Victimology and Victims Advocacy - Assignment Example

1) Victimology Victimology is the study into the escapades and behavior of victims may have led, fully or partially, to the predicament. Victim in this case refers to any individual who goes through injury, loss or adversity due to any cause. It isan indiscriminate term that refers to any person who undergoes negative experiences. Victimology is a scientific discipline that studies phenomena and victimization related causal relationships. It includes the study of events resulting in victimization, victim’s incident, outcome and actions taken by the victim’s society to counter cases of victimization.

Victimology involves the study of vulnerabilities, people responses, recoveries, precursors, organizations and cultures connected to the victimization (Doerner & Lab, 2012). 2) History and development The term Victim has its origin in numerous languages and cultures that stretched from Asia to North-West Europe. These languages had like linguistic pattern. They included Old European, Latin, Old Norse, Sanskrit and Old German. However, it is Latin that has the closest term to victim, both in terms of pronunciation and meaning.

Latin’s equivalent for Victim is victima-which means sacrifice or scapegoat- and its combination with the Greek term logos gave rise to the discipline called victimology. The word ‘victim’ was used as early as1776 criminologists such as Beccaria (1764), Garofalo (1885)and Lombroso (1876) among others. It was not until Benjamin Mendelsohn (1937; 1940) that the study of victims became an independent discipline. It was still Mendelson that proposed the adoption of victimology to define the discipline through his benchmark article “A New Branch of Bio- Psycho-Social Science, Victimology” that he published in mid 20th century.

He studied victims and came up with the six type typology for victims. Only one of these six types includes an innocent victim that had nothing to do to his or her predicament, which he termed as the innocent. All other five types involved victims who had a part in their own harm, which he referred to as victimization precipitation. Von Hentig, credited as the other father of victimology with Mendelsohn, advanced Mendelheson theory of victim precipitation by studying homicide victims. He came to the conclusion that certain types of individuals were victim prone.

The probable types of victims included the depressive type, greedy type, wanton type and the tormentor. Schafer and Wolfgang are also notable contributors to the victimology. Victim assistance program were first adopted in 1972 in the US in California and Washington states. Two years later, Fort Launderdale, Florida stated a police based victim advocate project. In 1984, the Victims of Crime Act sets up a countrywide Crime Victims Fund from the federal crime fines kitty to compensate victims.

In 1985, the UN adopts the Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power, becoming the first international breakthrough on the subject. Countries have since then entrenched Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power into their constitutions, such as Japan in 2005 (Worrell, 2001). 3) Difference with Criminology, sociology and psychology The main difference between criminology and victimology is in the subject of interest. Criminology is the study of criminals while victimology is the study