What is Victimology? (Ch.1)

Post-Traumatic Stress Disordeer

A perisitent, recurring, intense emotional reaction that is triggered by a highly unusual and potentially serious crisis such as a violent crime.

Victims

A person who suffers physical, emotional, and financial harm because of illegal activity.

Just Desserts

A philosophy that argues that offenders have "earned" their punishments and ought to suffer in ways that are in proportion to the seriousness of the harm they have inflicted on others.

Incidence Rate

A research-based estimate of the number of individuals who suffer a particular type of victimization in a particular year.

Prevalence Rate

A research-based estimate of the proportion of the population that has ever experienced a particular type of victimization during their lifetime up to that point in time; as distinct from cumulative risk or lifetime likelihood, which is a prediction about future events.

Needs Assessment

A research-based report that outlines the kinds of help victims require in order to recover from the financial, physical, and emotional damage they suffered.

Ideal Type

A sociological term meaning the clearest cases and best examples for comparison purposes.

Objectivity

A stance of neutrality, evenhandedness, and openmindedness that is desirable in victimology to avoid either provictim or antivictim.

Muggability Ratings

An assessment by robbers of attractiveness and vulnerability of specific potential targets.

Victimization

An asymmetrical relationship that is abusive, painful, destructive, parasitical, and unfair.

Survivorology

An emerging branch of victimology that focuses on individual character traits and other sources of resiliency that enables certain victims to recover from their ordeals in exemplary ways.

Crime Control

An outlook that emphasizes the need for a firm and efficient criminal justice system as a means of protecting the law-abiding majority.

Victimism

An outlook that traces deleterious consequences of past injustices right up to the present; often confused with the scientific study of the suffering experienced by crime victims.

Stockholm Syndrome

Behavior by a hostage during and after the period of captivity that appears to be unduly sympathetic or supportive of the situation of the kidnappers.

Subjectie Appoacch

In contrast to the objective approach, reactions to victimizations that are based on emotions and allegiances.

Direct or Primary Victims

Individuals or victims who suffer physical, economic, or emotional harm firsthand.

Indirect or Secondary Victims

Individuals who were not directly attacked but also suffered financially and emotionally, such as members of the injured party's family.

Survivors

The next of kin of murder victims; also, a term of respect applied to those victims who have undergone traumatic experiences.

Criminology

The scientific study of crimes, offenders, victims, criminal laws, the operations of the criminal justice system, and the social reaction to illegal behavior.

Victimology

The scientific study of the victim's plight, the criminal justice system's responses, and the public's reactions; usually viewed as a branch of criminology.