criminal

Examining How Pickpockets View their Targets According to a sample of 20 “class cannons” (professional pickpockets) working the streets of Miami, Florida, their preferred marks (victims) are tourists who are relaxed, off guard, loaded with money, and lacking in clout with criminal justice officials. Some pickpockets choose “paps” (elderly men) because their reaction time is […]

Explaining Public Indifference toward Victims of Fraud and Con Games People who have lost money to swindlers often are pictured as undeserving of sympathy in the media, and they may encounter callousness, suspicion, or contempt when they turn to the police or consumer affairs bureaus for help. This second-class treatment seems to be due to

Measure the True Dimensions of the Problem Because policy makers and the general public want to know how serious various kinds of illegal activities are, victimologists must devise ways to keep track of the frequency and consequences of prohibited acts. The accuracy of statistics kept by government bureaus and private agencies must be critically examined

Identify, Define, and Describe the Problem The most basic task for victimologists is to deter- mine all the different ways that a violation of the law can inflict immediate and long-term harm: the extent of any physical injuries, emotional damage, and economic costs, plus any social consequences (such as loss of status). For example, as

Some Differences and Issues about Boundaries Criminology and victimology differ in several important ways. For starters, criminology is several hundred years old, whereas victimology did not emerge until the second half of the twentieth century. Criminologists agree among themselves that they should limit their studies to illegal activities and should exclude forms of social deviance

The Many Parallels between Criminology and Victimology Even though it is a rapidly evolving subdiscipline, victimology parallels its parent, criminology, in many ways. Criminologists ask why certain indivi- duals become involved in lawbreaking while others do not. Their studies concentrate on the offenders’- backgrounds and motives in order to uncover the root causes of their

COMPARING VICTIMOLOGY TO CRIMINOLOGY Victimology is an interdisciplinary field that benefits from the contributions of sociologists, psycholo- gists, social workers, political scientists, doctors, nurses, criminal justice officials, lawyers, spiritual leaders, and other professionals, volunteers, advo- cates, and activists. But academically and organiza- tionally, victimology is best conceived of as an area of specialization within criminology,

WHY EMPHASIZE RESEARCH? As a branch of social science that closely focuses on how people behave and react, victimology must be research oriented. Yet, a criticism that often is voiced is, “Why spend all that time and money trying to establish what everyone already knows? The answer is that research is always necessary because “common

Concerning everyday life: ■ A Pulitzer Prize–winning conservative commentator (Will, 1998, p. 42) titled his syndicated column opposing the Clinton administration’s antismoking campaign as “President feeds the culture of victimology.” ■ One journalist (Parker, 1999, p. B10) even insisted that “Americans are fed up with twentieth-century victimology.” B O X 1.2 (Continued) 16 CH APT