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 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…