The ideal victims?

Consumers and economically motivated food fraud

Consumers can be damaged by food fraud – financially, physically or even psychologically. Although economically motivated fraud in the food sector is far from new, few consumers or politicians are aware of the state of the law. Moreover, there has been little sociological or criminological research on the victimisation¹ of consumers. If we are to guarantee effective consumer protection, we must enhance unannounced controls and establish appropriate punishments, so that illegal practices are no longer worthwhile to the perpetrator. We will show that there are unrecognised deficits in current knowledge.

The problem

In 1986, the criminologist Nils CHRISTIE coined the phrase of the “ideal victim” and illustrated it with the example of an old lady who was robbed during the day in the middle of the street by a tall unknown man [1] when returning from visiting her sick sister. Ideal victims are then totally free of guilt and appear to be morally unassailable. This corresponds to conventional ideas about a “just world” [2, 3], so that she suffered harm without any element of guilt at all, without any risky behaviour.
 The general view is that criminal actions primarily involve offences related to property or violence and that the perpetrator and victim are unambiguous. There is much less public awareness or scientific research about economic crime, although it can be assumed that this involves more damage and victims than in “classical criminality” [4].

¹ Victimisation means “to make a victim of”, so victimisation is the process of making a victim (from the Latin victima = victim).

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