be utilized and dealt to the actual perpetrators of crime. We judge as people even though that is not our job; we are not justice. However it does not stop us from dispensing unfair verdicts. By understanding the virtues of criminology and victimology, it will create an educated public from which we may act objectively and fairly without morally confounded judgments. By understanding the social structure, society will be able to