Victimology Real World Applications

An Overview of Victimology and Its Implication for Helping Professionals and Law Enforcement Authorities
Unfortunately, people are victimized all of the time in countless ways, including by criminal elements such as shysters and crooks who intentionally defraud them as well by otherwise-legitimate sources such as politicians and the mainstream media. In the vast majority of cases, people manage to overcome the adverse effects of these events without any significant complications. In some cases, however, people may succumb to the effects of being a victim by developing phobias or other mental health disorders that adversely affect their quality of life and limit their ability to lead a normal, productive life. Therefore, the study of victimology and its guiding principles can provide practitioners in all fields with a better understanding concerning how victims respond to traumatic events and what can be done to mitigate these outcomes. Finally, a summary of the research and important findings concerning victimology and possible directions for future research in this area are presented in the conclusion.
Review and Discussion
What is victimology?
From an academic perspective, the word “victimology” is comprised of two basic textual elements: (1) “victim” from the Latin word “victima” and (2) “logos,” which is derived from the Greek word for a “system of knowledge, the direction of something abstract, the direction of teaching, science, and a discipline” (Dussich, 2006, p. 116). More specifically, according to the legal definition provided by Black’s Law Dictionary (1990), a victim is “the person who is the object of a crime or tort, as the victim of a robbery is the person robbed” (p. 1567). Therefore, victimology is the study of crime victims and the manner in which they respond to these frequently traumatic events. The actual term “victimology” dates to the mid-20th century when Beniamin Mendelsohn coined the term in an article, “A New Branch of Bio-Psycho-Social Science, Victimology” in 1956, and he is widely regarded as “the Father of Victimology” (Dussich, 2006, p. 116).
Since its original introduction as a discipline more than 60 years ago, a growing body of scholarship concerning victimology based on this seminal work has emerged, and the field has become characterized by the same level of professionalism and scientific rigor that are routinely applied to other social sciences (Dussich, 2006). A number of different helping professions are active in victimology studies, including health care providers, social workers, psychologists, medical doctors and paraprofessional support staff, many with specialized training in the discipline (Dussich, 2006). In this regard, Dussich (2006) reports that, “Today the field of victim assistance is the major career field in victimology for persons wanting to help victims of crime directly” (p. 117). Although different practitioners apply different methods and protocols to their investigations, there are some general guiding principles of victimology that are followed by most victimologists as discussed further below.
Guiding principles of victimology
Although every individual experiences traumatic events differently, the study of victimology is guided by five fundamental principles as set forth in Table 1 below.
Table 1
Guiding principles of victimology
Principle
Description
Identifiable single event
In some cases, individuals feel victimized due to general forms of inequality or injustice. In these cases, people view themselves as being victims of a xenophobic mood, of globalization, of climate change, and other potentially catastrophic events. As a result, only identifiable single events should be included in the definition of victimization. As a consequence, a person must name a concrete incident (i.e., a xenophobic slur) to be considered a victim for the purposes of victimological study.
Negative evaluation
Victimization should be limited to those events that cause an unsatisfactory actual state in individuals.
Uncontrollable event
People who have caused the unsatisfactory actual state should not be called a victim (although certain forms of self-destructive behavior could suggest such a classification). Generally, assigning the victim role to a person means absolving him or her of responsibility, which precludes self-inflicted suffering.
Attribution to a personal or social offender
An important distinction between human actors and physical objects and animals is that the former are free to act in another, not victimizing way; by contrast, the latter are governed by laws of nature. This difference is connected with the sociological distinction between cognitive and normative expectations that influence strictly human behaviors.
Violation of a socially shared norm
A victimological construction of the victim must take into account the fact that the violation of purely idiosyncratic normative expectations that nobody shares will not lead to recognition as a victim or to an assignment of victim status. For that reason it should be different from a purely psychological approach and should concentrate on the violation of socially shared norms.
Source: Adapted from Shoham & Knepper, 2010, pp. 17-18
Implications for practitioners
The past half century has been characterized by two distinct phases in the analysis and application of victimhood theories. For instance, according to Walklate (2013), the first phase of victimological study spanned the years from the late 1960s through the early 1990s during which it emerged as a true discipline. The second phase of victimology study has more pronounced implications for practitioners today because it has resulted in what some sociological researchers have described as a “culture of victimhood” that has contributed to an unearned sense of entitlement among many young people today (Walklate, 2013). A concomitant of this trend has also been a lowering of the academic bar, it would seem, together with other changes in American society that reflect a diminished sense of competitiveness wherein everyone receives a trophy and there are no losers on the school sports field.
For example, one psychologist points out that, “The basic idea [of the culture of victimhood] is that colleges are coddling students, treating them as if they are psychologically fragile” (Routledge, 2016, para. 4). Unfortunately, these recent trends have also translated into an environment that ignores the fundamental resilience of young people (and old) to overcome setbacks and challenges in their lives and grow in the process. In this regard, Routledge also emphasizes that, “The truth is that humans are naturally very resilient. There is a large body of research showing that people are generally quite good at recovering from hardship and loss and are able to find meaning and purpose from some of life’s most challenging experiences” (2016, para. 4). In other words, to the extent that the culture of victimhood influences the assessment of clients and the selection of interventions by practitioners will likely be the extent to which this unhealthy culture is sustained.
Likewise, the culture of victimhood has also adversely affected minority members who lack the opportunities available to their middle- and upper-class counterparts as a result of nationwide affirmative action initiatives. These enhanced opportunities have also exacerbated the sense of entitlement that goes hand in hand with the culture of victimhood. As Williams (2003) notes, “Affirmative-action programs rarely help the least among us. Instead, they often benefit the children of middle- and upper-class black Americans who have been conditioned to feel they are owed something” (p. 33). Not surprisingly, many Americans resent affirmative action programs on this basis, and these initiatives similarly ignore the resilience and abilities of targeted groups (Williams, 2003).
As a graduate of an historically black college who worked to pay for his own education despite offers of full scholarships from prestigious universities, Williams (2003) argues that promoting sense of entitlement among certain demographic groups through affirmative action programs that are an outgrowth of the culture of victimhood can only have negative outcomes for American society as a whole. In this regard, Williams concludes that, “This is alarming. We have finally, after far too long, reached a point where black Americans have pushed into the mainstream--and not just in entertainment and sports. From politics to corporate finance, blacks succeed. Yet many of us still feel entitled to special benefits--in school, in jobs, in government contracts” (p. 34). This is not to say, of course, that this sense of unearned entitlement is restricted to minorities, but it is to say that it may be more pronounced by virtue of well-intentioned but misguided initiatives such as affirmative action.
Conclusion
The research showed that victimology is the formal study of the victims of crime and how they tend to respond to these events. The research also showed that the discipline of victimology is guided by five general principles: an identifiable single event, a negative evaluation of the event, it was an uncontrollable event, the attribution of the event was to a personal or social offender, and the event represented a violation of a socially shared norm. While these principles provide a valuable framework in which to analysis and better understand the antecedents of victim responses to criminal events, there may be a tendency for people to view themselves as victims due to a growing culture of victimhood that seems to pervade American society today. These trends have special implications for practitioners in a wide range of fields, including most especially education, law enforcement, juvenile criminal justice and sociology.





.References
Black’s law dictionary. (1990). St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company.
Dussich, J. P. (2006). Victimology: Past, present and future. Tokyo: United Nations Asia and Far East Institute for the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders.
Routledge, C. (2016, November 12). The growth of a victimhood culture. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/more-mortal/201611/the-growth-victimhood-culture.
Shoham, S. G. (2010). International handbook of victimology. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Walklate, S. (2013, Annual). Victims, trauma, testimony. Nottingham Law Journal, 22, 77-79.
Williams, A. (2003, January 27). Con: ... but not at this cost: Admissions policies like Michigan's focus not on who, but what, you are-perpetuating a culture of victimhood. Newsweek, 33-34.
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