Golden Age Of Victimology

This essay will attempt to explain a watershed moment using the Sarah’s Law as an example. The main objective will be to observe how this law improved society using academic research and what improvements that can be provided with the law to help in the future towards treatments of victims and witnesses. This essay will highlight how Sarah’s Law was created and how it made a huge impact in the criminal justice system, as well as, the ways the law helped victims and witnesses in society today.

Rooted in our civilization, restorative justice was once viewed as a sin against a sovereign society of a King, Queen, or Emperor. Albert Eglash (1975) first articulated restorative justice over retributive and rehabilitative justice, an indeed search for the original status of security of the victim’s feelings. Restorative Justice, a more victim-centered aspect of punishment than the offender, however, the victim should consider, what it is that restorative justice will restore to its original state of security, and would it be enough justice that the victim seeks.

it can be shown that the victims could take revenge from the criminals themselves. Some

Theories of victimization essentially does something morally unpopular, by discussing how the victim caused their own victimization. Identified below are four theories of victimizations and examples of both strength and weakness of each. The goal for this paper is to briefly define at the four theories in order to grasp a better understanding of how individuals can lessen the opportunity to become a victim of a crime.

The classical school of criminology is foundationally based upon the history of crime and punishment. Throughout history, crime was dealt with in an extremely harsh and inhumane manner. Criminals and suspected criminals were quartered, burnt at the stake, tortured, and subjected to other forms of extreme violence. These methods were used to get a confession or punish people for even minor crimes such as theft. The people of the Enlightenment period of the late 1600 's paid attention to this behavior and this is why a

Positivist victimology has made a fundamental contribution to the study of victimology by ensuring the development and refinement of quantitative victimisation. It emphasises the role of the state, criminal justice agencies and the voluntary sector in responding to the needs of victims of crime. It is however

Men, women, and children from all over the world came to experience the Chicago World Fair in 1893. Little did they know, about 200 of them would fall victim to Herman Mudgett. Herman Webster Mudgett, or more commonly referred to as H. H. Holmes was known as “America’s First Serial Killer”. Holmes had over 200 estimated victims, whom he had specifically picked out from the Chicago World’s Fair crowd. Chicago’s encounter with Holmes changed how people lived their own lives, people’s outlook on America, and even how the law was enforced and dealt with.

In victimology, there are still many unanswered questions and difficulties to find patterns that would easily classify victims, because nobody is exempt from becoming a victim. Nevertheless, some clichéd views about victims are embedded in our society. For example, Christie (1986) describes the idea of the ideal victim, which is, in fact a person who is easily given the status of being a victim. Ideal victims are perceived as blameless, law-abiding, usually female, vulnerable and worthy of help, sympathy and attention. Walklate (2005) used the fairytale of little red riding hood to illustrate the ‘ideal victim’; young, innocent, female out doing good deeds only to be attacked by

A person who experiences a traumatic event may be expected to experience a range of psychological effects, and, for many years, it was assumed that these psychological effects would be the same regardless of the cause of the injury. However, a growing body of knowledge is demonstrating that the impact of criminal victimization is different than the impact of other types of injuries because the intent element makes a difference in how the victim perceives the harm. In addition, victims of different crimes may respond differently to victimization. The psychological effects of victimization are important because they can help guide the criminal justice system for how to interact with victims and how to make the process more victim-appropriate. For example, victims of violent crimes, like sexual assaults, may benefit more from a victim-centered criminal justice approach than victims of other types of crimes (Resick, 1987). However, one of the problems with the traditional approach to victimology is that it has distinguished between different groups of victims. Emerging research suggest that victim needs are similar across the entire spectrum of crime, particularly the victims' needs for information about the crime and the needs for financial restitution to make them whole (ten Boom & Kuijpers, 2012).

The traditional criminal justice system is criticized for its neglect of victim importance and needs, for example (Symonds, 1980) acknowledges, that the criminal justice system is concerned about looking back at the event rather than focusing on how to rehabilitate and as a consequence making victims be in a ‘secondary victimization’ effect. This is the attitudes, behaviors and the beliefs of the people in the criminal

Also “Von Hentig criticised the traditional offender-oriented nature of criminology proposing a new dynamic approach to the study of crime that incorporated clear recognition of the victim’s role in the crime” Victim precipitation has its advantages, as today it can be used as a case of defence where by the defendant can plead man slaughter/self-defence due to the victim provoking the defendant which led to the murder/attack being committed. (Brookman, F2005)

The “dehumanization” of one’s victims does wonders to calm any qualms or misgivings an individual may experience about injuring another man. By evoking fear in the torturer and therefore, a sense of being threatened by a given enemy, the regime in power causes the torturer to feel obliged to defend against such a threat. Consequently, he will torture his fellow man to procure some valued piece of information and in doing so remove himself from a precarious position and subdue his enemies all at once. Such enemies are viewed as evil and little more than monsters. A victim is rarely referred to by his or her name or by any other humanizing characteristic, rather a victim is most often referred to as some base, nonhuman creature or beast.

From the beginning of time there have always been crimes against persons. People went by the saying “An eye for an eye”. You stole from your neighbor, they stole from you. You hurt someone, they hurt you. It wasn’t until the 1940’s people started taking a closer look into these crimes against person, which they later called victimology. This paper will look into victimology and their theories as we go back into the past and how victimology is now.

The history of victimology travels further back in time than most would realize. The concept of the victim emerged from the many attempts of many societies and peoples to explain both the reasons behind victimization and the appropriate action to be taken as a result of it (Burgess et al., 2013). As a concept, it can be difficult to define victimology, since each individual defines the term differently. According to the text utilized for this class, victimology is defined as being the study of the victim, including the offender and society. It is also seen as being a social-structural way of viewing the relationships between crime and the law as well as the criminal and the victim (Burgess et al, 2013)..

Victimisation is the process of learning the various ways that authority figures determine who is a victim, while also educating the person on how to become the victim. Secondary victimisation, also known as double victimisation refers to the way the state responds to victimisation. The states response has the potential to add further burdens on to the victim. Three main components of the criminal justice system will be focused on in this paper; these are enforcement, adjudication and punishment. This paper will identify why the criminal justice system tend to commit secondary victimisation towards the victims. It will also discuss the pains of victimisation and how secondary victimisation has the ability to amplify these pains. The paper will also identify reforms that have been put in place in order to minimise the occurrence of secondary victimisation.