SCOPE OF CONTEMPORARY
VICTIMOLOGY
Fachri Bey
University of Indonesia
Victimology
• Victimology as an academic terminology
contains two elements :
• One is the Latin word “ Victima” translates
into “victim”
• The other is the Greek word “logos” means a
system of knowledge, the direction of
something abstract, the direction of teaching,
science, discipline. (Kirchhoff 2005-42)
Cont.
• Victims means a person harmed by a crime,
tort, or other wrongful act . (Black Law
Dictionary 1999)
• Victims are persons threatened, injured or
destroy by an act or omission of another
man/structure, organization/institution.
(Separovic, 1969)
Victim of crime
• Victims means persons who individually or
collectively, have suffered harm, including
physical or mental injury, emotional suffering,
economic loss or substantial impairment of
their fundamental rights, through acts or
omissions that are in violation of criminal laws
operative with in members state, including
those laws proscribing criminal abuse of
power.(UN Declaration 1985)
• Formulation of the law, regulation, act
thinking, are dedicated only to the offenders,
about how guarantee their rights, how to
educate/train them properly in correctional
institution, how to protect their rights before
the police officers, district attorney as well as
in trial process before the judge
• The public prosecutor/district attorney tend to
be extremely careful in indicting the accused,
in as much they are controlled frequently by
the lawyer of the accused.
• The rights of victims of crime have never been
thinking seriously nor to provide them the
proper and adequate treatment by the law
enforcement authorities.
• The victimologist in the past and in the
present time come from different academic or
professional background : from sociology, or
from law, from psychiatry or from psychology,
from social work and management. (Kirchhoff
1995-37)
• Present time also come from medical doctor,
environment, engineering, geology, biology,
geophysics.
• The lawyer of the offenders tend to (always)
talk about the human rights protection of the
offender wich render the public prosecutor
feel uncertain.
• The scope of contemporary victimology not
only in criminal law and criminology field but
has been developed to other fields as well.
• Criminology – offender oriented
• Victimology – victims oriented
Victimology
• Victimology as a growing discipline
• Victimology is an independent area of inquiry
or a sub field of Criminology
• Victimology was born from its “mother”
Criminology.
• Historically, victimology bloomed in
criminology. (Kirchhoff 1995-37).
Conventional victims
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Victims of robery
Victims of rape
Victims of murder
Victim of deception
Victims of assault/batterey
Victims of torture
Inconventional victims
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Victims of technology
Victims of Information Technology
Victims of traffic accident
Victim of aparheid
Victims of slavery
Victims of trafficking
Victims of genocide
Victims of crime against human right
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Victim of organized crime
Victims of terrorism
Victims of malpractice
Victims of disaster
Victims of abuse of power
Victims of bullying
Victims of child abuse & child neglect
Victims of domestic violence
Study of victim – offender systems
• The study of victim vulnerability
• The study of victim culpability
• (Chockalingam 2010)
Hans Von Hentig discovery
• In his book 1948 : “ The Criminal and His Victim”
he explained that increased attention should be
paid to the crime provocative function of the
victim…With through knowledge of the
interrelation between the doer and the suffer,
new approaches to the detection of crime will be
opned.
• Von Hentig believed that victim contribution
largely results from characteristics or social
positions beyond the control of the individual.
Cont.
• Thus Von Hentic classified victims into 13
categories depending on their prospensity for
victimization.
• 1. The Young – children and infant
• 2. The female – All women
• 3. The old – Elderly persons
• 4. The mentallly defective and deranged- drug
addicts -narcotic, alcoholic
• 5. Immigrants – Foreigners unfamiliar with the
culture
• 6. Minorities – Racially
• 7. The depressed Persons with various
psychological maladies
• 8. Dull normals – Simple-minded persons
• 9. The Acquisitive – The greedy, those looking
for quick gains
• 10. The wanton – Promiscuous persons
• 11. The losesome and heartbroken-widows,
widowers, and those mourning
• 12. The tormentor – An abusive parent
• 13. The blocked, exempted or fighting-victims
of blackmail, exortion, confidence games
Beniamin Mendelsohn
• Completely innocent victim- this victim type
exhibited no provocative behavior prior to the
offenders attack
• Victim with minor guilt-victim due to ignorance
did something in advertently that placed them in
compromising positition before the occurrence of
victimization.
• Victim as guilty as the offender and voluntary
victim, suicide cases and parties injures while
engaging in vice crimes and other victimless
offences
Cont.
• Victim more guilty than offender-propokes the
criminal act. A person making an abusive remark
would fit in here. A victim who started as an
offender and, ended up as victim is the most
guilty victim, e.g. the burglar shot by a house
owner during an intrusion.
• Simulating or imaginary victim, persons who
pretend that they have veen victimized. A person
who claims to have been mugged, rather than
admitting to gambling his or her pay cheque
away.
Stephen Schafer
• Revisited victim’s role in his book “The Victim
and His Criminal”
• The concept of functional resposibility of the
victim. Schafer modified the typology by Hans
von Hentig and presented his own
classification.
• While Hentig tried to identify the varying risk
factors, Schafer sets forth the resposibility of
different victims.
General Victimology – A New
Approach
• Criminal victimization
• Self-victimization include suicide and any other
suffering induced by victims themselves
• Victims of social environment incorporates
individuals, class or group oppression, e.g. racial
discrimination, caste relations, genocide and war
atrocities.
• Victims of Technology are people who fall prey to
scientific innovation. Nuclear accidents,
improperly tested medicines
Cont.
• Victims of natural environment people
affected by floods, earthquakes, hurricanes.
Critical Victimology
• Mawby and Walklate (1994-21) define as
• “An attempt to examine the wider social
context in wich some versions of Victimology
had become more dominant than others and
also to understand how those versions of
victimology are inter woven with question of
policy response and service delivery to victims
of crime”
Cont.
• Mawby and Walklate view that crime committed
by the powerful are not subjected to the criminal
court.
• Genocide, war crimes, political campaign,
clandestine ars sales and weapons of mass
destruction, smuggling, and thehuman slave
trade are not given serious attention.
• Consequently, the victims of those crimes do not
enter into the typical discussion of victimological
concern.
Others
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The women’s movement
Children’s rights
Victim Compensation
Legal reform