What is victimology?

Victimology looks at the real people affected by crime, revealing how society responds, adapts and offers support. To understand this field, it’s helpful to explore its origins and most important concepts.

Victimology is the scientific study of people who are victims of crimes. It investigates their traits, their relationships with perpetrators, their experiences navigating the justice system, and the social, legal and personal aftermath of their experiences.

Additionally, it aims to understand the dynamics of crime, identify ways to mitigate or prevent victimization, and assess the effectiveness of the resources available to support the affected people.

This domain of research analyzes the experience of victims across a variety of demographics and social groups such as:

• Women
• Children
• The elderly
• Immigrants
• Individuals from LGBTQ+ backgrounds
• People affected by a disability

Born as a subfield of criminology in the mid-1900s, victimology eventually gained academic standing as an independent discipline. Today, it draws on concepts, theories and methods from disciplines such as sociology, psychology, rehabilitative sciences and criminal justice.

Victims have been acknowledged in society for centuries. The Code of Hammurabi, one of the earliest recorded sets of laws dating back to ancient Babylon in 18th century B.C., dictated that victims were entitled to restitution from offenders. During the Middle Ages, the justice system allowed the injured party to retaliate under the so-called eye-for-an-eye principle.

However, the study of victimology did not clearly emerge until the 1940s when criminologists Benjamin Mendelsohn, Hans von Hentig and Henri Ellenberger started to analyze the victim–offender relationship. Their work proposed different victim categorizations based on the degree to which individuals might play a role in their own plights.

Other notable figures include Marvin Wolfgang, who introduced the concept of victim precipitation, and Stephen Schafer, who theorized a victim typology based on responsibility.

In the 1970s, a few catalysts prompted scholars to adopt a more sympathetic stance and direct their attention to the most effective ways to prevent victimization and facilitate individuals’ return to their normal lives.

First, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics introduced the National Crime Victimization Survey. That data revealed that not only was crime on the rise, but much of it was not even reported. This survey remains an important source for victimologists’ research.

Then, the women’s movement stressed the relationship between sexism and crimes against women. The civil rights movement also created awareness of the treatment many minorities were facing when interacting with the criminal justice system.

The advancements in the field of victimology research paved the way for the recognition of victims’ rights and the creation of ad hoc services for individuals through the Victims of Crime Act.

In its earliest years, victimology tended to focus on the harmed party’s traits to understand how crime happens. The first victim categorization was proposed by Mendelsohn and comprised six categories based on the level of supposed culpability of the individual:

• The completely innocent victim
• The victim with minor guilt
• The voluntary or equally guilty victim
• The victim more guilty than the offender
• The most guilty victim
• The imaginary or simulated victim

The study of victimization has evolved significantly since then. In more recent times, victimologist Andrew Karmen offered a simplified version in which there would be primary or direct victims — those who experience the crime firsthand and indirect or secondary victims, who would be the people close to the person affected by the offense.

The consequences of victimization would then go far beyond the trauma of a single individual. While the injured party in a crime may suffer some type of loss, their family may experience strained relationships, changes in daily routines and increased caregiving or legal responsibilities.

During the past decades, the victim-assistance field has built a range of support systems to help people harmed by crime. First, in the 1970s the federal government, through the Office for Victims of Crime and the National Institute of Justice formed victim-witness programs in law enforcement and prosecutor offices for services such as state compensation applications, court case updates, translation and transport.

Then, with the passage of the Victims of Crime Act of 1984, the Crime Victims Fund was created to finance services, training and research.

By the late 1990s, more than 10,000 victim-assistance programs existed nationwide, and every state had a compensation program.

In the 2010s, efforts under the Vision 21: Transforming Victim Services initiative emphasized research-based service delivery, legal assistance, housing and technology-based services tailored to victim needs.

Victims of crime may endure physical, emotional and psychological harm that extends far beyond the incident itself. Survivors may suffer serious injuries and long‑term health issues such as post‑traumatic stress disorder, as well as emotions like grief, anger, confusion and shame.

The impact of victimization also extends to the community. Nearly half of violent crime victims experience moderate to severe distress. A significant number report problems with family, friends, work or school.

Fear of crime can also undermine community cohesion, reduce participation in public life and erode trust among neighbors.

On the economic front, the costs can be substantial. Victims might experience both direct losses, such as medical expenses, property damage and lost wages, and indirect costs including reduced productivity, diminished quality of life and increased demand for social services.

Furthermore, resources spent on community crime prevention initiatives might have been spent in different ways to benefit that population.

Victimology is typically divided into four branches:

• General: Examining the broad patterns of victimization across society, in all its forms and causes
• Theoretical: Focusing on causal explanations, analyzing victim-offender interactions and opportunities for crime
• Penal: Considering the victim’s role within the criminal justice system and how social forces shape victim‑offender interactions
• Critical: Highlighting the broader social context of being a victim, including how policies and services respond to these individuals

Modern victimology also draws on four main theories, all of which fall under the broader umbrella of victimization theory, to explain why people become victims of crimes: victim precipitation, lifestyle, routine activities and deviant place theory. Below is what each theory entails.

Early studies of victim behavior aimed to determine whether the crime resulted more from the offender’s actions or the victim’s circumstances, without implying that the victim was responsible for the crime.

First theorized by Wolfgang, victim precipitation suggests that, in certain circumstances, the sufferer might hold a degree of responsibility in the occurrence of the crime.

The criminologist studied a series of lethal offenses in Philadelphia between 1948 and 1952 and concluded that, in many cases, the violence appeared to be a direct escalation of the victim’s first response.

The concepts of provocation and facilitation offer additional frameworks for understanding how victims may influence crime dynamics.

Although researchers have interchangeably used the terms precipitation and provocation over the years, victim provocation attributes the highest accountability to the recipient of harm.

In this perspective, a crime arises from the victim’s direct instigation. This could be the case in a road rage incident if one driver aggressively cuts off a second driver, and the second driver retaliates violently.

Another variation of the precipitation theory, victim facilitation also ascribes a certain blameworthiness to the injured party. The hypothesis here is that the hurt individual’s inadvertent actions or carelessness make the crime more likely to occur.

Thefts, burglaries and other larcenies in which the losing party made themselves an easier target can be considered examples of this theory.

The lifestyle-exposure and the routine activities theories are two other foundational frameworks of victimology. While the two models can overlap, the first posits that an individual’s exposure to victimization depends on how, where and with whom they spend their time.

Demographics and cultural and economic constraints can influence one’s lifestyle. Closer proximity to illegal activities may result in higher chances of becoming victim of crime.

On the other hand, the routine activities theory shifts the focus from lifestyle patterns to the mechanics of a crime event. According to this theory, victimization occurs in the presence of three elements converging in time and space: someone willing to commit an offense encounters an appealing victim or object in a situation where no one is present to prevent it.

This theory argues that the risk of being victimized is shaped more by the environments people live in than by their own actions. People residing in neighborhoods marked by social disorder or high crime, for example, would be more likely to come into contact with offenders, even if they themselves do not engage in risky or deviant behaviors.

Victimology, criminology and criminal justice are fields that study crime from different angles. Studying them and understanding their interconnections helps professionals develop policies and measures to address crime prevention and victim support.

University of Phoenix offers online criminal justice degrees. If you’d like to take a course on victimology, consider earning a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice Administration.

For more information, reach out to UOPX.