Research has demonstrated a pronounced and positive link between participation in criminal behavior and the experience of victimization, also known as the overlap between victims and offenders. The Victim-Offender overlap examines the intricate connection between individuals who experience victimization and those who engage in criminal behavior. It challenges the conventional notion of victims and offenders as separate entities by exploring the potential overlap or relationship between them. This approach reveals instances where victims may later become offenders due to factors like trauma or personal circumstances. Equally, offenders can also become victims, creating a victim-to-offender relationship.
Early research documented the victim-offender overlap, in which 64% of homicide offenders and 47% of homicide victims previously had criminal records. In 2006, later research found that 57% of homicide offenders and 50% of homicide victims had criminal charges. These studies showed Victim-Offender overlap and that many murdered victims had criminal records, and many of them precipitated homicides.
While the victim-offender relationship is consistently reported in the wider victimology literature, it is driven by multiple factors rather than a single one. Victims of a crime who engaged in offending behaviours likely go through trauma. For instance, children who experience domestic abuse normalise violence, promoting retaliatory or antisocial behaviours as a coping mechanism. Empirical evidence suggests that victimisation hinders emotional development by negatively affecting stress response, which causes aggression. Hence, unresolved trauma can increase likelihood of offence, prompting early interventions.
Deviant peers can also lead to offending behaviours as they normalise offence and engage victims in criminal acts via social learning, group acceptance, or even coercion. This is often seen in youth gangs. Likewise, limited social support increases isolation, developing a cycle of VOO through frequent delinquency. When the victim absorbs painful experiences, they see themselves as worthless, consider the world hostile, and lose faith in a promising future. Thus, the victim-offender link is driven by multiple factors, including trauma, peer influence and lack of social support.
Protective factors can break the VOO overlap. There are limited examples available to this argument, but they do show that the victim-offender relationship is not true in all situations, as victims with similar backgrounds do not offend. For example, Oprah Winfrey became the victim of emotional and sexual abuse in her childhood, but she never turned into an offender. Oprah’s protective factors, including her resilience, positive role modelling of her teachers, and psychological healing, protected her from becoming the offender. When protective factors are absent, VOO becomes obvious. Thus, VOO is a correlation, not a rule and with protective factors in place, it can be overcome.
According to Serious Crime Act 2015 of the UK, coercive control refers to an offence in which one individual (let’s say X) frequently or constantly tries to control or coerce another individual (let’s say Y) in a close relationship, knowing that such control or coercion will cause significant distress and negatively affect routine activities of Y. Coercive control comprises of non-physical abuse and its signs include isolating victim from friends and family, monitoring victim’s time, spying on victim’s social platforms, controlling aspects of victim’s routine life (such as, where victim can go, meet, wear, or sleep), stop victim’s access to support services, controlling victim’s finances, depriving victim of basic needs, and humiliating the victim.
Unlike physical assault, which is easy to spot, coercive control is subtle and difficult to identify, notably when the victim is detached from family and friends, heightening “behind closed doors” crime in households, comprising 37% violence against women and girls. Thus, coercive control breeds on a power imbalance between partners that reflects hegemonic masculinity, and where offenders create an environment of fear.
Coercive control has the potential to create VOO. Notably, when the victim experienced abuse for an extended period of time, it heightens the victim’s risk of retaliation or engaging in offence, strengthening the victim-offender relationship. Coercive control causes anxiety, depression, stress, or PTSD, of which PTSD is the most common and harmful disorder. PTSD can modify the physiology and functionality of the victim’s brain through the amygdala, which activates the body’s responsiveness to stress and becomes extremely sensitive due to continuous abuse, hindering rational capability. A bidirectional relationship exist in coercive control because victims commit a crime due to PTSD. Thus, coercive control can cause unresolved trauma leading to offence.
Case studies support the argument that coercive control can influence victims to offend. Penelope Jackson had been convicted of murdering her husband, claiming that she lost control due to physical violence, belittling, and financial abuse. Likewise, Sally Challen also murdered her husband due to emotional abuse. Sara Thornton murdered her husband due to excessive control and abuse.
Long-term exposure to coercive control removed autonomy and resilience. In these traumatic relationships, partners like Penelope, Sally, or Thornton lost the ability to think rationally and lost control over their actions, such as the consequences of what would happen if they killed their partners. Another factor that led victims to offend is the use of all physical and mental resources to avoid abuse each day to survive, and are unable to think of the future, so their offence is a survival. Thus, these cases show that coercive control can have a significant impact on the victims’ mental ability and life.
The implementation of the coercive control legislation is also questionable. The rulings in the three cases are different. Penelope was sentenced for 18 years, and her appeal was dismissed, while Sally’s sentencing was overturned because the court accepted that Sally was coercively controlled. Sara Thornton was convicted of manslaughter by arguing for diminished responsibility and called the murder an accident. Penelope and Thornton’s decision was based on evidence such as her calm attitude, so the jury considered them calculated offences rather than a loss of control. Perhaps the court that convicted Penelope and Thornton was unable to consider the psychological influence that the abusive relationship had on the victim/offender and her mental state, and the condition in which she murdered her partner. Additionally, it may be that mental abuse is a complex thing to explain, suggesting the need for robust assessment in criminal proceedings.
Despite evidence that coercive control causes VOO, some case studies refute this correlation. In 2017, a woman named Jordan Worth physically abused his partner, Alex Skeel. She was the first woman in the UK who face 7.5 years of imprisonment due to coercive control. Alex survived the violence without any offence, but alternative explanations exist to explain his compliant behaviour. Societal stereotypes prevent male victims from seeking support after gendered violence.
However, a more convincing argument is self-control, preventing impulsive aggression for protective reasons. Alex stated that he stayed in the abusive relationship because he feared that Jordan would harm their young children, demonstrating high self-control over his impulsive aggression, considering the long-term consequences of his behaviour, and avoiding self-centredness. Literature shows that high self-control, moral engagement and overcoming negative emotions reduce VOO in intimate partner violence, inhibiting escalation despite trauma. Thus, individual characteristics are the key to VOO.
Legislation exists to prevent coercive control and break the cycle of VOO at least for this type. The Serious Crime Act 2015, Section 76, makes coercive control an offence. However, the legislation is unable to change the justice system. For example, one Government review found that in 2016-17, 4,246 cases of coercive control were reported, while it jumped to 24,856 in 2019-20, and only 1,112 convictions were administered in 2019. The same review argues that coercive control is likely to be prevalent, but issues exist between victims and police in identifying the crime. Thus, besides legislation, police training should be made mandatory, so they can recognise when the situation is precarious and the situations in which offences should be charged.
Another reason why VOO in coercive control prevails is the limited options for victims. International comparisons informed that a New Zealand review recommended adopting a social entrapment approach that looks at the woman’s situations that not only include intimate abuse but also consider the ineffectiveness of community and government support. The social entrapment approach highlights systemic failures and subtle abuse behind closed doors, representing offence as a defence mechanism. It is therefore necessary to adopt a social entrapment approach in coercive control cases, considering the impact and dynamics of coercive control.
Early interventions can mitigate trauma and prevent VOO. Studies show that trauma-informed services provide a safe space for victims that empower and heal them and also reduce trauma-based offence. However, coercive control is done behind closed doors, so early trauma intervention becomes difficult to administer. Still, routine screening in emergency departments or other settings if a patient has bruises or wounds, community-based services using hotlines, or online (mobile app or web-based) services, and public awareness campaigns can recognise abuse, provide care, and develop awareness among victims. Thus, a multi-sectorial approach will provide safe and accessible early care to victims.