Victims and Victimology: Research, Policy and Practice.

Source: (2005) Harrow, England: Pearson Longman.

For a long time, academia and policymakers have focused on criminology – that is, on issues of crime, criminals, and response to crime and criminals. In fact, though, most people do not experience crime as criminals. Most people experience crime either specifically as victims, or more generally as something that adversely affects life with a sense of unease and insecurity. Yet, points out Jo Goodey, academia and policymakers have not, for the most part and especially until recent years, given equal time and value to dealing with criminal victimization and the pervasiveness of the fear of crime. Study of victims – in terms of the criminological sub-discipline of victimology – has not had status equal to criminological research, policy, and practice. To remedy this, Goodey in this book focuses on documenting and critiquing selected themes in victim-centered research, policy, and practice. Along the way she explores some of the reasons for the prior neglect and the recent upsurge in victim-centered criminal justice. To accomplish all of this, she pursues her examination of victims and victimology in the these chapters: contextualizing the victim; counting victimization; understanding fear of crime and vulnerability; academic victimology, victim advocacy, and social policy; looking at victims’ needs and rights; balancing victims’ and offenders’ rights; the question of whether restorative justice is a victim-centered paradigm shift; and neglected and emergent victim-centered research, policy, and practice.