Secondary victimisation
Definition
Additional harm caused to a victim through the process of reporting and investigation, such as disbelief, insensitive questioning, or retraumatisation. Fear of secondary victimisation is a documented reason victims of sexual offences and domestic violence choose not to report, directly shaping the composition of official statistics.
Related terms
- Repeat victimisation
- The empirical pattern in which a small proportion of people or locations experience a disproportionate share of violent incidents. Domestic violence shows...
- Victim impact statement
- A written or oral account submitted by a victim (or victim's family) describing the physical, psychological, financial, and social effects of the...
- Victimology
- The sub-field of criminology that studies crime victims: their characteristics, the victim-offender relationship, the impacts of victimisation, and the adequacy of legal...
- Attrition
- The progressive loss of cases as they move through the criminal justice system: from crime committed, to reported, to recorded, to prosecuted,...
- Counting rules
- Administrative instructions that specify how agencies should convert incidents into statistical records: how to count multiple victims of one incident, how to...
- Notifiable offences
- In England and Wales, the category of offences that must be formally reported to the Home Office and included in national crime...
- Police-recorded crime
- Criminal incidents formally logged by police following a report or officer discovery, counted according to nationally defined rules and submitted to a...
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- A recognised psychological disorder that can follow exposure to traumatic events including criminal victimisation. Diagnostic criteria include intrusive re-experiencing, avoidance, negative mood...
- Reporting rate
- The proportion of crimes experienced by victims that are brought to the attention of police. Reporting rates vary substantially by offence type,...
- Restorative justice
- A process in which the victim, the offender, and relevant community members meet with a trained facilitator to discuss the harm caused,...
- Routine activity theory
- A criminological framework developed by Cohen and Felson (1979) that explains property crime as the product of three converging elements: a motivated...
- Victim precipitation
- The discredited idea, associated with Von Hentig and Mendelsohn, that victims bear some responsibility for their own victimisation through their behaviour or...
Explained in these topics
- Foundations of VictimologyThe additional harm caused to victims by insensitive treatment from criminal justice agencies, the media, or social networks after the original offence. It can...
- Official Crime StatisticsAdditional harm caused to a victim through the process of reporting and investigation, such as disbelief, insensitive questioning, or retraumatisation. Fear of...
- Victim Rights, Support, and the Impact of CrimeAdditional harm caused to victims by the institutional and social responses that follow the original crime. Sources include insensitive police questioning, adv...