Five Victim Typologies

Five Victim Typologies

Name

Class

Date

Professor

Five Victim Typologies

Victimology is the study of crime victims in association with the criminal offender and the role they play in the criminal justice system. Criminology looks at the extent and nature of crime and the reason why criminal offenders commit crimes. Selin & Wolfgang developed five different victim types to explain the situations involving the crime victim. They are the primary, secondary, tertiary, mutual, and no victimization. Through understanding the situations involved with the victimization more can be learned about the role the victim plays in becoming victimized.

Victimology plays an important role in criminology and is used to determine what the victims and their behavior has to do with their risk of being victimized. The primary victimization category finds that the individual becomes a victim due to being targeted by the criminal offender. An example of a primary victimization target would be a hate crime or domestic violence. The victim is targeted because of their race, gender, or sexual preference in the hate crime but the offender targets the spouse in domestic situations. Domestic violence occurs within family or household typically involving spouses or former spouses or those in a current or was formerly in a dating relationship (Grivette, 2011). When an offender chooses the target of their crime based on these personal reasons the victim will be considered a primary.

The secondary victimization involves the actions of others being the result of how the individual becomes a victim. The individual was not the object of the action but as a result of another individual criminal action becomes a victim. An example of a secondary crime victim would be the family of a murder victim. The family’s members were not killed but due to the actions of the offender suffer from the loss of their loved one. A secondary victim can also be the results of an organization....