Strangers vs Acquaintances
Definition
The relationship-distance axis used across victimology and criminal justice statistics to separate offences between people who did not know each other from those between people with a prior tie, since the two show very different reporting and clearance patterns.
Related terms
- Completely Innocent Victim
- Mendelsohn's first category: a victim selected by chance or by an offender's premeditation, with no contribution from the victim's own conduct, such...
- Intimate Partner Victimisation
- Violence or abuse committed by a current or former spouse, partner or dating partner, a relationship category with markedly lower reporting rates...
- Provocative Victim
- A victim whose own conduct, such as an insult, a threat or a first strike, triggered the offender's response; positioned midway along...
- Victim Blaming
- Attributing moral responsibility for a crime to the victim's character or conduct rather than to the offender's decision to act, a normative...
- Victim Precipitation
- The discredited idea, associated with Von Hentig and Mendelsohn, that victims bear some responsibility for their own victimisation through their behaviour or...
- Situational Culpability
- The idea that a specific act within an encounter, such as who struck first, carries some causal weight, as distinct from treating...
Explained in these topics
- Victim-Offender Relationship and Victim Typologies
- Victim-Offender Relationship (UGC-NET Unit X)The relationship-distance axis used across victimology to separate offences between people who did not know each other from those between people with a prior t...