Can a crime be the victims fault? Can a victim be at fault for a crime committed against them if they failed to take precations to prevent said crime from happening to them? I’d like to present ffour difference scenarios :
Scenario A: A man is at a party. He decides to get drunk. He drinks until he passes out. He is robbed of his wallet and phone while he is passed out.
Scenario B: A rich man creates a profile on a dating site. on it he brags about how money he makes. He receives a messages from woman wishing to enter a relationship with him. he meets the woman and dates her for several weeks. One day he discovers that all his credit cards have been maxed out and some money is missing from his bank account . As it turns out the woman was a gold-digger who ran up his credit cards and stole money from him.
Scenario C) A man regularly cheats on his wife. He also treats her like a doormat.
The wife eventually finds out that the man had been cheating on her . She gets so angry at this news she stabs him to death (or Lorena Bobbits him if you prefer).
Scenario D) A man goes to the bar to get drunk and to pick up women for one night stands.(He gets drunk and has unprotected sex with strangers on a regular basis). He meets a woman at a bar and goes to her place for sex. The woman is HIV-positive and is fully aware of it, but she doesn’t tell him that she is HIV-positive, but she doesn’t say that she’s clean either. The man has unprotected sex with her and ends up being infected with HIV.
Do you think that the victims in my 3 scenarios are at fault/responsible for what happened to them?
No, an individual is not responsible for crimes committed against them. But, people have a duty to themselves to do what they can to avoid being victimized.
That kind of stupidity might allow an insurance company to escape having to provide coverage. If a homeowner leaves the door unlocked, that isn’t culpable negligence. But if he puts up a big sign in the front yard: “Door Unlocked, Residents on Vacation” and there’s a burglary, I think the insurance company would have a strong legal case not to have to pay out against insured damages.
Stupidity isn’t illegal, but it can be legally actionable.
None of those situations excuse the perpetrator, and the only one that might mitigate the perpetrator’s guilt is the Lorena Bobbitt one, and that only if “doormat” implies a serious history of physical abuse that cast reasonable doubt on her ability to leave him safely. Otherwise:
Raping a drunk girl is still rape.
Robbing a passed-out guy is still theft.
Stabbing a cheating husband is still attempted murder.
Burglarizing an unlocked home or car is still burglary.
A+B+C+D=4. You gave us 4 scenarios, not 3. And no, the victims can’t be responsible for the crimes committed against them. That would make them both the perp and the victim.
Criminals are responsible for crimes. Sometimes people are incredibly stupid and not deserving of much sympathy for their loss. A and B could be interpreted that way. In C and D the impact of the crime rises to a level generally considered unacceptable.
I’ll be as charitable as posible to the original question:
Should someone who knowingly puts themselves in a situation where they will probably be victimized, say putting an unlocked bike out in a high-theft area where they know several bikes were stolen already, share some of the fault for what happens?
And if you say no, what about the case where you put yourself in a situation intending to be victimized? Like the disturbed person who walks at 3am with a concealed weapon hoping for the chance to lethally defend himself?
Well, the OP title specifically mentions responsibility for the crime, not the injury. But then the OP asks, are they “responsible for what happened to them?”
So really, the OP is just muddled, and this thread will just probably just get more muddled as it goes on.
The victim of a crime is not at fault. A crime only occurs when a criminal makes a conscious choice to commit it. So the criminal is responsible for the crime.
That said, criminals exist and crimes occur. Some people do things which make them more likely to be the victim of a crime.