SCOPE OF CONTEMPORARY VICTIMOLOGY

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SCOPE OF CONTEMPORARY VICTIMOLOGY

• Fachri Bey
• University of Indonesia

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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)

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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)

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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)

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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

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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).

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Conventional victims

• Victims of robery
• Victims of rape
• Victims of murder
• Victim of deception
• Victims of assault/batterey
• Victims of torture

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Inconventional victims

• 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

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Study of victim offender systems

• The study of victim vulnerability
• The study of victim culpability
• (Chockalingam 2010)

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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
  victimWith 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.

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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

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• 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

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• 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

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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

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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.

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Stephen Schafer

• Revisited victims 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.

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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

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Cont.

• Victims of natural environment people affected by
  floods, earthquakes, hurricanes.

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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

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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.

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Others

• The womens movement
• Childrens rights
• Victim Compensation
• Legal reform