1. Victimology: Scope, concepts, scientific endeavour
Beyond victims of crime
Michael O’Connell AM APM
Consulting Victimologist
Secretary-General, WSV
Member, INVICTM
Member, VSA

2. What is the scope of Victimology?
Victimology can be viewed both as a fully-fledged academic social science and as a non-academic social movement (backed by some research) (O’Connell 2008)
Scope of Victimology:
Victims of crime: the extent, nature and causes of criminal victimisation, its consequences for victims and the reactions of society (O’Connell 2005).
Human rights abuses (Neuman 1984; Elias 1986).
All forms of human suffering, regardless of their origin (Garkawe 2004).

3. What is the scope of Victimology?
Debate on scope is not resolved
Even Mendelsohn (1963; 1973), one of the forefathers of victimology, first proposed a criminal or penal victimology but later advocated for a general victimology.
Modern victimological studies cover many and varied sources of victimisation including: conventional crime, white-collar crime, environmental crime, organised crime, terrorism, armed-conflict, corruption, abuse of power, human rights abuse, and natural as well as human-made disasters.
A new Victimology is not limited solely to the study of victims of crime

4. What are ‘fundamental’ concepts for Victimology?
Two concepts are fundamental to Victimology – victim and victimisation:
Victim
“lacking descriptive precision” (Anand CJ 1997 in Ramasubramanian J 2015)
Ideal victim (Christie 1986) & deserving of victimhood (Bayley 1991) – helpless to prevent, plus legally and/or morally entitled to social concern
People who are beset by loss, injury or hardship from any cause (Karmen 2004)

5. What are ‘fundamental’ concepts for Victimology?
Victim continued:
Spalek (2006) posits, it is the concept of the ‘ideal’ or ‘deserved’ victim that has repeatedly been used to justify law reform and funding for victim assistance.
Implications:
There are few services for partners and children of prisoners who suffer psychologically and financially because of prisoners’ crimes and custodial sentences (Woodward 2003).
Less investment in culturally competent victim services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, despite the over-representation of women and children as victims of violent crime (Blagg 2008).

6. What are ‘fundamental’ concepts for Victimology?
United Nations (1985, para. 1) developed a broad definition - a victim of crime is an individual or collectivity of people harmed ‘through acts or omissions that are in violation of criminal laws including those proscribing abuse of power’.
Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation of Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law (2005).
In the context of terrorism and mass violence, the Special Rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering terrorism (2014) expanded the UN definition to include not only the direct victims and their next of kin or dependents but also:
indirect victims (for example, bystanders and eye-witnesses, rescue workers as well as innocent people accused of being terrorists); and,
potential victims of future terrorist incidents.
This broad definition is consistent with the concept of ‘levels of victimisation’.

7. What are ‘fundamental’ concepts for Victimology?
Victimisation:
Sources:
Natural – Disaster (e.g. earthquake, tsunami), Disease (e.g. HIV/AIDS), Predatory Animal (e.g. shark attacks)
Human – Structural (e.g. patriarchy. political), Criminal, Civil, Self / Auto (e.g. suicide)
Levels of victimisation:
Primary victims are directly affected by the source.
Secondary victims are people who have some relationship with the primary victim and are emotionally and/or financially dependent on them (e.g. a child, parent or spouse).
Tertiary victims are people whose lifestyles have been inconvenienced by, for instance, excessive fear and those people (e.g. consumers and taxpayers) who have to bear the cost to society of the source of victimisation

8. Is Victimology a social science?
What is required to attain the status of a social science?
Being empirically based on observation and logical analysis
Being theoretical (including summarising complex observations and devising propositions to explain relationships)
Being accumulative (that is, developing theories that build on one another / evolving body of knowledge)
Publishing research findings for checking by other scholars
(Weir 1991, p8)
What are the tasks of Victimology as a social science?
To diagnose a situation
To interpret the situation
To suggest ways of creating desired situations
To prevent undesired situations
(Holyst 1982 in Whitrod 1986, p3)
To minimise the effects / the impact
(Groenhuijsen 2017)

9. Is Victimology a social science?
A “hodgepodge of non-academic collection of ideas, interests, ideologies and research methods” (Cressey 1988).
Victimology lacks a sound theoretical basis (Goodey 2005; O’Connor 2005)
Conversely, several theoretical streams had evolved: conservative, liberal, positivist, radical and critical victimology (Karmen 1994; Mawby and Walklate 1994; Walklate 2017)
Several theories have been advanced through scientific methodologies:
Social-structural, situational-oriented (Schneider 2001) and differential risk (Fattah 1991) theories that, among other things, help explain why victimisation happens.
Psycho-social theory (Dussich 2007; Tollefson 2012) and ‘invasions into the self of the victim’ theory (Kirchhoff 2005; James 2015) that help explain the impact of victimisation.

10. A new Victimology as a social science?
Terrorism & mass violence (Pemberton 2010)
Procedural justice (Laxminarayan 2014;Kirchengast, Iliadis & O’Connell 2019)
Cyber-victimisation (Groenhuijsen 2017)
Disaster-victimisation (Susetyo 2017)
Migration ‘Hidden victims’ (O’Connell 2016)
Suicidology (Lester 2001; Dillenburger 2007)
Globalisation (Essletzbichler 2018)