Victims of Violence
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“Violent crime rates declined since 1994, reaching the lowest level ever recorded in 2004.” (
“Violence is a widespread and growing problem in practically all societies. It takes many forms, and occurs in all settings: at work, in the home, in the streets and the community at large.” It affects both males and females of all ages, particularly young people. (
The first age group that I am going to look deeper onto their victimization is infants. Because infants are completely reliant on adults they find themselves to be the most vulnerable individuals in our society. Even though society does trust adults to take care of them they still fall victims to violence. Kidnapping is at the top of the list when it comes to crimes that are committed against infants. Compare to other age groups infants are kidnapped twice as much. Another violent crime that infants fall victim to be simple assault which in a lot of cases is discovered to late. When infants are abused it is up to a adult to take the abused child to doctor if the infant is severely hurt; in most cases the abuser is not going to bring the child to the doctor if they know they are responsible for the bodily harm on the child. Other crimes like aggravated assault and sexual assault are considered types of abuse or mistreatment.
More serious crimes that infants fall victim to are manslaughter and murder. Also another serious crime that infants fall victim to is shaken baby syndrome. This is a serious crime when it comes to infants because it can be cause intentionally, or unintentionally. An angry adult can easily bring serious bodily harm to infant that way. Almost all of these crimes come from adults, but sometimes they come from older children and juveniles. Juveniles and children are the next group I am going to talk about which happens to be the most victimized of all age groups. (
“Juveniles are twice as likely as an adult to be victims of serious crimes and three times as likely to be victims of assault.” This is a staggering statement that was made in the Juvenile Justice Bulletin but not all that surprising. Juveniles and children fall victim to most violence and violent crimes. Homicide is one of the major violent crimes that are committed on juveniles and children. “In 1997, the number of juvenile homicide victims was 2,087. The homicide rate was 3.0 per 100,000 persons ages 0 through 17, compared to 8.1 for adults. Eleven percent of the homicides in 1997 occurred in the 17 or younger age group.”(
Children fall victims to the most crimes and the fact of the matter is, it is not getting any better, its getting worse. For similar reasons as infants, being so reliant on adults the leaves children open to predators. As they grow older and become juveniles and become less dependent this opens them up to be victims of more adult crimes like homicide.
Adults are the next most victimized age group that I am going to discuss. “In 2004, U.S. residents age 12 or older experienced approximately 24 million crimes, according to findings from the National Crime Victimization Survey. ” (
When you think of crimes that women