Chapter 4: Victimology
Overview
The discipline of victimology is a specialization within the broader field of criminology. A proper study of victimology includes examining victims of crime and their circumstances, the relationship to and responsibilities owed to victims by the criminal justice system, and the peripheral connections that victims of crime have with the media, special interest and advocacy groups, political figures, and important social movements (LeClair, 2007).
This chapter will view crime victims through several lenses: individuals, groups, and entities who may have suffered as a result of criminal activities. As the reader will see, victims may be harmed physically, emotionally, or economically. Frequently, a victim may suffer all three types of harm simultaneously from the same act. Further, people can be victimized either directly (through a primary act or event) or indirectly (secondarily affected due to a criminal act having occurred). This chapter’s investigation of victimization will utilize the scientific method of analysis (Burgess, 2013) in order to optimize an objective approach to the study. The basic steps of the scientific method are:
- making observations or asking questions about your observations,
- forming a hypothesis, or a testable explanation, and making predictions based upon it,
- testing the hypothesis and predictions in a reproducible experiment,
- analyzing the data from the experiment and drawing conclusions, and
- communicating the results to others, so as to encourage further dialogue, review and experimentation.
The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate how victimologists ascertain the ways a person, group, or entity has been harmed. It is equally important to determine whether victims are being supported, empowered, accommodated, assisted, rehabilitated, celebrated, memorialized, honored and, even in some cases, idolized (Karmen, 2007).
There are two essential parts of the crime equation: the victim and the offender. To develop a complete understanding of the causes and prevention of crime, we must look at the entire equation. Only then can we begin to apply what has been learned to the academic pursuit of criminology and more fully understand the applied practices of the criminal justice system. We will then be better informed about their effectiveness in addressing the needs of victims and better able to aid in the reform and rehabilitation measures afforded the criminal actor in our system.
Objectives
After completing this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
- Define the concepts of victimology, crime victims, and victim-based materials;
- Discuss the historical overview of the discipline of victimology;
- Discuss how victimologists conduct inquiries to determine how victims are supported, empowered and, in some cases, celebrated, memorialized and honored;
- Discuss three current ideologies that influence the study of victimology;
- Discuss the important relationship between victims of crime and media coverage of that event;
- Identify the possible role that victims may play in their own victimization;
- Explain the importance of ethics and objectivity in the study of victimology;
- Identify and evaluate methods of measuring victimization;
- Identify and discuss unique issues regarding victimization against protected classes, including members of the LGBTQ+ communities, and with specific focus on the transgender community; and
- Discuss the continuum of shared responsibility for victims of a crime.
Key Terms
Advocacy for crime victims
Completely innocent victim
Conservative tendency (ideology)
Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED)
Direct victimization
Indirect victimization
Liberal tendency (ideology)
Radical tendency (ideology)
Victim
Victim fabrication
Victim facilitation
Victim inaction
Victim precipitation
Victim proneness
Victim provocation
Victim resources
Victimless crimes
Victim typology
Attributions
- Chapter opening image: image released under the Pexels License
