FIELD EXPERIENCE PAPER

Field Experience Paper

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

Field Experience Paper

Introduction

Our world is full of all the types of people; these people can broadly be divided into two categories, good and bad. Good people are those who do good things, do not hurt anyone, obey the laws and do not indulge in evil doings. On the other hand, bad people are those people who hurt others, do not obey the laws and indulge in criminal activities. The people who suffer from the evil doings or criminal activities of such people are called victims.

Crime is defined as an action that constitutes an offense and is usually punishable in the eyes of law (Gottfredson, & Hirschi, 1990). Crime happens every now and then, according to the statistics, a crime is taking place in the world every second (Chambliss, 2018). Hence, every second, a person or a group of people become a victim to various crimes in the world.

Discussion

Being a student of victimology, I have a deep link with the crime, criminal activities, and criminal procedures. I closely observe the victims of various criminal activities, whether they are small or big, and then study the effect of this criminal activity on the life or lives of the victim(s). These effects are observed from both physical and psychological aspects.

I recently came to interview such a sufferer or victim, who had been suffering from a serious evil like domestic violence. I came to know many new things which I did not know before and then compared them to the knowledge that I already had gained in the class. The description of this interview along with the results and comparison has been given below.

Description of Interview

I chose a person who had been a victim of domestic violence. Her name was Lily (name has been changed) and, according to her, she had been a victim of domestic violence from many years. She told that in the beginning, it was very good, in fact, “magical”. He used to bring gifts for her, lover her very much and be always there for her. But then suddenly everything changed. After a year of being in a relationship, things started changing. Michael (name has been changed) started coming home late and mostly, he was in a drunk state. At first, he used to just slap or hit once but then this hitting became a routine. It also kept becoming harsher and harder. Michael used to hit Lily very badly, in fact, black and blue.

Lily kept on suffering this just to keep her relationship intact. She thought that one day, Michael will be the normal and loving person again as he was before, but finally, she had to speak up. She reported the behavior to police after Michael hit her black and blue and fractured her two bones. He even tried to put gas in her and burn her. Lily told that she received complete support from the police department. The police completely understood her situation and assured her complete protection and safety. Lily told that the treatment and behavior by police helped her build her trust even more on the police department.

Results

After complete observation and analysis of the interview, I came to know that the reaction and behavior of the domestic violence victim, was completely justified and natural (Berns, 2017) (Othman, Goddard, & Piterman, 2014). In addition to this, the treatment of the police department, towards the victim was very friendly and positive.

Comparison

When I compared the results of this interview with the knowledge that I studied in the class, I came to know that they were completely in accordance to the text that had been taught to us in the class. The reaction and behavior of the victim, the treatment strategies that were adopted by the law enforcement department and the perception of victim after that, all were completely in line with the course material studied by us in the class (Pearlman, Zierler, Gjelsvik, & Verhoek-Oftedahl, 2016).

References

Berns, N. S. (2017). Framing the victim: Domestic violence, media, and social problems. Routledge.

Chambliss, W. J. (2018). Power, politics and crime. Routledge

Gottfredson, M. R., & Hirschi, T. (1990). A general theory of crime. Stanford University Press.

Othman, S., Goddard, C., & Piterman, L. (2014). Victims’ barriers to discussing domestic violence in clinical consultations: A qualitative enquiry. Journal of interpersonal violence, 29(8), 1497-1513.

Pearlman, D. N., Zierler, S., Gjelsvik, A., & Verhoek-Oftedahl, W. (2016). Neighborhood environment, racial position, and risk of police-reported domestic violence: a contextual analysis. Public health reports.