Determinants of Criminogenic Victimization of Transbaikal Region’s Population
A study of the process of victimization of population in a specific region is highly relevant as it allows to determine not only the factors and conditions that turn a person into a crime victim, but also the factors and conditions that form potential victims of criminal infringements which, in its turn, contributes to the detection of latent crimes and the prediction of the crime level in the region as a whole. The paper examines the issues of victimization of Transbaikal Region’s population, analyzes a complex of economic, political, and legal factors of population’s victimization. The study shows that the satisfaction of material needs of people is harmed by the processes that create barriers for industrial development, growth of labor productivity, introduction of new technologies and growth of competitiveness of businesses in Transbaikal Region. In the social sphere, these barriers and obstacles facilitate the processes of marginalization (growing unemployment level), criminalization, socio-cultural degradation. The mechanism influencing economic and social processes is active redistribution of resources between the processes that satisfy needs and the processes that form barriers and obstacles for the satisfaction of these needs. The redistribution of resources and their loss determine not only low effectiveness, but also its unstable dynamics and high volatility. The authors use their own methodology of evaluating the level of socio-economic development of the region based on the effectiveness indices for socio-economic processes to determine the level of satisfying basic needs of population in Transbaikal Region in 2004–2017. The study shows that over a long period of time the level of satisfying basic socio-economic needs of population has steadily remained low which, undoubtedly, is an important factor of its victimization. The authors also analyze the factor of internal and external migration. Internal migration is caused by uneven economic development of Russian regions, interethnic tensions and a growth in crime rates in a number of Russian regions. The results of this research could be used for teaching such courses as «Criminal Law», «Criminology» for the specialty «Jurisprudence» in higher educational establishments; they could also be used as methodological recommendations for developing crime prevention programs.