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ANDREW KARMEN John Jay College of Criminal Justice City University of New York

crimevictims A N I N T R O D U C T I O N T O V I C T I M O L O G Y

N I N T H E D I T I O N

Australia • Brazil • Mexico • Singapore • United Kingdom • United States

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1 What Is Victimology?

CHAPTER OUTLINE Focusing on the Plight of Crime Victims

Studying Victimization Scientifically

Why Objectivity Is Desirable

Sometimes It Is Difficult to Distinguish Victims from Villains

Criminals Can Be Victims Too Victims Can Find Themselves at Odds with the

“Good Guys” Sources of Bias that Thwart Objectivity

Victimology’s Undeserved “Bad Reputation” Why Emphasize Research?

Comparing Victimology to Criminology

The Many Parallels between Criminology and Victimology

Some Differences and Issues about Boundaries Interfacing with Other Disciplines Divisions within the Discipline

What Victimologists Do

Step 1: Identify, Define, and Describe the Problem Step 2: Measure the True Dimensions of the Problem Step 3: Investigate How Victims Are Handled Step 4: Gather Evidence to Test Hypotheses

Why Study Victimology?

Recognizing Exemplary Behavior Under Very Difficult Circumstances

“Survivorology:” Toward a More Inspiring and Upbeat Trajectory within Victimology

Summary

Key Terms Defined in the Glossary

Questions for Discussion and Debate

Critical Thinking Questions

Suggested Research Projects

LEARNING OBJECTIVES To practice looking at victims and victimization

through a scientific lens.

To appreciate why objectivity is worth striving for when examining the victims’ plight.

To discover why some people have a negative impression about what they brand as victimology.

To be able to recognize how victimology is similar to as well as different from criminology.

To become familiar with the steps to follow when conducting a victim-centered analysis.

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FOCUSING ON THE PLIGHT OF CRIME VICTIMS

The concept of a victim can be traced back to ancient societies. It was connected to the notion of sacrifice. In the original connotation of the term, a victim was a person or an animal put to death during a religious ceremony in order to appease some supernatural power or deity. Over the centuries, the word has picked up additional meanings. Now it commonly refers to individuals who suffer injuries, losses, or hardships for any reason. People can become victims of accidents, natural disasters, diseases, or social problems such as warfare, discrimination, political witch hunts, and other injustices. Crime victims are harmed by illegal acts.

Victimization is an asymmetrical interpersonal relationship that is abusive, painful, destructive, par- asitical, and unfair. While a crime is in progress, offenders temporarily force their victims to play roles (almost as if following a script) that mimic the dynamics between predator and prey, winner and loser, victor and vanquished, and even master and slave. Many types of victimization have been out- lawed over the centuries—specific oppressive and exploitative acts, like raping, robbing, and swindling. But not all types of hurtful relationships and deceitful practices are forbidden by law. It is permissible to overcharge a customer for an item that can be pur- chased for less elsewhere, or to underpay a worker who could receive higher wages for the same tasks at another place of employment, or impose exorbitant interest rates and hidden fees on borrowers who use credit cards and take out mortgages, or to deny food and shelter to the hungry and the homeless who cannot pay the required amount.

Victimology is the scientific study of the physical, emotional, and financial harm people endure because of illegal activities. Victimologists first and foremost investigate the victims’ plight: the impact of the injuries and losses inflicted by offenders on the people they target. In addition, they carry out research into the public’s political, social, and economic reactions to the suffering of victims. They also study how victims are handled

by officials and agencies within the criminal justice system, especially interactions with police officers, detectives, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, probation officers, and members of parole boards.

Victimologists want to know whether and to what degree crime victims experience physical wounds, economic hardships, or emotional turmoil. One aim, of course, is to devise ways to help them recover. In the aftermath of the incident, are they sad- dened, depressed, frightened, terrorized, traumatized, infuriated, or embittered? Also, victimologists want to find out how effectively the injured parties are being assisted, supported, served, accommodated, rehabili- tated,andeducatedtoavoidfurthertrouble.Victimol- ogists are equally curious to determine the extent to which their suffering is being totally ignored, largely neglected, belittled, manipulated, and commercially or politically exploited. Some individuals who sustain terrible injuries and devastating losses might be memorialized, honored, and even idolized, while others might be mocked, discredited, defamed, deme- aned, socially stigmatized, and even condemned for bringing about their own misfortunes. Why is this so?

Victimologists also want to examine why some injured parties find their ordeals life transforming. Some become deeply alienated and withdraw from social relationships. They may become burdened by bouts of depression, sleep disorders, panic attacks, and stress-related illnesses. Their healing process may require overcoming feelings of helplessness, frustration, and self-blame. Others might react to their fear and fury by seeking out fellow sufferers, building alliances, and discovering ways to exercise their “agency”—to assess their options and make wise decisions, take advantage of opportunities, regain control of their lives, rebuild their self- confidence, and restore a sense of trust and security. Why do people experience such a wide range of responses, and do personality or social factors pri- marily determine how a person initially reacts and then recovers?

Direct or primary victims experience the criminal act and its consequences firsthand. Indirect or secondary victims (such as family members and loved ones) are not immediately involved or physically

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injured in confrontations. But they might be burdened, even devastated, as the following examples illustrate.

A teenager who shot and killed a high school athlete is about to be sentenced to prison. The distraught father of the murdered boy tells the judge, “We always hope our little guy will come through the door, and it will never be. We don’t have lives. We stay in every day. We can’t function.” (MacGowan, 2007)

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As an argument with a stranger escalates and he pulls out a gun, a wife is wounded when she puts out her hand to try to shield her husband from the bullet that causes his death. She tells an interviewer, “I was just so excited and looking forward to spending the day with the love of my life.… And just to think that in the blink of an eye, my whole world just got shattered into a million pieces. And now I’m left trying to pick them all up and putting them back together.” (Gutman, 2014)

First responders and rescue workers who race to crime scenes (such as police officers, forensic evi- dence technicians, paramedics, and firefighters) are exposed to emergencies and trauma on such a rou- tine basis that they also can be considered secondary or indirect victims who periodically might need emotional support themselves to prevent burnout (see Regehr and Bober, 2005; and Abel, 2013).

Note that victimologists are social scientists and researchers, as opposed to practitioners who directly assist injured parties to recover from their ordeals or who advocate on their behalf. Doctors, nurses, psy- chiatrists, psychologists, therapists, counselors, social workers, caseworkers, lawyers, clergy, and dedi- cated volunteers provide hands-on services, emo- tional support, and practical advice to their clients (see Williams, 2002). Victimologists step back and evaluate the effectiveness of these well-intentioned efforts by members of the healing and helping pro- fessions. Conversely, people who minister to those in distress can gain valuable insights and useful sug- gestions from the findings of studies carried out by victimologists.

The term victimology can mean different things to different people, and detectives can consider themselves “victimologists” too. In police work, the term victimology is applied to a type of back- ground investigation. To homicide detectives, vic- timology is the process of reconstructing events and learning as much as possible about a person who was murdered in order to help figure out who the killer is (see Box 1.1).

STUDYING VICTIMIZATION SCIENTIFICALLY

The suffering of victims and of the people who are very close to them always has been a popular theme for artists and writers to interpret and for political and religious leaders to address. But this long and rich tradition embodies what might be categorized as the subjective approach to the plight of vic- tims, since issues are approached from the stand- point of morality, ethics, philosophy, personalized reactions, and intense emotions. Victimologists examine these same topics and incidents from a fresh, new angle: through a social science lens. Objectivity is the hallmark of any social scientific endeavor. Scientific objectivity requires that the observer try to be fair, open-minded, evenhanded, dispassionate, neutral, and unbiased. Objectivity means not taking sides, not showing favoritism, not allowing personal prejudices to sidetrack analy- ses, not permitting emotion to cloud reasoning, and not letting the dominant views of the times dictate conclusions and recommendations.

Prescriptions to remain disinterested and unin- volved are easier to abide by when the incidents under scrutiny happened long ago and far away. It is much harder to maintain social distance when investigating the plight of real people right here and right now. These scientific tenets are extremely difficult to live up to when the subject matter—the depredations inflicted by lawbreakers—connects to widely held beliefs about good and evil, right and wrong, and justice and unfairness. Most offen- ders show such callous disregard and depraved

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indifference toward the human beings they have cold-bloodedly targeted as depersonalized objects that it is difficult to avoid being caught up and swept away by strong emotional currents. Consider how natural it is to identify with those on the receiving end of violent attacks, to feel empathy and sympathy toward them, and to bristle with hostility toward the aggressors, as in the following real-life cases (all involving college students):

A 22-year-old student government president is car- jacked and kidnapped by two armed young men, 21 and 17 years old, and forced to withdraw money from an ATM. Next, they drive their hostage to a remote location in the woods, molest her, and then decide to kill her since she could identify them. She pleads for her life and urges them to pray with her. Instead, one shoots her four times. But she still can move and talk, so he blasts her with a shotgun to finish her off. The two assailants are caught and convicted of murder. (Velliquette, 2011)

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A 22-year-old college student who aspires to become a police officer works in a bakery. But he is gunned down in his home by a gang of young men who barge in and mistake him for his look-alike younger brother, who had gotten them in trouble with the authorities. “He was one of the best boys you will ever find,” his mother laments. (Bultman and Jaccarino, 2010)

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A sophomore attends a campus party and leaves alone around midnight. About 2 am, footage from a sur- veillance camera shows her walking in a downtown pedestrian mall followed by a man. After that she disappears, and her family, friends and volunteers undertake the largest hunt for a missing person in the state’s history. Over a month later, her remains are discovered on an abandoned property about 8 miles away from the mall, and the police arrest the man in the video, who is linked by forensic evidence to other attacks. Students at her university organize a memorial during homecoming weekend, and her parents thank the police and the volunteers who searched for her, but

B O X 1.1 What the Police Mean by the Term Victimology

When homicide squad detectives say they are engaged in vic- timology, they mean piecing together clues and leads from the dead person’s life in order to help discover the killer’s identity. Police investigators want to find out as much as possible about the deceased from interviews with the next of kin and eyewit- nesses, e-mail messages, diaries, banking deposits and with- drawals, computer files, and records of telephone calls. Detectives look into the victim’s associates (by compiling lists of contacts, including friends, family members, acquaintances, rivals, and enemies), social background (lifestyle, occupation, education, marital status, secret lovers), criminal history (any prior record of arrests, convictions, and incarcerations plus any cases in which the departed served as a complainant, plaintiff, or witness against others), financial situation (sources of income, debts owed, investments, and who is next in line to inherit any property), and health issues (drinking habits, substance abuse, and other problems). Autopsy findings shed light on the final meal, the presence of any traces of recent drinking and drug taking, the cause of death, and the approx- imate time interval when the fatal confrontation took place.

For example, if a drug dealer is found shot to death in an alley, detectives would construct a timeline of his last known

whereabouts and activities. What were his known hangouts (bars, clubs, parks, etc.)? Investigators would seek clues to determine whether he was killed by someone above him in the hierarchy of drug trafficking or someone below who worked for him or bought controlled substances from him. Was he recently embroiled in any disputes or court cases, and did he secretly serve as a confidential informant? Who had a motive and an opportunity to slay him? (NYPD homicide detectives, 2008). When police discovered the scattered remains of a number of young women in a stretch of deserted sand dunes near a pop- ular beach, their victimological inquiries soon established a common thread: that they all had been prostitutes apparently slain by a serial killer (Swartz, 2013).

Clearly, whereas victimologists want to uncover trends, patterns, and regularities that hold true for many injured par- ties in general, police investigators seek to establish in great detail everything that can be unearthed about the life and death of a particular person. “Forensic victimology” in this very pragmatic and immediate sense is undertaken to increase the odds of solving a case, apprehending a suspect, and testifying in court on behalf of a person who is no longer able to pursue justice on his or her own (see Petherick and Turvey, 2008).

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add, “We are devastated by the loss of our beautiful daughter.” (Martinez, 2014)

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A classroom door swings open, and a mentally deranged undergraduate barges in and shoots the professor who is lecturing by the blackboard. Then, starting with those in the front rows, the silent and expressionless gunman methodically starts firing away at the horrified students, who hit the floor and turn over desks to shield themselves. “There were a couple of screams, but for the most part it was eerily silent, other than the gunfire,” a student reports. As the mass murderer wanders off, another student recalls, “I told people that were still up and conscious, ‘Just be quiet because we don’t want him to think there are people in here because he’ll come back in.’” Indeed, he tries to return to resume the slaughter, but a wounded classmate keeps the door wedged shut. Still determined to reenter into the classroom, the deeply disturbed young man fires repeatedly at the door. When he eventually stalks off, frantic students call 911 on their cell phones and holler for help out the windows. The attacker is later found dead from a self- inflicted gunshot wound to the head, in another classroom, alongside the bodies of some other under- grads he murdered. (Hernandez, 2007)

Doesn’t basic human decency demand that observers identify with the wounded, fallen, down- trodden, and underdogs and condemn vicious predatory behavior? Why would anyone even con- sider striving for objectivity to be an indispensable prerequisite of each and every scientific analysis?

WHY OBJECTIVITY IS DESIRABLE

At first glance, the importance of reserving judg- ments, refraining from jumping to conclusions, and resisting the urge to side with those who are in pain might not be self-evident. An angry, gut reaction might be to ask, “What kind of person would try to remain detached and dispassionate in the midst of such intense suffering? What is wrong with championing the interests of people whose

lives have been upended by unjust and illegal actions? Why is neutrality a worthwhile starting point in any analysis?”

The simple and direct answer to the question “Why shouldn’t victimologists be openly, unabash- edly, and consistently pro-victim?” is that, unlike the situations described in the examples above, on many occasions this formula offers no real guidance. So when is a person worthy of sympathy and support? Most people would consider an individual to be an innocent victim only when the following conditions apply (what sociologists would call the ideal type or positive stereotype): The person who suffered harm was weaker in comparison to the apparent aggressor and was acting virtuously (or at least was engaged in conventional activities and was not looking for trou- ble or breaking any laws), the wrongdoer was a com- plete stranger whose predatory behavior obviously was illegal and unprovoked, and the one who resorted to force was not a member of a governmen- tal agency authorized to use coercion (such as police officers or prison guards). Using the language of soci- ology, the status of being a legitimate or bona fide victim worthy of support is socially constructed and conferred (see Christie, 1986; and Dignan, 2005).

Sometimes It Is Difficult to Distinguish Victims from Villains

But real-life confrontations do not consistently gen- erate simple clear-cut cases that neatly fall into the dichotomies of good and evil, innocence and guilt. Not all victims were weak, defenseless, unsuspect- ing “lambs” who, through tragic or ironic circum- stances or just plain bad luck, were pounced upon by cunning, vicious “wolves.” In some instances, observers may have reasonable doubts and honest disagreements over which party in a conflict should be labeled the victim and which should be stigma- tized as the villain. These complicated situations dramatize the need for impartiality when untan- gling convoluted relationships in order to make a rational argument and a sound legal determination that one person should be arrested, prosecuted, and punished, and the other defended, supported, and assisted. Unlike the black-and-white examples

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presented above, many messy incidents reported in the news and processed by the courts embody shades of gray. Clashes frequently take place between two people who, to varying degrees, are simultaneously both victims, or both wrongdoers. Consider the following two accounts of iconic, highly publicized incidents from past decades that illustrate just how difficult it can be to try to estab- lish exactly who seriously misbehaved and who acted appropriately:

A wealthy couple are at home in their mansion watch- ing television and eating ice cream when someone shoots the man point-blank in the back of the head and then blasts his wife with a shotgun a number of times in the face. The police search for the killers for six months before the couple’s two sons, 21 and 18, concede that they did it. In a nationally televised trial for first-degree murder and facing possible execution, the sons give emotionally compelling (but uncorroborated) testimony describing how their father sexually molested and mentally abused them when they were little boys. The brothers contend they acted in self-defense, believing that their parents were about to murder them to keep the alleged incestuous acts a family secret. The prosecution argues that these boys killed their parents in order to get their hands on their $14 million inheritance (they had quickly spent $700,000 on luxury cars, condos, and fashionable clothing before they were arrested). The jurors become deadlocked over whether to find them guilty of murder or only of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, and the judge declares a mistrial. In the second trial, the prosecution ridicules their “abuse excuse” defense. The jury convicts them of premedi- tated murder and sentences them to life in prison without parole. Soon afterwards, each brother gets married (the older one divorces and has a second wed- ding behind bars) even though the prison system does not permit conjugal visits for lifers. (Berns, 1994; Mydans, 1994; Associated Press, 1996a; and Hubbard, 2012)

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An ex-Marine who works as a bouncer in a bar wakes up in his bed and discovers to his horror that his wife has sliced off his penis with a kitchen knife.

Arrested for “malicious wounding,” she tells the police that she mutilated him because earlier that evening in a drunken stupor he forced himself upon her. He is put on trial for marital sexual abuse but is acquitted by a jury that does not believe her testimony about a history of beatings, involuntary rough sex, and other humiliations. When she is indicted on felony charges (ironically, by the same prosecutor) for the bloody bedroom assault, many people rally to her side. To her supporters, she has undercut the debili- tating stereotype of female passivity; she literally disarmed him with a single stroke and threw the symbol of male sexual dominance out the window. To her detractors, she is a master of manipulation, publicly playing the role of a sobbing battered wife deserving of sympathy to divert attention from her act of rage against a sleeping husband who had lost his sexual interest in her. Facing up to 20 years in prison, she declines to plead guilty to a lesser charge and demands her day in court. The jury accepts her defense—that she was traumatized, deeply depressed, beset by flashbacks, and susceptible to “irresistible impulses” because of years of cruelty and abuse—and finds her not guilty by reason of tem- porary insanity. After 45 days under observation in a mental hospital, she is released. Soon afterwards, the couple divorces, and then they each take financial advantage of all the international media coverage, sensationalism, titillation, voyeurism, and sexual politics surrounding their deeply troubled relationship. Over the years, he is arrested seven times, gets mar- ried three more times, stars in porn movies, and brags that about 70 women have been sexually attracted to him because of his ordeal and re-attachment surgery. She is arrested for punching her mother but then sets up a charitable organization that attempts to prevent domestic violence. (Margolick, 1994; Sachs, 1994; and Moye, 2013)

In both of the classic cases that were resolved by the criminal justice system years ago in ways that caused quite an uproar and still provoke many heated discussions, the persons officially designated as the victims by the police and prosecutors—the dead parents, the slashed husband—arguably could be considered by certain standards as wrongdoers

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who “got what was coming to them.” Indeed, they were viewed just that way by substantial segments of the public and by some jurors. The defendants who got in trouble with the law—the shotgun- toting brothers, the knife-wielding wife—insisted that they should not be portrayed as criminals. On the contrary, they contended that they actually were the genuine victims who should not be pun- ished: sons sexually molested by their father, a bat- tered woman who was subjected to marital rape.

Now consider three confusing and controver- sial cases that made headlines and provoked heated public debates in recent years:

A 17-year-old boy wearing a hooded sweatshirt on a rainynight ison the phone with his girlfriend as hewalks home from a store after buying a can of soda and some candy. A member of a neighborhood watch group on patrol in a gated community of townhouses that has recently suffered a rash of break-ins drives by, spots him, and calls the police, voicing his suspicions that, “Heisup tonogood…”.The911dispatcher tells the28-year-old man, who had taken some criminal justice courses at a community college, not to follow and confront the youth. But he does, and after he gets out of his SUV, they exchange words and become embroiled in a fistfight. Neighbors hear someone screaming and pleading for help, and call 911. When officers arrive, they find the man bloodied and the teenager dead from a bullet to his heart. The man claims that he was the actual victim and that he had a right to fire his licensed handgun in self- defense. When the news spreads that the local police department has decided not to arrest the armed crime watch volunteer, demonstrations erupt across the coun- try, demanding his arrest as an overzealous police wan- nabe who acted as a vigilante. Protesters also condemn provisions of the state’s “stand your ground” law for causing needless bloodshed and denounce the shooter for engaging in racial profiling because he trailed after what he deemed to be a “suspicious outsider.” The local police chief steps down, the county prosecutor and the Justice Department re-open the investigation, and President Obama identifies with the unarmed youth who was tragically and needlessly killed, telling journalists that, “If I had a son, he’d look like {the victim}.” A jury of six women acquits the defendant of charges of second

degree murder, and even of the lesser charge of man- slaughter. The jurors reject the prosecution’s version of the events: that the man had deliberately pursued the hoodie-clad black teenager and instigated the fight that led to the fatal shooting. The jury accepts the injured man’s contention that the teenager knocked him to the ground, punched him and repeatedly slammed his head against the sidewalk; and that he was justifiedin firing to protect himself because he feared grave bodily harm or death. The testimony and evidence at the trial does not clearly resolve key questions about what really happened that rainy night: who initiated the confrontation and started the fight by throwing the first punch, who screamed for help, and at what point was the handgun drawn? Angry protesters insisting that the dead teen was the genuine victim chant, “No justice, no peace.” After the controversial “not guilty” verdict, the man is featured in the news several times for brushes with the law involving violent outbursts. (Alvarez and Buckley, 2013; and Jauregui, 2014)

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At around 4:30 am, a 55-year-old white man hears loud pounding and shouting at his front door and then at his side door. He grabs a shotgun and fires a blast through his locked screen door into the face of a teenage black girl standing on his front porch, killing her instantly. He is arrested and put on trial. Although he initially told the police that his weapon discharged accidentally, he tells the jury that he thought his home was about to be invaded by several intruders and, fearing for his life, vowed that “I wasn’t going to cower in my house, I didn’t want to be a victim.” The pros- ecution contends that he went to the door armed because he wanted to confront and frighten vandals who had defaced his vehicle with paintballs a few weeks earlier. The jury rejects his claim of firing in self-defense, and finds the man guilty of second degree murder and manslaughter. The young woman he killed turned out to be 19, unarmed, and intoxicated. Apparently she was making a commotion because she was seeking help after being involved in a car crash nearby several hours earlier. (Anderson, 2014; and Abby-Lambertz, 2014)

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A 29-year-old mother of 3 enters her home to gather her belongings so she can escape from her abusive estranged husband, whose periodic beatings have inflicted injuries that have sent her to a hospital. But he returns home unexpectedly, accompanied by two of her stepsons. The 10-year-old and 13-year-old watch in horror as he beats and strangles her. She runs into the garage to get into her car but finds herself trapped, so she grabs her licensed handgun and returns to their house. When he curses and charges towards her, she fires what she contends are three warning shots into the kitchen ceiling to ward him off. But he calls the police, and her shots are viewed as angry attempts to hurt or kill him and his sons. She rejects a plea offer and is put on trial, and after the jury deliberates for a mere 12 minutes, she is convicted of three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, which could keep her in prison for 20 years. A grassroots move- ment of supporters fights for her release and for the charges to be dropped, viewing her as a battered woman who used a weapon to defend herself from imminent bodily injury. When her conviction is overturned because of faulty jury instructions, the prosecution vows to retry her and to seek consecutive sentences that would keep her behind bars for 60 years. (Shepeard, 2014)

In all three of these recent high-profile cases presented above, one other question arose: whether the race of the participants, and especially whether negative racial stereotypes, colors the thinking of various groups about which person should be des- ignated as the genuine victim (see Ghandnoosh, 2014). Also, in all three of these cases, individuals perceiving themselves to be facing a threat of immi- nent bodily harm reached for their gun, triggering a debate between advocates of armed self-defense and supporters of gun control legislation (the arguments of both sides of this controversy appear in Chapter 13). Sharply different points of view were aired in dinner table discussions, news media columnists’ interpretations, courtroom proceedings, and even political rallies about the role of race in decision making and about the use of deadly weapons for self-protection These are the kind of issues that vic- timologists need to study scientifically.

Whenever different interpretations of the facts lead to sharply divergent conclusions about who is actually the guilty party and who really is the injured party, knee-jerk pro-victim impulses provide no use- ful guidance for action. The confusion inherent in the unrealistically simplistic labels of 100 percent cul- pable criminal and 100 percent innocent victim underscores the need for objectivity when trying to figure out who is primarily responsible for whatever lawbreaking took place. Clearly, the dynamics between victims and victimizers need to be sorted out in an evenhanded and open-minded manner, not only by victimologists but also by journalists, police officers, prosecutors, judges, and juries.

In rare instances, even the authorities can’t make up their minds, as this unresolved incident demonstrates:

A pizza parlor chef and a mob henchman become embroiled in a knife fight that spills out on to a city street. They stab and slash each other and wind up in different hospitals. The police arrest both of the injured parties on charges of attempted murder as well as other offenses. However, each of the combatants refuses to testify in front of a grand jury against his adversary, fearing self-incrimination if he has to explain his motives and actions. The district attor- ney’s office declines to grant immunity from prose- cution to either of the two parties because detectives cannot figure out who was the attacker and who fought back in self-defense. As a result, neither is indicted, and a judge dismisses all the charges pend- ing from the melee. Both wounded men, and the lawyers representing them, walk out of court pleased with the outcome—that no one will get in trouble for an assault with a deadly weapon. (Robbins, 2011)

Criminals Can Be Victims Too

To further complicate matters, impartiality is called for when the injured party clearly turns out to be an undeniable lawbreaker. To put it bluntly, predators prey upon each other as well as upon innocent members of the general public. Some assaults and slayings surely can be characterized as

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“criminal-on-criminal.” Researchers (see Singer, 1981; and Fattah, 1990) noted long ago that people who routinely engage in illegal activities are more likely to get hurt than their law-abiding counterparts. When an organized crime syndicate “puts out a contract” on a rival faction’s chieftain, the gangster who gets “whacked” in a “mob rub- out” is not an upstanding citizen struck down by an act of randomly directed violence. Similarly, when a turf battle erupts between drug dealers and one vanquishes the other, it must be remembered that the loser aspired to be the victor. When youth gangs feud with each other by carrying out “drive- by” shootings, the young members who get gunned down are casualties of their own brand of retali- atory “street justice.” Hustlers, con men, high- stakes gamblers, pimps, prostitutes, fences, swindlers, smugglers, traffickers, and others living life in the fast lane of the underworld often get hurt because they enter into showdowns with volatile persons known to be armed and dangerous. What could it possibly mean to be pro-victim in these rather com- mon cases in which lawbreakers harm other wrong- doers? The designations “victim” and “offender” are not always at opposite poles but sometimes can be pictured as overlapping categories somewhere near the middle of a continuum bounded by complete innocence and full legal responsibility.

Of course, it is possible for people engaged in illicit activities to be genuine victims qualifying for protection and redress through the courts. For exam- ple, prostitutes who trade sexual favors for money are frequently beaten by sadistic johns, robbed of their earnings by exploitative pimps (see Boyer and James, 1983; and Brents and Hausbeck, 2005), and occa- sionally targeted by serial killers. The harms they suf- fer are more serious than the “offenses” they commit (see Coston, 2004). Similarly, drug addicts who get beaten and robbed merit assistance. Next, consider the possibility of the intergenerational transmission of misusing force—a cycle of violence over time that transforms a victim into a victimizer (see Fagan, Piper, and Cheng, 1987). For example, a child sub- jected to periodic beatings might grow up to parent his sons in the same excessively punitive way he was

raised. A study that tracked the fortunes of boys and girls known to have been physically and sexually abused over a follow-up period of several decades concluded that being harmed at an early age substan- tially increased the odds of future delinquency and violent criminality (Widom and Maxfield, 2001). Another longitudinal study of molested males esti- mated that although most did not become pedo- philes, more than 10 percent grew up to become sexual aggressors and exploiters (Skuse et al., 2003). Similarly, the results of a survey of convicts revealed that they were much more likely to have been abused physically or sexually as children than their law- abiding counterparts (Harlow, 1999).

Even more confusing are the situations of cer- tain groups of people who continuously switch roles as they lead their messy and deeply troubled daily lives. For instance, desperate heroin addicts are repeatedly subjected to consumer fraud (dealers constantly cheat them by selling heavily adulterated packets of this forbidden powder). Nevertheless, after being swindled over and over again by their suppliers, they routinely go out and steal other peo- ple’s property to raise the cash that pays for their habits (see Kelly, 1983). Similarly, teenage girls who engage in prostitution are arrested by the police and sent to juvenile court as delinquents, in accordance with the law. But reformers picture them as sexu- ally abused by their pimps and by johns who actu- ally commit statutory rape upon these underage sex workers. Are they victims who need help rather than offenders who deserve punishment (see Kristof, 2011)? To further complicate matters, offenders can morph into victims right under the noses of the authorities. For example, when delin- quents are thrown in with older and tougher inmates in adult jails, these teenagers face grave risks of being physically and sexually assaulted (“New study,” 2008). In penal institutions, convicts become victims entitled to press charges and to pro- tection when they are assaulted, gang raped, or robbed by other more vicious inmates (who seek to stifle any complaining and reporting as “snitching”). About half of all inmates in state pris- ons told interviewers that they had been shot at in

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their past lives on the street, and more than a fifth had been wounded by gunfire (Harlow, 2001).

Violence begets violence, to the extent that those who suffer today may be inclined to inflict pain on others tomorrow, For example, a group of picked-upon students might band together to ambush their bullying tormentors; or a battered wife might launch a vengeful surprise attack against her brutal husband.

Victims Can Find Themselves at Odds with the “Good Guys”

Striving for objectivity is important for yet an- other reason. Crime victims can and do become embroiled in conflicts with persons and groups besides the perpetrators who have directly inflicted physical wounds and economic losses. Injured par- ties might nurse grievances against journalists reporting about their cases; police officers and detectives investigating their complaints; prosecu- tors ostensibly representing them in court; defense attorneys working on behalf of the accused; juries and judges deciding how to resolve their cases; pro- bation, parole, and corrections officers supervising convicts who harmed them; lawyers handling their lawsuits in civil court; governmental agencies and legislative bodies shaping their legal rights; social movements either speaking on their behalf or opposing their wishes; and businesses viewing them as eager customers for security products and services. Impartiality helps social scientists to under- stand why friction can develop in these situations and how to find solutions if these relationships become antagonistic.

First consider the situation in which some vic- tims are pitted against others. This can arise in the aftermath of a Ponzi scheme collapse, when it comes to parceling out whatever funds remain to the many investors who were defrauded. Those investors who bought in and cashed out earlier made money at the expense of those who jumped in right before the pyramid scheme was uncovered (see Henriques, 2010). Which victims are truly the “good guys,” and which are more deserving of inaccurate depictions than others? Objectivity

is needed to resolve this victim versus victim infighting.

Next, consider how victims of highly publicized crimes could be outraged by the way the news media portrays them. Rather than side with the injured parties or with the journalists covering their cases, shouldn’t a victimologist adopt the stance of a detached and disinterested observer who investigates these charges of insensitivity and inaccuracy perhaps by carrying out a fine-grained content analysis of press coverage in those high-profile cases?

Third, consider those situations where well- intentioned officials and groups put forward compet- ing criminal justice policies, both of which claim to be pro-victim. For instance, prosecutors’ offices have adopted one or the other of two alternative ways of responding to violence between intimate partners. One policy enables a battered woman to remain in control of “her” case and ultimately decide if she wants to press charges against her husband or lover whom she had arrested for assaulting her. Advocates of letting her choose whether to prosecute or not emphasize that this approach empowers her to weigh her alternatives and take her personal safety into account. The other policy mandates that the prosecution of the arrestee should go forward on the basis of the available evidence (police officer tes- timony, photos of bruises, eyewitness accounts, hos- pital records, and 911 recordings), even if the injured party wants to drop the charges (either because she fears reprisals or seeks rapprochement). Supporters of this policy believe that when batterers know they will be held responsible and punished, domestic violence will subside as a societal problem. In other words, her ability to determine what she wants to do about her individual situation must be sacrificed for the “greater good,” which is to use cases like hers to gen- erally deter would-be batterers from assaulting their partners. Only an impartial analysis of scientifically gathered evidence can determine which of these two ostensibly pro-victim approaches best serves the long-term interests of most domestic violence victims (see O’Sullivan, Davis, Farole, and Rempel, 2007; and Nichols, 2014).

The Pentagon has tried for several decades to reduce the number of sexual assaults inflicted by

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members of the marines, army, navy, air force, and even the coast guard upon their comrades in arms in service academies, barracks, military bases, and even foreign battlefields. After the U.S. Senate debated alternative ways to bring the problem under control, two competing bills, both claiming to be pro-victim, came up for a vote. Supporters of one proposal argued that soldiers, sailors, and mar- ines who are sexually assaulted fear that if they dare to file a complaint, their superiors may not act in their behalf. So they urged legislation that would have stripped commanding officers of their ability to decide which cases reported to them should lead to a court martial and would have empowered mil- itary prosecutors to make that decision about press- ing charges or not. But the majority voted against this proposal, and instead the Senate passed the Vic- tims Protection Act of 2014 that provides complai- nants with special counsels to advise them about the pros and cons of pursuing their cases in the military as opposed to the civilian criminal justice system (Jordan, 2014). Which of these two competing approaches would have been better for victims of sexual assaults? Will the new reform bring about substantial improvements? Objectivity, not parti- sanship, is needed to answer these questions.

The above examples underscore how impor- tant it is for researchers to remain neutral at the outset of a study. Now consider the dilemmas many everyday people face because of their com- peting loyalties: their desire to back crime victims in their struggle for justice versus remaining true to their other commitments. The following examples illustrate how objectivity and impartiality are sorely needed whenever pro-victim impulses must be bal- anced against other priorities and allegiances—for instance, enthusiastic support for the police or for the pro-life movement.

The mission of police departments is to protect and serve the public, and most people respect and admire the courage of officers who risk their lives to rescue hostages taken by kidnappers. But who would a person who is pro-victim as well as pro-police side withwhenthesewell-intentionedofficersaccidentally kill by “friendly fire” a captive they are seeking to free from the clutches of a captor? Would they agree

with the distraught relatives who launch civil lawsuits for damages that criticize the department for inade- quate training and an overreliance on military-style SWAT tactics rather than hostage negotiation techni- ques, or would they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the police fraternal organizations that predictably insist that the courageous officer did nothing wrong? Clearly, objectivity is called for when examining the effectiveness of existing law enforcement strategies and departmental policies in these tragedies that peri- odically seize the attention of the news media and the public (for example, see Dewan, 2005; Rubin, 2008; Murphy, 2014; and Haake, 2014).

People who are pro-choice would agree that a girl or woman who has been compelled to submit to incestuous relations or a forced penetration that results in a pregnancy should not have to bear the rapist’s child. But those who want to minimize the suffering of these females and yet are also passionately pro-life might find themselves torn between their conflicting loyalties. This dilemma is fought out in public whenever candidates running for office declare their support for strict antiabortion bills that would permit no exceptions, not even for terminating preg- nancies resulting from incest or rape (see Redden, 2013). Evaluating the impact of these controversial policies and proposals about terminating desperately unwanted pregnancies requires an open-minded and even-handed approach to the arguments advanced by both sides about how many pregnancies each year arise from incest or rape, and what are the conse- quences for the mother who is compelled to bear the rapist’s child and for that baby as it grows up. In many states, the man, unless he is convicted of rape, can sue for visitation and custody rights, like any other estranged father (see Chapter 10).

SOURCES OF BIAS THAT THWART OBJECTIVITY

To sum up the arguments presented in earlier sec- tions, when choosing projects to research and when gathering and interpreting data, victimologists must put aside their personal political orientations toward

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criminal justice policies (such as conservatism or liberalism); their allegiances to causes (such as pre- serving civil liberties or advancing women’s rights or outlawing abortion); and any positive or negative feelings toward entire groups (such as being pro- police or hostile to gun owners). Advocacy, whether for or against some policy or practice, should be kept separate from assessing the facts or drawing conclusions based on the available data. Scientific skepticism in the face of claims (“Prove it! Where is the evidence?”)—not self-interest or preconceived notions—must prevail when evaluat- ing whether victims’ rights legislation, prevention strategies, antitheft hardware, and recovery pro- grams genuinely work or are ineffective or even counterproductive in reaching their stated goals. Expert opinion, in reports, in court testimony, or in the classroom, must be based on facts, not faith. Research, policy analyses, and program evaluations must tell the whole truth, no matter who is disap- pointed or insulted.

Three types of biases undermine the ability of any social scientists (not just victimologists) to achieve objectivity and draw conclusions based on solid evidence (see Myrdal, 1944). The first may arise from personal experiences, taking the form of individual preferences and prejudices. For example, victimologists who have been personally harmed in some way (beaten by a lover, robbed, or raped, for example) might become so sensitized to the plight of their fellow victims that they can see issues only from that point of view. Conversely, those who have never been through such an ordeal might be unable to truly grasp what the injured parties must endure. In either case, the victimologist may develop a bias, whether it be oversensitivity and overidentification or insensitivity and lack of identification.

A second type of bias derives from the legacy of the discipline itself. The language, concepts, theories, and research priorities can reflect the collective preferences and priorities of its founders and their followers. For instance, it is widely acknowledged that the pioneers in this field of study introduced a victim-blaming orientation into the new discipline, but over the decades the tide has decisively turned. Today, the vast majority

of victimologists make no secret of their opposite commitments: not to find fault with those who are suffering but rather to devise more effective means of aid, support, and recovery.

Although subtle, a third type of bias can be traced back to the mood of the times. Victimolo- gists, like all other members of a society, are influ- enced by their social environment. The events that shape public opinion during different periods of time can also affect scientific thought. During the 1960s and early 1970s, for example, many people demanded that the government devise ways to help victims get back on their feet financially, medically, and emotionally. This insistence about expanding the social safety net to cushion the blows inflicted not only by corporations laying off workers and hospitals and doctors charging exorbitant fees for medical treatments but also by criminals reflected the spirit of egalitarianism and mutual aid of this stage in American history. The belief that society—through the instrument of the government—could and should do more to help out inspired a great deal of research and policy advocacy. But these ambitious goals have been voiced less often ever since the 1980s, when the themes of “strive for self-reliance,” “reduce social spending by government,” and “cut taxes” gained popularity. This emphasis on individuals taking responsibility for their own well-being as opposed to holding the socioeconomic system accountable for its shortcomings and failings (especially chroni- cally high rates of unemployment and a growing gap between the super rich and the desperately poor) has become the dominant ideology since the financial meltdown of 2008 and the onset of the “Great Recession.” Consequently, research projects and proposals about government-funded victim assistance programs have shifted their focus to matters such as only providing seed money for demonstration projects, imposing “sunset provi- sions” (to phase out efforts that don’t rapidly produce results), stressing cost effectiveness, and exploring the feasibility of self-help, privately financed, or faith-based charitable alternatives.

Clearly, inquiries into how victims suffer at the hands of criminals as well as other groups such as

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journalists and criminal justice officials is unavoid- ably a value-laden pursuit that arouses intense pas- sions and sharply dissenting views. As a result, some have argued that objectivity is an impossible and unrealistic goal that should be abandoned in favor of a forthright affirmation of values and allegiances. They say that victimologists (and other social scien- tists) should acknowledge their biases at the outset to alert their audiences to the slant that their analy- ses and policy recommendations will take. Others argue that objectivity is worth striving for because subjectivity thwarts attempts to accurately describe, understand, and explain what is happening, why it came about, and how conditions can be improved.

For the purposes of a textbook, the best course of action is to present all sides of controversial issues. Nevertheless, space limitations impose hard choices. This book focuses almost entirely on victims of inter- personal violence and theft (street crimes such as murder, rape, robbery, assault, kidnapping, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft). There are many other categories of lawbreaking: crimes in the suites involving a betrayal of trust and an abuse of power by high government officials against their rivals or to the detriment of the general public, and by corporate executives who can illegally inflict massive losses and injuries upon their company’s workers, custo- mers, stock owners, or competitors. White-collar crimes such as embezzlement by employees against their employers or fraud by citizens against govern- ment programs also impose much greater financial costs than street crimes. Organized rackets run by mobsters (drug smuggling, gun trafficking, counter- feiting of documents and currency, gambling, extor- tion) generate millions of dollars, undermine everyday life, and stimulate official corruption (bribes to look the other way). Crimes without complainants—victimless activities to some, vice to others—are controversial because the social reaction and criminal justice response might be worse than the original deviant behavior involving transactions between consenting adults (such as prostitution, ille- gal wagering, and street-level drug selling and buy- ing). Clearly these other categories of crimes are as serious and merit attention from scholars, law enforcement agencies, and concerned citizens.

But they are not the types of lawless deeds that come to mind when people talk about “the crime problem” or express fears about being harmed. Street crime scares the public, preoccupies the media, keeps police departments busy, and captures the notice of politicians. These conventional, ordinary, depress- ingly familiar, and all-too-common predatory acts have tangible, visible, and readily identifiable victims who are directly affected and immediately aware of their injuries and losses.

In contrast, in the other categories of crime, especially white-collar crime and crime in the suites, the deleterious consequences are experienced by abstractions (such as “a competitive economy” or “national security”), impersonal entities (such as the U.S. Treasury or multinational corporations), or vaguely defined collectivities (such as voters, tax- payers, investors, shareholders, or consumers). It is difficult to grasp precisely who has suffered in these cases, and it is nearly impossible to describe or mea- sure the background characteristics or reactions of the injured parties. It is extremely tough to establish in court specifically who the flesh-and-blood vic- tims are in cases of drug smuggling, money laun- dering, insurance scams, false advertising, bribe taking, software piracy, counterfeiting of trade- marked goods, dumping of toxic wastes, insider trading, electoral fraud, illegal campaign contribu- tions, and income tax evasion. But individuals hurt by assailants, robbers, and rapists can be easily iden- tified, observed, contacted, interviewed, studied, counseled, assisted legally, and treated medically. As a result, a wealth of statistical data has accumu- lated about their wounds, losses, and emotional reactions. For these reasons, victims of interpersonal violence and theft will be the primary focus of attention and concern throughout this text, even though many of the illegal activities cited above inflict much more severe social and economic dam- age (see Naim, 2005). But note that this decision immediately introduces a bias into this introduction to the field of victimology, one that reflects the experiences of authors of articles and textbooks, the collective priorities of the discipline’s founders and most prolific researchers, and the mood of the times!

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Victimology’s Undeserved “Bad Reputation”

Not very long after the term entered mainstream culture, victimology (undeservedly!) became a “dirty word.” Some prominent and insightful people who ought to know better misuse “victimology” as an epithet spit out through clenched teeth. This dis- turbing trend emerged during the 1990s and unfor- tunately is becoming even more entrenched and pronounced during the twenty-first century. For example, in an article condemning a speech deliv- ered by President Obama, an editor of a political journal used the term victimology in a negative way four times (such as “Obama has now put the presi- dential imprimatur on the crudest kind of racial victimology.…”) (MacDonald, 2013). Similarly, a former speechwriter for President Bush wrote an editorial headlined, “The Victimology of Hillary Clinton” (Frum, 2014). And a nationally syndicated radio talk show host, responding to a caller who characterized “victimology” as a mindset about feeling guilty for being privileged, responded, “But this whole notion of victimology, I totally get it” (Limbaugh, 2014)—but does he really? Some dramatic illustrations of how victimology has been bad-mouthed in the media as muddled thinking or even denounced as a contemptible point of view over the years appear in Box 1.2.

What were these commentators thinking when they issued these sweeping denunciations of what they branded as “victimology”? Why is this rela- tively new academic discipline being singled out for such harsh criticisms?

Evidently, those who condemn what they label “victimology” are railing at something other than scientific research focused on people harmed by criminals. The mistake these commentators are making is parallel to the improper usage of the phrase “sociological forces” rather than “social forces,” and “psychological problems” instead of “mental problems.” Victimology is just one of many “-ologies” (including such narrowly focused fields of study as volcanology, penology, or suici- dology, or such broad disciplines as sociology and psychology). The suffix -ology merely means “the study of.” If the phrase “the objective study of

crime victims” is substituted for “victimology” in the excerpts quoted above, the sentences make no sense. Victimology, sociology, and psychology are disciplines that adopt a certain approach to their subject matter or a method of analysis that main- tains a particular focus, but they do not impose a partisan point of view or yield a set of predictably biased conclusions.

It appears that what these strident denunciations are deriding is a victimization-centered orientation that can be categorized as the ideology of victimism (see Sykes, 1992). An ideology (such as conservatism or liberalism) is a coherent, inte- grated set of beliefs that shapes interpretations and leads to political action. Victimism is the outlook of people who share a sense of common victimhood. Individuals who accept this outlook believe that they gain insight from an understanding of history: of how their fellow group members (such as women, homosexuals, or racial and religious minorities) have been seriously “wronged” by some rival group (to put it mildly; viciously slaughtered would be a better way to phrase it in many historical cases!) or held back and kept down by unfair social, economic, or political institutions built upon oppressive and exploitative roles and relationships.

For example, in a well-known speech in 1964 (right before Congress passed civil rights legislation officially dismantling segregation), Malcolm X, the fiery spokesman for the black nationalist move- ment, adopted a victimist outlook when he pro- claimed (see Breitman, 1966) “I’m one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism … victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy … I’m speaking as a victim of this American dream system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.” A victimist review of the history of African Americans up to the present would stress how the evils of slavery were “perfectly legal”; how Jim Crow segregation and institutionalized racism in housing, employment, education, and public accommodations until the 1950s were permitted by a Supreme Court decision; how lynch mobs rarely got into trouble for their extrajudicial

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B O X 1.2 Some Striking Examples of “Victimology Bashing”

The context and then the statement denouncing “victimology”

Concerning male/female relations:

■ During a nationally televised interview, a critic of con- temporary feminism (Paglia, 1993) declared, “I hate victimology. I despise a victim-centered view of the uni- verse. Do not teach young women that their heritage is nothing but victimization.”

■ A collection of letters written to the editors of the New York Times (1996, p. E8) was published under the headline “What women want is a lot less victimology.”

■ A reviewer (Harrop, 2003) of a book about the difficul- ties facing boys wrote, “The art of victimology requires three easy steps: (1) Identify a group suffering real or perceived injustices. (2) Exaggerate the problem. (3) Blame the problem on a group you don’t like. Conserva- tives have long condemned the “victimology industry” as a racket, especially when practiced by women and minorities. As it happens, conservatives also play the game, and very well indeed…. The latest victimized group seems to be American boys.”

■ A political analyst subtitled her provocative article about an alleged “Campus Rape Myth” as “The reality: bogus statistics, feminist victimology, and university approved sex toys” (MacDonald, 2008a).

Concerning heterosexual/homosexual relations:

■ In a newspaper opinion piece about the controversy surrounding homosexuals serving in the military, the author (Sullivan, 1993, p. A21) observed, “The effect that ending the ban could have on the gay community is to embolden the forces of responsibility and integration and weaken the impulses of victimology and despair.… A defeat would send a signal to a gay community at a crossroads between hopeful integration and a new relapse into the victimology of the ghetto.”

Concerning race and ethnic relations:

■ An author of a book about race relations called a well- known reverend and civil rights activist a “professional victimologist” (see Dreher, 2001).

■ A former governor of Colorado (Lamm, 2004) warned that a plot to “destroy America” through immigration and multiculturalism would include the following strat- egy: “establish the cult of victimology … start a griev- ance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population.”

■ A newspaper columnist and political activist (Kuhner, 2011) lamented: “Victimology and racial set-asides dominate large swathes of American life, from university admissions and government bureaucracies to big busi- ness and construction.”

Concerning international relations:

■ A former Soviet intelligence officer (Pacepa, 2005) denounced the United Nations as a breeding ground for “a virulent strain of hatred for America, grown from the bacteria of Communism, anti-Semitism, nationalism, jin- goism, and victimology.”

■ A prominent commentator (Brooks, 2006a) wrote about the public’s perception of the Middle East: “What these Americans see is fanatical violence, a rampant culture of victimology and grievance, a tendency by many Arabs to blame anyone but themselves for the problems they create.”

■ A reviewer (Anderson, 2008) of a book about the war on terrorism wrote: “The Left’s victimology now sickens [the author].”

■ The secretary of defense in both the Bush and Obama administrations (Gates, 2009) told members of the armed forces: “I think most of our families don’t regard themselves as victims and don’t appreciate sometimes the victimology piece. They are very proud of the service of their soldiers overseas.…”

Concerning “culture wars”:

■ In his syndicated column, a leading conservative parti- san (Buckley, 1994, p. 30a) condemned the thinking of the 1960s Woodstock generation: “The countercultural music is the perfect accompaniment for the culture of sexual self-indulgence, of exhibitionism, of crime and illegitimacy, and ethnic rancor and victimology.”

Concerning courtroom strategies:

■ A news magazine columnist (Leo, 2002) took a swipe at certain lawsuits: “Yes, everybody is a victim now, but some breakthroughs in victimology are more noteworthy than others. The year’s best example was the trio of supersize teens who sued McDonald’s, claiming the burger chain made them fat by enticing them to eat its meals nearly every day for five years.”

■ In a critique of several jury verdicts that found defen- dants “not guilty,” a news magazine commentator (Leo, 1994) complained, “We are deep into the era of the abuse excuse. The doctrine of victimology—claiming

(Continued)

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murders; how Klan terror often went unpunished; and how injustices within the criminal justice pro- cess such as police brutality and racial profiling con- tinue right up to the present.

Similarly, a leading figure in the women’s liberation movement of the late 1960s analyzed “sexual politics” in a victimist way (Millet, 1970): “Oppressed groups have been denied education, economic independence, the power of office, representation, an image of dignity and self- respect, equality of status, and recognition as human beings. Throughout history women have been consistently denied all of these, and their denial today, while attenuated and partial, is never- theless consistent.” A victimist perspective about the history of female oppression would point out how in the past girls and young women who testi- fied that they had been raped felt as if they were put on trial; how battered women’s pleas for help were ignored by the men at the helm of the criminal justice system; and how females were barred from serving on juries and were strongly discouraged from pursuing various careers, such as becoming a police officer, lawyer, or judge.

Staunch critics of current conditions often connect the dots by tracing the roots of today’s

social problems back through centuries of system- atic subjugation. Activists believe that the unfair practices of the past persist right up to the present. But the commentators cited in Box 1.2 claim that adopting this kind of victimist orientation leads to an unhealthy preoccupation of dwelling on past wrongs that impedes efforts to make prog- ress today.

This debate over who or what is to blame for persisting injustices surrounding sex, class, and race is part of an ongoing political battle for the hearts and minds of the American people—a continuing ideological struggle that is often categorized as “identity politics,” which is part of the “culture wars.” Unfortunately, victimology has become confused with victimism and as a result has been caught up in the cross fire between partisans of the Right and Left. But victimology, as an “-ology” and not an “-ism,” is an objective, neu- tral, open-minded, and evenhanded scientific endeavor that does not take sides, play favorites, or speak with just one voice in these political debates. So there is no reason to condemn the whole scholarly enterprise of victimology and dis- miss it as flawed, distorted, or slanted, as the com- mentators quoted in Box 1.2 did. To put it bluntly,

victim status means you are not responsible for your actions—is beginning to warp the legal system.…. The irony of this seems to escape victimologists. A move- ment that began with the slogan, ‘Don’t blame the victim’ now strives to blame murder victims for their own deaths.”

Concerning academia and life on college campuses:

■ A columnist (Seebach, 1999, p. 2B) berated liberal pro- fessors for producing college grads whom employers would reject because the students were “experts only in victimology or oppression studies.”

■ A political analyst (MacDonald, 2007) interpreted the selection of a new university president as evidence that “Harvard will now be the leader in politically correct victimology.”

■ Arguing that resentment against highly educated can- didates might be going too far during the 2008 presi- dential campaign, a political analyst (MacDonald, 2008c) agreed with her allies: “I am as depressed as anyone by the university’s descent into ignorant narcis- sism and victimology over the last 30 years.”

Concerning everyday life:

■ A Pulitzer Prize–winning conservative commentator (Will, 1998, p. 42) titled his syndicated column opposing the Clinton administration’s antismoking campaign as “President feeds the culture of victimology.”

■ One journalist (Parker, 1999, p. B10) even insisted that “Americans are fed up with twentieth-century victimology.”

B O X 1.2 (Continued)

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victimology has received a bum rap by those who mockingly equate it with victimism. Read on and this confusion will be dispelled. Victimology will take shape as a challenging, meaningful, balanced, enlightening, socially constructive, and relevant field of study that focuses on a very old problem from a fresh, new angle.

WHY EMPHASIZE RESEARCH?

As a branch of social science that closely focuses on how people behave and react, victimology must be research oriented. Yet, a criticism that often is voiced is, “Why spend all that time and money trying to establish what everyone already knows? The answer is that research is always necessary because “common sense” or “conventional wisdom” is sometimes mis- taken, and what people think they already know is incorrect.

For example, consider what happened in this real-life incident:

A 43-year-old grad student enters a classroom in which about 20 students had assembled a few minutes before class. Armed with a military semiau- tomatic rifle loaded with a 30-round clip, he points the weapon at his classmates and pulls the trigger, but the rifle jams. He tries again, but again the gun does not fire. The students realize they are under attack and drop to the floor, overturn their desks, and try to hide behind them. One courageous student shoves his desk at the gunman, enabling the others to bolt out into the hallway and then out of the building. The gunman flees too but is captured within an hour back at his home. (Asmussen and Creswell, 1995)

Everyone knows what happened in the imme- diate aftermath, since—unfortunately—violence on college campuses has erupted many times in recent decades. Students in nearby classrooms heard a commotion and set up makeshift barricades while the 20 distraught students raced away in a panic from the scene of the potential slaughter and imme- diately sought out counselors provided by the administration, right? Wrong! Only a few were openly emotional and cried. Most were in a state

of denial and milled around the entrance to the building kidding each other about their near- death experience, dismissing it as though it was trivial. No one called the campus mental health center right away. Most sought out the company of friends or hung out in nearby bars, according to two researchers who interviewed some of the students who thought they were about to die that fateful day (Asmussen and Creswell, 1995).

Next consider what is “known” about robbers: They single out targets that they consider weak and vulnerable, who are easy prey and are unlikely to put up much of a struggle to escape or to try to overpower and capture them. Therefore, it seems predictable that elderly ladies would be robbed much more often than young men, right? Wrong. Data derived from a national survey of the public carried out by a government agency, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, each year reveals that robbers go after teenage boys and young men much more often than older women.

As a final example, most people are familiar with the military’s problem of sexual assaults within the ranks (mentioned above). Few would be surprised that servicemen, especially those of higher ranks, exploit their power over the women in uniform to coerce them to submit to sexual acts against their will. But it may be quite a shock to most observers to discover that a little more than half of all reports gathered by researchers of “unwanted sexual con- tacts” imposed by men were directed at other men. Men therefore made up the majority of the targets of sexual assaults, although women suffered dispropor- tionately high rates (females make up only 15 per- cent of all members of the armed forces but almost 50 percent of all victims). Clearly, the findings of the Pentagon’s survey indicate that the problem of sex- ual violence goes far beyond the confines of male– female relations among enlistees serving in the army, navy, air force, and marines (see Dao, 2013).

Research is always needed because unexpected findings often are uncovered. Victimologists rely upon the same methods used by all social scientists: case studies, surveys and polls based on question- naires and interviews, carefully designed social experiments, content analyses of various forms of

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communication (like movies and song lyrics), sec- ondary analyses of documents and files, records of focus group interactions, and up close and personal ethnographic inquiries based upon systematic field observations.

COMPARING VICTIMOLOGY TO CRIMINOLOGY

Victimology is an interdisciplinary field that benefits from the contributions of sociologists, psycholo- gists, social workers, political scientists, doctors, nurses, criminal justice officials, lawyers, spiritual leaders, and other professionals, volunteers, advo- cates, and activists. But academically and organiza- tionally, victimology is best conceived of as an area of specialization within criminology, on par with other fields of intensive study, such as delinquency, drug abuse, and penology. All these subdisciplines merit elective courses and textbooks of their own in colleges and graduate programs. In other words, criminology is the older parent discipline and vic- timology is the recent offshoot.

Criminology can be defined as encompassing the scientific study of illegal activities, offenders, their victims, criminal law and the justice system, and societal reactions to the crime problem.

The Many Parallels between Criminology and Victimology

Even though it is a rapidly evolving subdiscipline, victimology parallels its parent, criminology, in many ways. Criminologists ask why certain indivi- duals become involved in lawbreaking while others do not. Their studies concentrate on the offenders’- backgrounds and motives in order to uncover the root causes of their misbehavior. Victimologists ask why some individuals, households, and entities (such as banks) are targeted while others are not. Research projects aim to discover the sources of vulnerability to criminal attack and the reasons why some victims might act carelessly, behave recklessly, or even instigate others to attack them.

Criminologists recognize that most people occa- sionally break certain laws (especially during adoles- cence) but are otherwise law-abiding; only some who engage in delinquent acts graduate to become hardcore offenders and career criminals. Victimolo- gists realize that anyone can suffer the misfortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time but wonder why certain individuals are preyed upon over and over again.

Although the law holds offenders personally accountable for their illegal conduct, criminologists explore how social, economic, and political condi- tions “breed” or foster or generate criminal activity. Similarly, although certain victims might be accused of sharing some degree of responsibility with their offenders for the outbreak of specific incidents, vic- timologists examine personality traits, agents of socialization, and cultural imperatives that compel some people to take chances and put their lives in danger (like teenagers), while others seem to accept their fate. Just as aggressive criminal behavior can be learned, victims may have been taught to lead high- risk lifestyles or alternatively, even to play and accept their subordinate roles.

Both criminologists and victimologists place a great emphasis on following the proper ways of gathering and interpreting data as evidence. Crim- inologists and victimologists calculate statistics, compute rates, compile profiles, draw graphs, and search for patterns and trends. Criminologists col- lect and analyze information about individuals engaging in illegal behaviors, especially their typical ages and social backgrounds (such as educational attainments and income levels). Victimologists look over statistics about the sex, ages, and social backgrounds of the people who are harmed by unlawful activities.

Criminologists apply their findings to devise local, regional, and national crime-prevention strat- egies. Victimologists scrutinize the patterns and trends they detect to learn from other people’s mis- fortunes and mistakes. They then develop person- alized victimization-prevention strategies and risk reduction tactics.

Both criminologists and victimologists study how the criminal justice system actually works, in

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contrast to the way the system is supposed to oper- ate according to agency regulations, official roles, federal and state legislation, court decisions, and politicians’ promises. Criminological research reveals how suspects, defendants, and convicts are really handled, while victim-centered studies exam- ine the way injured parties are actually treated by police officers, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges. Criminologists assess the needs of offenders for counseling, psychotherapy, additional educa- tion, job training, and drug treatment. In addition, criminologists evaluate the effectiveness of various rehabilitation programs offered behind bars or avail- able to probationers or parolees that are intended to reduce recidivism rates. Similarly, victimologists want to diagnose the emotional problems that beset people after they have been harmed by offen- ders, and to test out the usefulness of programs designed to facilitate their recovery (see Lurigio, 1990; and Roberts, 1990). Criminologists try to calculate the social and economic costs that criminal activity imposes on a community or on society as a whole. Victimologists estimate the losses and expenses that individuals and businesses incur due to acts of violence, theft, or fraud.

Some Differences and Issues about Boundaries

Criminology and victimology differ in several important ways. For starters, criminology is several hundred years old, whereas victimology did not emerge until the second half of the twentieth century.

Criminologists agree among themselves that they should limit their studies to illegal activities and should exclude forms of social deviance that do not violate any criminal law. For instance, the unwanted attention and advances that constitute sexual harassment at a workplace are no longer con- sidered to be a private matter or a personal problem but are a type of discrimination that can lead to a lawsuit—but not an arrest. Similarly, certain aspects of bullying are clearly against the law (physical attacks), while other expressions (mocking, teasing, taunting) are upsetting and ought to be discouraged

but are not illegal acts. Both criminologists and vic- timologists would study bullying in those instances where the intentional acts of aggression rise to the level of criminal behavior and result in vandalism or theft, or, worse yet, erupt into violence (such as the object of scorn suffering a severe beating; or conversely, when the pushed-around individual switches roles by bringing a deadly weapon to school to fight back against his tormentors) (see DeGette, Jenson, and Colomy, 2000; Unnever and Cornell, 2003; and Lipkins, 2008).

However, victimologists, unlike criminologists, cannot reach a consensus about the appropriate outer limits of their field. Some victimologists argue that their scientific studies should not be restricted to criminal victimization. They believe that additional sources of harm, anguish, and loss are worthy of systematic analysis: vicious political repression (brutality, torture, execution) carried out by despotic regimes that violate basic human rights; manmade slaughters (such as wars and geno- cide); natural disasters (such as floods and earth- quakes); and maybe even sheer accidents (like meltdowns of nuclear power plants). There are vic- tims of cancer, famines, ethnic cleansing, and tor- ture who suffer in similar ways to people injured in crimes. The common thread would be to under- stand the nature of tribulations and travails, and the consistent goal would be to develop effective strat- egies for short-run relief as well as long-term solu- tions to alleviate emotional and physical pain stemming from all kinds of calamities.

However, the majority of victimologists believe that their studies should remain focused on criminal victimization so that there are precise, readily identi- fiable limits and clear directions for further research and theorizing. Actually, criminal victimization may not be more serious (financially), more injurious (medically), or more traumatic and longer lasting (emotionally) than other types of harm. But it is necessary to rein in the boundaries of the field in order to make it manageable for the practical purposes of holding conferences, publishing journals, writing textbooks, and teaching college courses. (For the pros and cons of these alternative visions of what the scope of victimology ought to be, see

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Schafer, 1968; Viano, 1976, 1983, and 1990a; Galaway and Hudson, 1981; Flynn, 1982; Scherer, 1982; Schneider, 1982; Friedrichs, 1983; Elias, 1986; Fattah, 1991; and Dussich, 2009b.)

The dividing line between victimology and mainstream criminology is not always clear-cut. Invariably, the two fields overlap. Historically, much of criminology can be characterized as offen- derology because of its preoccupation with the reasons why criminals behave as they do, a focus on the wrongdoers’ personal motives and the underlying root causes of their antisocial behavior, and whether punishment or treatment will make them stop. Lawbreakers always have been under a spotlight while the people they harmed remained shadowy figures on the fringes. But now victimol- ogy enriches criminology by yielding a more bal- anced and comprehensive approach that sheds light on both parties and their interactions.

Another way to differentiate the priorities of criminology versus victimology is to examine the social reaction to crime as opposed to the social reaction to victimization.

Once again, it is difficult to try to draw a sharp line between what issues criminologists should explore in contrast to what parallel or comparable topics victimologists should scrutinize. Yet such an exercise might be worthwhile because it helps clar- ify how the two fields have different focuses and also points to areas where research about victims and victimization remains sparse.

Since the offender is of primary interest to criminologists, analyzing the social reaction to law- breaking might include issues like the public’s willingness to pay for increased criminal justice expenses (hiring more police officers, supplying them with more powerful weaponry, and building more prisons in contrast to investing in job training, drug treatment, and inmate reentry programs) and the degree of voter support for tough new laws or for stiffening existing penalties (such as “three strikes” legislation or expanded use of electronic monitoring) or for police crackdowns (zero toler- ance campaigns). The focus remains on the wrong- doers and how to best handle them, whether through punishment or rehabilitation. Long-term

crime prevention strategies that criminologists propose and debate include efforts to eradicate the social roots of street crime, such as poverty, unemployment, failing schools, and dysfunctional families.

For victimology, the emphasis shifts to the public’s reaction to the plight of injured parties. Consequently, researching the social reaction to victimization translates to examining the degree of voter support for victims’ rights initiatives and the willingness of taxpayers to earmark revenue for government-run assistance programs and compen- sation funds. Also of great interest are the many self- help and direct aid projects set up by former vic- tims, such as child search organizations, shelters for battered women, crisis centers for rape victims, and similar advocacy organizations. Another dimension of the social reaction is the many steps fearful indi- viduals might undertake to reduce their own risks of becoming targets. These victimization prevention efforts on a personal level (in contrast to crime prevention efforts on a community or societal level) include taking self-defense classes and buying guns for self-protection, purchasing antitheft devices (such as burglar and car alarms), and buying insurance policies for reimbursement of crime-inflicted losses (life, health, home, and car insurance as well as for identity theft and fraud protection).

One of the most intriguing aspects of the social reaction to lawbreaking behavior is how often and in what manner eyewitnesses respond while a crime is in progress. Criminology and victimology overlap whenever researchers focus upon the interaction between offenders, their intended victims, and onlookers, an emerging area of study that could be referred to as bystanderology, to coin a term (see Box 1.3).

Interfacing with Other Disciplines

A number of academic orientations enrich victim- ology. Researchers who pursue a mental health/ forensic psychology orientation might explore how victims react to their misfortunes. They ask why some injured parties experience

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B O X 1.3 The Social Reaction to Victimization: A Look at the Interplay between Victims, Offenders, and Bystanders

Bystanderology

If a third party is present when an offender confronts his intended victim, this presence of an audience introduces a situational variable or contextual factor that can become the focus of what can be called “bystanderology.”

One or more onlookers were watching in about 70 per- cent of all fights, around 50 percent of all robberies, and almost 30 percent of all rapes and other sexual assaults, according to an analysis of government surveys of victims’ experiences during the 1990s (Planty, 2002).

Individuals who witness a crime in progress as it unfolds right before their eyes may react in essentially two ways. First of all, there is nonintervention: Bystanders may avert their gaze, steer clear of trouble, mind their own business, and not get involved in the dispute. Or they may simply watch, become confused and immobilized, and consequently not do anything to help out. In extreme cases, they may run away, as when shots are fired. Alternatively, onlookers could become engaged and intervene to some degree while a crime is in progress or in its immediate aftermath (see Shotland and Goodstein, 1984; and Takooshian, 2014).

The following example, which took place on a busy big city street, illustrates this spectrum of possibilities, as an onlooker who intervened in behalf of a victim becomes mor- tally wounded himself and then fails to receive any aid from other spectators:

A man angrily confronts a woman and threatens vio- lence. A homeless immigrant who sometimes works as a day laborer comes to her aid and is stabbed. A nearby surveillance camera records how he collapses and lies face down in the gutter for over an hour. Passersby show some curiosity but hurry along. One man lifts the wounded Good Samaritan’s body, sees a pool of blood, and then walks away. Another snaps a photo and then departs. By the time the police are summoned and help arrives, he is dead. (Sulzberger and Meenan, 2010)

Police officers are third parties who have a duty to intervene and can be counted upon to enter the fray in behalf of an innocent person under attack. Bystanders and onlookers have no such duty and may or may not take action as a robber, rapist, or assailant confronts a victim. A typology of possible responses by bystanders could include the fol- lowing categories, ranked in terms of the desirability/unde- sirability of the outcome (making the situation better or worse for the person under attack):

a) Effectively intervene to rescue the victim from harm and also apprehend the apparent offender by making a citizen’s arrest until the police arrive.

b) Minister to the victim after the attack is over by pro- viding physical and emotional first aid until first responders like police officers, emergency medical technicians, and ambulance crews arrive.

c) Scream for help and summon the authorities by calling 911; or at least take pictures that can later be used as evidence.

d) In the aftermath of an attack, come forward and serve as a witness for the prosecution.

e) Do nothing, take no action, look the other way, or melt away due to apathy or indifference; but also some non- interveners may be immobilized by fear.

f) Become a victim; the Good Samaritan who steps in can get injured or killed by the offender.

g) Accidentally injure or kill the victim while carrying out a rescue mission (this disaster can happen when a SWAT team tries to overpower a hostage-taker but the captive is killed during the raid).

h) Intervene in behalf of the wrong party by erroneously sizing up the situation, resulting in the injury or death of the genuine victim. This can happen when uniformed officers mistake an undercover officer for an “armed perpetrator” who is training a gun on a suspect, and they shoot the officer in disguise thinking they are rescuing a victim (a tragic mistake referred to by the military term “friendly fire”)

i) Intentionally join in on the side of the wrongdoer, undermining the victim’s ability to effectively resist and inflicting additional losses and injuries, which may even be fatal (these bystanders who knowingly make things worse have been called “Bad Samaritans”). Bystanders who rally to the side of lawbreakers while a crime is in progress can get swept up into a type of crowd psychology that leads to the looting of stores, mob attacks, lynchings, race riots, and gang rapes.

The social reaction of the bystander(s) may decisively shape the outcome of an attempted crime. The presence of onlookers might cause the would-be offender to back down or cut short his attempt to inflict harm. On the other hand, the existence of an audience might cause both parties to escalate their conflict in order to save face and protect their reputations on the street. This might encourage the aggres- sor to deliver additional wounds in order to demonstrate his prowess, as in clashes between gang members.

When surveyed about whether the presence of a third party helped or worsened the situation, half of all victims reported “neither helped not hurt.” But when bystanders actively interceded, victims judged the impact of their

(Continued)

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post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (occa- sionally feeling very frightened long after a danger- ous “fight or flight” situation has passed) while others who suffer through comparable calamities do not. Professionals engaged in therapeutic rela- tionships with patients who endured vicious vio- lence need to discover which crisis intervention techniques work best (see Roberts and Roberts, 2005). Researchers who take an historical perspec- tive trace developments from the past to better understand the present, while those who adopt an economic perspective try to measure individual and collective costs, losses, and expenses that result from criminal activities. The anthropological orientation compares victimization in other societies far away and long ago in order to transcend the limitations of analyses rooted in the here and now. Victimologists

who adopt a sociological perspective develop pro- files (statistical portraits) of the characteristics of people who are harmed, analyze the interactions within the victim–offender relationship, examine the way other people and social institutions (such as the public welfare and health care systems) deal with injured parties, and seek to evaluate the effec- tiveness of new policies and programs. Scholars who apply a legalistic/criminal justice orientation (that focuses on department regulations, Supreme Court decisions, and legislation) explore how vic- tims are supposed to be handled by the police, pro- secutors, defense attorneys, judges, probation officers, and parole boards, and they scrutinize the provisions of recently enacted laws designed to empower victims as the adversary system resolves their cases.

actions as “helpful” more often than as “harmful.” Passersby play a constructive role if they prevent further injuries and recover stolen property, and their intervention is counter- productive if they further enrage the attacker (Hart and Miethe, 2008).

A phenomenon known as the “bystander effect” has been studied extensively by social psychologists, often by simulating emergencies in an experimental setting. Their findings reveal that as the number of bystanders increases, the likelihood that any particular individual will intervene decreases. Also, as the number of onlookers increases, the time that elapses until someone takes action increases. Bystanders are more inclined to get involved if they are directly beseeched for assistance. When bystanders are slow or reluctant to make a move, it may be due to audience inhibition (each person is afraid of being publicly embar- rassed if the effort fails) or because of the diffusion of responsibility (each onlooker assumes someone else will take charge of the situation and take the first step) (see Scroggins, 2009).

Passersby might have a moral duty to be “their brother’s keepers.” But in most states (except in Vermont since 1967, and later Minnesota and Wisconsin), they bear no legal obli- gation to undertake any risks (unless they are police officers, firefighters, and doctors, even when they are off-duty). Civil statutes shielding Good Samaritans from out-of-pocket expenses and lawsuit liability are meant to encourage

individuals to get involved. Criminal laws prevent people from harming one another, but they do not compel indivi- duals to help one another, even if one knows that another person is in imminent danger or has sustained a serious physical injury (Silver, 2012).

Police departments and community organizations sometimes help set up civilian anticrime patrols and neigh- borhood watch committees. On college campuses, rape pre- vention campaigns include efforts to train potential bystanders (especially male athletes and sorority sisters) to step in to creatively outmaneuver aggressive classmates from crossing the line separating drunken partying from carrying out sexual assaults. Ever since the late 1980s, role playing exercises and poster campaigns have urged students, espe- cially incoming freshmen, to “Do something” with slogans like “Don’t be a passive bystander,” “Don’t just stand there,” and “If she can’t stop him, you can” (Winerip, 2014). Inter- vention by onlookers (playing the role of “capable guar- dians”) is counted upon by some victimization prevention strategies (such as alerting the authorities if an alarm goes off). Honoring those who didn’t stand idly by and placed themselves at risk as “heroes” demonstrates the public’s appreciation for coming to the assistance of victims when a crime is in progress (also see Hart and Miethe, 2008; Lateano, Ituarte, and Davies, 2008; Reynald, 2010; Gidcyz et al., 2011; Moynihan, 2011; and Banyard, Arnold, Eckstein, and Stapleton, 2011).

B O X 1.3 (Continued)

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Divisions within the Discipline

Victimology does not have the distinct schools of thought that divide criminologists into opposing camps, probably because this new subdiscipline lacks its own well-developed theories of human behavior. However, in both criminology and vic- timology, political ideologies—conservative, liberal, and radical left/critical/conflict—can play a signifi- cant role in influencing the choice of research topics and in shaping policy recommendations.

The conservative tendency within victimology focuses primarily upon street crimes. A basic tenet of conservative thought is that everyone—both vic- tims and offenders—must be held strictly account- able for their decisions and actions. This translates into an emphasis on self-reliance rather than gov- ernmental assistance. Individuals should strive to take personal responsibility for preventing, avoid- ing, resisting, and recovering from criminal acts and for defending themselves, their families, and their homes from outside attack. In accordance with the crime control model of criminal justice, the primary purpose of the legal system is to protect the innocent from those who want to harm them. As a result, lawbreakers must be punished in proportion to the suffering they inflicted on their victims (the philosophy of retribution, or just deserts). Making criminals pay also is supposed to accomplish the goals of general deterrence (to make a negative example of them, to serve as a warning to other would-be offenders that they should think twice and decide not to break the law), as well as specific deterrence (to teach them a lesson so they won’t repeat this forbidden conduct in the future). Incapacitating predators behind bars keeps them away from the targets they would like to prey upon.

The liberal tendency sees the scope of the field as stretching beyond street crime to include crimi- nal harm inflicted on persons by reckless corporate executives and corrupt officials. A basic theme within liberal thought is to endorse societal inter- vention through the instrument of government to try to ensure fair treatment and to alleviate needless suffering. This position leads to efforts to extend the

“safety net” mechanisms of the welfare state to cushion shocks and losses due to all kinds of mis- fortunes, including crime. To “make the victim whole again,” aid must be available from such pro- grams as state compensation funds, subsidized crime insurance plans, rape crisis centers, and shelters for battered women. Some liberals are enthusiastic about restorative justice experiments that, instead of punishing offenders by imprisoning them, attempt to make wrongdoers pay restitution to their victims so that reconciliation between the two estranged parties might become possible.

The radical left/critical/conflict tendency seeks to demonstrate that the problem of victimization arises from the exploitative and oppressive relations that are pervasive throughout the social system. Therefore, the scope of the field should not be lim- ited simply to the casualties of criminal activity in the streets. Inquiries must be extended to cover the harm inflicted by industrial polluters, owners and managers of hazardous workplaces, fraudulent advertisers, predatory lenders (for example, of mort- gages with deceptive provisions for repayment of the loan), brutally violent law enforcement agen- cies, and discriminatory institutions. Victims might not be particular individuals but whole groups of people, such as factory workers, minority groups, customers, or neighborhood residents. From the radical/critical/conflict perspective, victimology can be faulted for preferring to study the more obvious, less controversial kinds of harmful beha- viors, mostly acts of personal violence and crude theft by desperate individuals, instead of the more fundamental injustices that mar everyday life: the inequitable distribution of wealth and power that results in poverty, malnutrition, homelessness, fam- ily dysfunction, chronic structural unemployment, substance abuse, and misplaced aggression toward potential allies who are in similar circumstances. The legal system and the criminal justice apparatus are considered part of the problem by criminolo- gists as well as victimologists working within this tradition because these institutions that supposedly promote fairness actually primarily safeguard the interests of influential groups and privileged classes (see Birkbeck, 1983; Friedrichs, 1983; Viano, 1983;

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Elias, 1986, 1993; Fattah, 1986, 1990, 1992a, 1992b; Miers, 1989; Reiman, 1990; Walklate, 1991; and Mawby and Walklate, 1993).

WHAT VICTIMOLOGISTS DO

The current parameters of the field are evident in the kinds of questions victimologists try to answer. In general, these questions transcend the basics about “who, how, where, and when,” and tackle the questions of “why?” and “what can be done?”- Victimologists explore not only the interactions between victims and offenders, but also victims and the criminal justice system as well as victims and the larger society.

A selection of some intriguing and imaginative studies that illustrate the kinds of issues concerning offender–victim relationships addressed by research- ers over the decades appears in Box 1.4.

Victimologists, like all researchers, must adopt a critical spirit and a skeptical stance to see where the trail of evidence leads. In the search for truth, myths must be exposed, unfounded charges dismissed, and commonsense notions put to the test. The follow- ing guidelines outline the step-by-step reasoning process that can be followed when carrying out research (see Parsonage, 1979; Birkbeck, 1983; and Burt, 1983).

Step 1: Identify, Define, and Describe the Problem

The most basic task for victimologists is to deter- mine all the different ways that a violation of the law can inflict immediate and long-term harm: the extent of any physical injuries, emotional damage, and economic costs, plus any social consequences (such as loss of status). For example, as they grow up, severely abused children might suffer from post- traumatic stress disorder, dysfunctional interpersonal relationships, personality problems, and self- destructive impulses (see Briere, 1992).

Sometimes a group is difficult to study because there isn’t an adequate expression that describes its common misfortune or captures the nature of its

plight. Now that terms like date rape, stalking, cyberstalking, carjacking, battering, elder abuse, identity theft, and bias crime have entered everyday speech, government agencies and researchers are exploring in what manner and how frequently peo- ple are harmed by these offenses. On occasion, vic- timologists help break the silence about situations that long have been considered taboo topics by studying activities such as sibling abuse, incestuous sexual impositions in stepfamilies, and marital rape (see Hines and Malley-Morrison, 2005).

Victimologists analyze how the status of being a “legitimate victim” is socially defined. They explore why only some people who suffer physical, emo- tional, or economic harm are designated and treated as full-fledged, bona fide, and officially recognized victims and as such, are eligible for aid and encour- aged to exercise rights within the criminal justice process. But why are other injured parties left to fend for themselves? One key question is, “Is the social standing of each of the two parties taken into account when government officials and mem- bers of the general public evaluate whether one person should get into legal trouble for what hap- pened and the other should be granted assistance?”

Clearly, the status of being an officially recog- nized victim of a crime is socially constructed. The determination of who is included and who is excluded from this privileged category is carried out by actors within the criminal justice process (police officers and detectives, prosecutors, judges, even juries) and is heavily influenced by legislators (who formulate criminal laws) and the media that shapes public opinion about specific incidents.

Step 2: Measure the True Dimensions of the Problem

Because policy makers and the general public want to know how serious various kinds of illegal activities are, victimologists must devise ways to keep track of the frequency and consequences of prohibited acts. The accuracy of statistics kept by government bureaus and private agencies must be critically examined to ferret out any biases that might inflate or deflate these estimates to the advantage of those who, for

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B O X 1.4 A Sampling of the Wide Range of Studies about the Interaction between Offenders and Victims

Identifying the Cues that Trigger a Mugger into Action

Pedestrians, through their body language, may signal to prowling robbers that they are “easy marks.” Men and women walking down a city street were secretly videotaped for sev- eral seconds, about the time it takes a criminally inclined person to size up a potential victim. The tapes were then shown to a panel of “experts”—prisoners convicted of assaulting strangers—who sorted out those who looked as if they would be easy to corner from those who might give them a hard time. Individuals who received high muggability ratings tended to move along awkwardly, unaware that their nonverbal communication might cause them trouble (Grayson and Stein, 1981).

Explaining Public Indifference toward Victims of Fraud and Con Games

People who have lost money to swindlers often are pictured as undeserving of sympathy in the media, and they may encounter callousness, suspicion, or contempt when they turn to the police or consumer affairs bureaus for help. This second-class treatment seems to be due to negative stereo- types and ambivalent attitudes that are widely held by the public as well as criminal justice officials. A number of aphorisms place blame on the “suckers” themselves—“fraud only befalls those of questionable character,” “an honest man can’t be cheated,” and “people must have larceny in their hearts to fall for a con game.”

For example, white-collar crime investigators picture even sophisticated investors who lose their money to scam- mers in Ponzi schemes as being so blinded by their greed for suspiciously high returns that they ignore the red flags that should have alerted them to the likelihood that they were being drawn into a too-good-to-be-true business arrange- ment (Goldstein, 2011).

Con artists count on exploiting the anticipated behavior of their “marks.” Their targets may get so preoccupied with some “convincer” (such as a large sum of money awaiting them) that they are too distracted to realize what is really going on. Marks could be socially compliant to someone impersonating an authority figure (for example, they reveal their password in response to an e-mail allegedly from a bank’s security officer and subsequently are taken in by a “phishing” scheme). They may let their guard down and assume there is safety in numbers if it seems that lots of other people are willing to take a chance on some risky ven- ture. They may be willing to do something illegal (such as to buy stolen goods) and end up too compromised to go to the police. They could be so trusting and naïve that they fall for

tear-jerking emotional appeals for financial help. And under pressure to “act now or it will be too late,” they could make impulsive decisions they later regret. In well-planned con games pulled off by professionals, nothing is what it seems to be (Stajano and Wilson, 2011).

The stereotype of defrauded parties is that they disre- garded the basic rules of sensible conduct regarding financial matters. They don’t read contracts before signing and don’t demand that guarantees be put in writing before making purchases. Their apparent foolishness, carelessness, or com- plicity undermines their appeals for redress and makes others reluctant to activate the machinery of the criminal justice system and regulatory agencies on their behalf. Their claims to be treated as authentic victims worthy of support may be rejected if they are scorned as money-hungry “dupes” who were merely outsmarted (Walsh and Schram, 1980; Moore and Mills, 1990; and Shichor, Sechrest, and Doocy, 2000).

Using a broad definition of fraudulent schemes (including various rip-offs such as dishonest home, auto, and appliance repairs and inspections; useless warranties; fake subscription, insurance, credit, and investment scams; phony charities, contests, and prizes; and expensive 900-number telephone ploys), a nationwide survey found victimization to be widespread. More than half the respondents had been caught up in some scam or an attempt at deception at least once in their lives, costing an average loss of more than $200. Contrary to the prevailing negative stereotype, the elderly were not any more trusting and compliant; in fact, they were deceived less often than younger people (Titus, Heinzelmann, and Boyle, 1995).

Examining How Pickpockets View their Targets

According to a sample of 20 “class cannons” (professional pickpockets) working the streets of Miami, Florida, their preferred marks (victims) are tourists who are relaxed, off guard, loaded with money, and lacking in clout with criminal justice officials. Some pickpockets choose “paps” (elderly men) because their reaction time is slower, but others favor “bates” (middle-aged men) because they tend to carry fatter wallets. A “moll buzzer” or “hanger binger” (sneak thief who preys on women) is looked down on in the underworld fra- ternity as a bottom feeder who acts without skill or courage. Interaction with victims is kept to a minimum. Although pickpockets may “trace a mark” (follow a potential target) for some time, they need just a few seconds to “beat him of his poke” (steal his wallet). This is done quietly and deftly, without a commotion or any jostling. They rarely “make a score” (steal a lot in a single incident). The class cannon

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some self-serving reason, wish to either exaggerate or downplay the real extent of the problem.

In order to make measurements, victimologists have to operationalize their concepts by develop- ing working definitions that specify essential char- acteristics and also mark boundaries, clarifying which cases should be included and which should be excluded. For example, when trying to deter- mine how many students have experienced school violence, should youngsters who were threatened

with a beating be counted, even if they were not actually physically attacked?

Once victimologists measure the frequency of some unwanted event per year, they can begin to search for changes over time to see if a particular type of criminal activity is marring the lives of a greater number or fewer people as time passes. To grasp the importance of making accurate measure- ments, consider the problem of child abuse. Suppose that statistics gathered by child protection agencies

“passes” (hands over) “the loot” (wallet, wad of bills) to a member of his “mob” (an accomplice) and swiftly leaves the scene of the crime. Only about one time in a hundred do they get caught by the mark. And on those rare occasions when the theft is detected, they can usually persuade their victims not to call the police. They give back what they took (maybe more than they stole) and point out that pressing charges can ruin a vacation because of the need to surrender the wallet as evidence, plus waste precious time in court appear- ances. Cannons show no hatred or contempt for their marks. In general, they rationalize their crimes as impersonal acts directed at targets who can easily afford the losses or who would otherwise be fleeced by businesses or allow their money to be taken from them in other legally permissible ways (Inciardi, 1976).

Exploring the Bonds between Captives and their Captors

Hostages (of terrorists, skyjackers, kidnappers, bank robbers, rebelling prisoners, and gunmen) are used by their captors to exert leverage on a third party—perhaps a family, the police, or a government agency. These captives could react in an unanticipated way to being trapped and held against their will. Instead of showing anger and seeking revenge, these pawns in a larger drama may emerge from a siege with posi- tive feelings for, and attachments to, their keepers. Their outrage is likely to be directed at the authorities who rescued them for acting with apparent indifference to their well- being during the protracted negotiations. This surprising emotional realignment has been termed the Stockholm syndrome because it was first noted after a 1973 bank holdup in Sweden. Several psychological explanations for this “pathological transference” are plausible. The hostages could be identifying with the aggressor, and they might have

become sympathetic to acts of defiance aimed at the power structure. As survivors, they might harbor intense feelings of gratitude toward their keepers for sparing their lives. As helpless dependents, they might cling to the powerful figures who controlled their every action because of a primitive emotional response called “traumatical infantilism.” After the ordeal, terrorized hostages need to be welcomed back and reassured that they did nothing wrong during—and right after—their captivity. People in occupations that place them at high risk of being taken prisoner—ranging from conve- nience store clerks and bank tellers to airline personnel and diplomats—need to be trained about how to act, what to say, and what not to do if they are held and used as a bargaining chip during a stand-off. Law enforcement agencies need to set up and train hostage negotiation units as an alternative to solely relying on heavily armed SWAT teams whose military-style assaults endanger the lives of the captives they are trying to save. Crisis negotiators no longer consider the bonding that may occur between captives and captors to be detrimental. The development of the Stockholm syndrome actually can increase the hostages’ chances of surviving the ordeal. However, it could also mean that law enforcement cannot count on the victims’ cooperation in working for their own release and for later prosecuting their violent and dan- gerous kidnappers in court. In terms of frequency of occur- rence, it is likely that this type of coping mechanism by captives has been overemphasized and inaccurately assumed in cases that were diagnosed by commentators in the media. Identifying with the aggressor and seeing rescuers as adver- saries rarely takes place, according to an analysis of the narratives contained in the FBI’s Hostage/Barricade Database System (see Ochberg, 1978; Fattah, 1979; Symonds, 1980a; Turner, 1990; Louden, 1998; Fuselier, 1999; and De Fabrique, Romano, Vecchi, and Van Hasselt, 2007).

B O X 1.4 (Continued)

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indicate a huge increase in the number of reported instances of suspected abuse. How can this upsurge be explained? One possibility is to interpret this spike as evidence that parents are neglecting, beating, and molesting their children these days like never before. But another explanation could be that new compul- sory reporting requirements recently imposed on physicians, school nurses, and teachers are bringing many more cases to the attention of the authorities. Thus, a sharp rise in reports might not reflect a genu- ine crime wave directed at children by their caretakers but merely a surge in official reports because of improvements in detecting and keeping records of maltreatment. Victimologists can make a real contri- bution toward resolving this controversy by devising ways to estimate the actual dimensions of the child abuse problem with greater precision. Other pressing questions that can be answered by careful measure- ments and accurate statistics include the following: Are huge numbers of children being snatched up by kidnappers demanding ransoms? Or are abductions by strangers rare? Are husbands assaulted by their wives about as often as wives are battered by their husbands? Or is female aggression of minor concern when compared to male violence? Is forced sex a common outcome at the end of an evening, or is date rape less of a danger than some people believe (see Loseke, Gelles, and Cavanaugh, 2005)?

Once injured parties have been identified, and their ranks measured, researchers can carry out a needs assessment through interviews or via a sur- vey to discover what kinds of suffering they are experiencing and what sorts of assistance and sup- port they require to resolve their problems and return to the lives they were leading before the crime occurred. Such studies might reveal their unmet material and emotional needs, and weak- nesses in existing programs and policies.

Step 3: Investigate How Victims Are Handled

Researchers scrutinize how victims actually are treated by the criminal justice and social service

systems that are ostensibly designed to help them. Their studies can pinpoint the sources of tension, conflict, mistreatment, and dissatisfaction that alienate victims from the agencies that are supposed to serve them. Program evaluations determine whether stated goals are being met. For instance, many victimologists have studied how well or how poorly the police, prosecutors, judges, and family therapists are responding to the plight of abused children, sexually assaulted persons, and also battered women (see Hilton, 1993; Roberts, 2002; Hines and Malley-Morrison, 2005; Roberts and Roberts, 2005; and Barnett, Miller-Perrin, and Perrin, 2005).

Step 4: Gather Evidence to Test Hypotheses

Victimologists investigate all kinds of hypotheses: suspicions, hunches, impressions, accusations, assertions, and predictions. Like all social scientists, when presented with claims about what is true and what is false, their proper response is not to accept or reject the assertion but to declare: “Prove it! Show me! Where is the evidence?”

Testing hypotheses yields interesting findings, especially discoveries that cast doubt on common- sense notions (challenging what everyone “knows” to be true) and widely held beliefs. A major goal is try to sort out myths from realities.

For example, will the “dos and don’ts” tips offered on websites for women who are being stalked by ex-lovers actually work to reduce the risks of violent outbursts; or are these bits of advice largely ineffective; or could following these instruc- tions actually be counterproductive, escalating ten- sions and heightening dangers?

In order to illustrate each of the four steps that victimologists might follow when researching a particular type of suffering, a systematic analysis of the problem of “road rage” is presented in Box 1.5.

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B O X 1.5 An Illustration of How to Analyze a Specific Type of Victimization: Road Rage

Step 1: Identify, Define, and Describe the Problem:

The analysis begins with a brief history that recounts when the problem was recognized and the way in which the victims’ plight was originally portrayed.

For decades, concern about the risks surrounding auto- mobile travel centered on accidents caused by hazardous road conditions, speeding, and drunk driving. Although flare-ups between motorists with short fuses must have been taking place since the onset of the automobile age well over 100 years ago, they remained under the radar until the news media began to report on a spate of “freeway shootings” (in California in 1977, in Houston in 1982, in Los Angeles in 1987, and in Detroit in 1989). Newspaper headlines originally dubbed the frightening situations as “road assaults,” “free- way free-for-alls,” “highway violence,” “highway hostility,” “motorist mayhem,” and even merely “unfriendly driving.” Yet concerns about becoming a casualty of one of these confrontations on wheels did not mount until a media account coined the phrase “road rage” in 1988; the catchy alliteration was meant to capture the essence of an armed attack in which a Florida driver shot a passenger in a car that had cut him off (see Best, 1991; and Roberts and Indermaur, 2005). During the 1990s, the sudden emergence and rapid diffusion (across the country and around the globe) of sub- stantial media attention to this “new crime” demonstrated how large audiences of frazzled commuters and anxious tra- velers considered this amorphous yet omnipresent threat to be of great relevance. Colorful accounts—about 10,000 stor- ies between 1990 and 1996, and nearly 4,000 in 1997 alone— described a “spreading epidemic” of “ugly acts of freeway fury” in which cursing, seething, and stressed-out motorists were “driven to destruction,” because it was “high noon on the country’s streets and highways.” Roads were pictured as “resembling something out of the Wild West,” “highways to homicide,” “shooting galleries,” “war zones,” and even “ter- ror zones.” Journalists, reflecting the popular movies of their day, originally branded offenders as “road warriors” and “Rambos,” who rejected the prevailing outlook of “have a nice day” in favor of a “make my day” chip-on-the-shoulder approach to dealing with strangers. Drivers lost their tempers and took their frustrations out on each other in numerous ways, ranging from fistfights to intentional collisions to gunfire (see Best, 1991; Mizell, 1997; Fumento, 1998; and Roberts and Indermaur, 2005).

Today, cases like this one are widely recognized to be examples of “road rage:”

A man in a SUV with his wife and two-year-old daughter is driving down a big city highway known for its traffic jams when he suddenly finds himself surrounded by a swarm of men on motorcycles. He panics and bumps one of the motorcyclists; another dismounts and he accidently runs over him. Fearing for his safety and the well-being of his family, he races down an exit ramp with the motor- cycle riders in hot pursuit. They catch up with him on a busy street, smash his vehicle’s windows, and drag him from his SUV. A video of the beatdown goes viral, drawing a great deal of international attention, as viewers ask, “Where were the police—what took them so long to break up this attack on this besieged motorist?” (It turns out that one of the “bikers” actually was an undercover officer infiltrating the gang, but he is indicted for assault, along with 10 others.) (Long and Peltz, 2013)

Step 2: Measure the True Dimensions of the Problem

The analysis proceeds by estimating the frequency of occur- rence of this sort of incident and examining the victim– offender interaction in order to draw evidence-based portraits of the typical aggressors and their usual targets, and of the amount of harm done.

Unfortunately, chilling accounts often were laced with hyperbole and sensationalism. Consequently, heated discus- sions erupted about whether fears were out of proportion to actual threats. Investigations that attempted to estimate the actual toll that road rage imposed on motorists adopted definitions that were way too broad: media coverage, and even some of the earliest research undertakings, character- ized road rage as synonymous with extremely aggressive driving habits that embodied hostility toward other motor- ists. Part of the continuum included noncriminal acts, such as screaming curses out the window, making threatening or obscene gestures, flashing headlights on and off, honking horns repeatedly, weaving in and out of traffic, cutting others off, tailgating in a way that resembles stalking, and getting out of the vehicle to argue face-to-face. From the targeted motorist’s point of view, as well as from a police and traffic safety perspective, this inclusive definition that ran- ged from trivial to life-threatening actions seemed to make sense, in terms of recognizing all the different dimensions of an infuriating and ominous encounter. But from the stand- point of both criminology and victimology, the definition should be much more restrictive and exclude insults and

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implied threats as well as bad driving maneuvers that at most result in summonses for moving violations in traffic court. A more limited and precise definition of road rage would count only those interpersonal conflicts that are matters for the criminal justice system to resolve: outbreaks of violence in which either one of the drivers—or one of the passengers—intentionally or recklessly injures or kills another driver, passenger, cyclist, or even a pedestrian, or damages a vehicle on purpose; or uses the vehicle to make a serious attempt to do harm to another party embroiled in the fracas (see Smart and Mann, 2002). A driver who is threat- ened can be considered a victim of harassment, and if a gun is pointed, the crime becomes “menacing.” If a shot is fired, an assault with a deadly weapon has taken place. One difficult methodological decision confronting researchers is whether to include or exclude incidents in which the two warring parties were not complete strangers. For example, some car chases are really extensions of ongoing quarrels that fall under the category of “domestic violence” (Mizell, 1997). Upon investigation, other clashes could turn out to be drive- by shootings involving members of warring street gangs or competing drug-dealing crews. But putting these exceptional cases aside, road rage generally constitutes a type of physical attack perpetrated by a stranger in a vehicle who approaches a victim just by chance in an anonymous public space—a street or highway (Roberts and Indermaur, 2005).

Criminologists zero in on the perpetrators’ possible mental problems, anger and aggression, drug and alcohol use, and risk-taking propensities while victimologists focus on the characteristics of the injured parties and how they respond to the incidents. Both sets of researchers seek to discover how often punishable acts of road rage break out. Not all cases are considered newsworthy by editors and journalists, so schol- arly studies must be based on access to “official sources of data”: the arrest records of police departments and the tran- scripts of court proceedings, perhaps supplemented by the files of insurance companies. However, descriptions of the events leading up to the confrontation may be fragmentary or incomplete, or the versions of who did what to whom could be completely one-sided. Furthermore, just as with media coverage, official statistics present an underestimate. Some criminal acts that could lead to arrest and prosecution go unreported because the authorities were not notified by either party or by eyewitnesses. On the other hand, accounts from unofficial sources could yield overestimates because the working definition of road rage used by the general public and the media has expanded far beyond the original narrower

notion of violence on wheels. Other unofficial sources of data, including the findings of surveys, that ask motorists if they were ever subjected to or eyewitnesses to road rage may be cluttered with huge numbers of judgmental interpreta- tions about incidents that would not wind up in the criminal justice system. For example, using a broad definition, an annual survey estimated that the most afflicted cities in 2009 were New York, Dallas/Fort Worth, Detroit, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Atlanta; far fewer incidents reportedly took place in Portland, Cleveland, Sacramento, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh (AP, 2009).

Several websites that welcome postings by motorists infuriated by encounters with inconsiderate, rude, careless, or just plain inept drivers also use a definition that is too vague and inclusive. Overly broad definitions tend to gener- ate exaggerated estimates. The prevalence rate of ever experiencing, perpetrating, or witnessing road rage can approach 100 percent if the database includes motorists’ complaints about drivers who suddenly cut in front of them, honked incessantly, braked hard without warning, swerved dangerously, hurled insults, or even forced them on to the shoulder. These experiences might be unnerving and insult- ing, and some might be violations of traffic ordinances, but as merely subjective and undocumented accusations, they don’t rise to the level of criminal matters, so the aggrieved parties are not genuine “victims” of physical violence or deliberate property destruction.

The task for scholarly researchers is to sort through this collection of media and police reports about aggres- sive and reckless driving and focus on the incidents of intentional collisions, assaults, shootings, and even murders. For example, a comprehensive review of over 10,000 records of events that took place from 1990 through 1996 yielded an estimate of over 200 deaths and about 12,600 injuries directly attributable to road rage, or about 1,500 casualties a year resulting from collisions arising from dangerously aggressive driving (see Mizell, 1997; and Garase, 2006). On the other hand, as real as the threat may be, criminal acts of road rage seems to be a relatively infrequent event, statistically speaking, at least according to self-report surveys of drivers (Roberts and Indermaur, 2005). Pedestrians and cyclists felt the most vulnerable; believed that they were specifically targeted; suffered more physically and mentally; and were more likely to alter their behavior after the incidents, according to a survey of a small sample of self-identified victims (Cavacuiti et al., 2013).

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B O X 1.5 (Continued)

Road rage needs to be operationalized (precisely defined so that it can be measured) in a restrictive manner to include only incidents in which one driver knowingly injures or kills another motorist, passenger, or pedestrian or uses a vehicle as a weapon to attack someone or something. Then criminologists could focus their attention on the defendants who get arrested and prosecuted for their angry outbursts, by asking questions like: Do people who pick fights when driving also start altercations in everyday life? Do they drive as they live? Do these hyperaggressive drivers differ demographically and socially from average motorists? Psychologically oriented criminologists could ask whether these belligerent drivers are burdened with pent up anger, poor impulse control, short fuses, and hair triggers that reflect deep-seated personality problems (and maybe even mental disorders) that make them a danger to themselves and anyone who strays into their path. These emotional disturbances might include an obses- sion with minimizing travel time to the point of always being in a great rush; a need to try to come in first in a highly competitive environment; a tendency to perceive the driving mistakes of others as personal attacks on themselves or their vehicles; and even a sense that they need to punish others to teach others a lesson to improve their driving skills (see Ayar, 2006).

But these issues about the presumed shortcomings of offenders are not the immediate focus of victim-centered investigations, which seek to expand and balance out the inquiry into the hostile encounter by paying close attention to the injured party and to the behaviors of both individuals during their confrontation. The victim–offender interaction must be carefully reconstructed. Two strikingly different possibilities arise. The first scenario is that road rage casual- ties were innocent travelers who were cruising along and just minding their own business when they were randomly tar- geted by belligerent drivers. This image of a routine activity being interrupted “out of the blue” by senseless violence is especially chilling because automobile travel unavoidably brings strangers from very different social backgrounds into close proximity as they attempt to share the road with one another. Road rage is a serious problem that must be addressed immediately if ordinary motorists can become embroiled in a feud without warning; if some hothead’s wrath can be vented on anyone who is unlucky enough to gets in his way; and if any motorist—just like getting into a collision—can find himself under attack at anytime.

But the alternative scenario paints an entirely different picture: that the injured party was a violence-prone individ- ual himself. He was spoiling for a fight and was easily inflamed and incited into action. These mutual combatants overreacted to each other’s overtures. The initial event was misperceived as embodying a hostile intent, and this pre- sumed threat was countered with an inappropriately bellicose response, thereby escalating the incident to the point of bloodshed or a crash. The misbehavior of the victim can be as important a catalyst in this interaction as the aggressive actions of the assailant. In essence, offenders and victims “find each other” as they interact within a vast pool of fellow drivers. The question arises, in what proportion of cases are the injured parties not totally innocent victims? How often do those who get wounded or killed share some degree of responsibility with the complete strangers who attacked them? Presumably, the violations of traffic laws would not have spiraled into a criminal matter were it not for the vic- tim’s inadvertent triggering of the aggressive driver’s violent response; or worse yet, the victim’s furious overreaction to the offender’s bad driving led to the next round of escalating hostilities. Researchers who examine the victim–offender interaction can provide estimates of the percent of cases in which victims are totally innocent of any incitement to vio- lence, and the remaining percent in which those who wind up hurt are partially at fault for triggering the aggressive driver’s illegal response.

Media accounts portray road rage victims as tending to be young males in their twenties and thirties (Asbridge, Smart, and Mann, 2003). Some researchers who have studied both parties suggest that they have uncovered situations that illustrate the principle of homogamy: that both offen- ders and victims share a great deal in common, socially and demographically (according to surveys about aggressive driving that asked about lesser skirmishes in addition to violent episodes). The picture they have painted from their data is that the two persons caught up in the confrontation tend to closely resemble each other. Both usually are males; often in their twenties and thirties; generally of lower socioeconomic status; frequently with drug and drinking problems; perhaps exhibiting a “macho” personality; some- times driving around in a high-performance vehicle or sports car with tinted windows; and most disturbingly, all too often going around armed with guns (see Asbridge et al., 2003, 2006; Roberts and Indermaur, 2008; Hemenway, Vriniotis, and Miller, 2006; and Fierro, Morales, and Alvarez, 2011).

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These angry young men, who have poor impulse control and a propensity to get into fights while trying to share the road, seem to be one and the same as those who spend a lot of time away from home and get into brawls on street corners and in bars. Additional studies that derive profiles of both parties from police files and court proceedings could settle this question about the possibility of homogamy. The research hypotheses would be that both the offenders and their victims would tend to be low-income, young, urban males, rather than females, older persons, suburbanites or rural residents, and more affluent people (Asbridge et al., 2003). Furthermore, those whose routine activities involve a great deal of driving may have more opportunities to become embroiled in confrontations (Asbridge and Butters, 2013).

Step 3: Investigate How Victims Are Faring

Zero in on the criminal justice system’s response. Motor vehicle collisions are a major cause of injury,

disability, and death, especially of young people. On a soci- etal level, vehicle crashes are a major source of shattered lives, emotional damage (including phobias, and in extreme cases, post-traumatic stress disorder), truncated opportu- nities, missed work, and other losses and expenses. Since some unknown proportion of highway carnage is attributable to road rage, this societal problem may impose serious unrecognized consequences for public safety and social well- being. How are the police, courts, and insurance companies addressing these issues of?

Criminologists and criminal justice officials debate whether offenders might need to be punished (through stiff fines and time behind bars) to teach them a lesson not to drive recklessly again (specific deterrence), and to hold them up as negative role models to serve as a warning to other would-be road warriors (general deterrence). Incapacitation (through license suspensions and incarceration) will serve to protect other motorists by removing them from the driver’s seat. Treatment (such as anger management, time manage- ment, and stress management) might be called for if that is the source of their dangerously aggressive behavior behind the wheel. But what could and should be done for the objects of their wrath? If the homogamy thesis is correct, then vic- tims might be negatively stereotyped as potential perpetra- tors themselves. The authorities might automatically handle the “ostensible targets” of road rage differently than other innocent victims of physical violence because these

individuals might bear some responsibility for the breaking of laws this time—and the next time, they could be the offenders.

Victim-centered questions that researchers need to address include these: What happens in police stations, courtrooms, and in insurance offices when the authorities believe that both parties are partially to blame? Are charges against the defendant reduced or dismissed if it appears that the injured party contributed in some way to the escalation of the confrontation? Do insurance companies reduce the amounts of reimbursement for damages or medical treatment, or deny the applications entirely, in cases of mutual combat? In contrast, in cases where the injured parties are blameless, are the sentences harsher on those convicted of highway mayhem than of comparable street brawls? Do innocent tar- gets of road rage get the same assistance and exercise the same rights as innocent victims of violent street crimes? How these victims’ cases actually are handled ought to be a prime concern of victimologists.

Step 4: Gather Evidence to Test Hypotheses

See if this criminal activity is linked to other social problems and whether effective responses have been devised and implemented.

Now that the term road rage is firmly entrenched in the vocabulary of law, criminal justice, and journalism, discus- sions of the problem generate many interesting hypotheses. For example, a number of possible societal causes have been suggested. Can increases or decreases in road rage be corre- lated with other indicators of changes in the pace of life and the level of tension, frustration, alienation, and cutthroat competition in an area at a given time and place? Does the problem have deeper societal roots than just the chance encounter of two foul-tempered/short-fused individuals? To what extent is road rage the outgrowth of underlying social problems, such as alcohol consumption and drug abuse; overall levels of aggression, rage, and untreated mental ill- ness; as well as increases in commuting time, road traffic, construction delays, and rush-hour congestion (see Smart and Mann, 2002; and Asbridge et al., 2003).

Another interesting hypothesis that needs investigation is: Does the yearly incidence of highway violence closely track the level of violence on the streets—in other words, if public safety improves and the streets become more peaceful, does the occurrence of road rage also decline?

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WHY STUDY VICTIMOLOGY?

One last parallel between criminology and victimol- ogy merits highlighting. Criminology and victimol- ogy are not well-paying fields ripe with lucrative opportunities for employment and advancement. Studying the modus operandi of criminals and the mistakes made by the individuals they injured cer- tainly doesn’t make a person invincible to physical attacks, thefts, or swindles, although this heightened awareness might reduce the risks a student of human behavior and criminal conduct faces. Yet for several good reasons a growing number of people are invest- ing time, energy, and money to study victimology in training academies and college courses.

First of all, those who study the plight of victims benefit intellectually, as do all social scientists, by gaining insights into everyday life, solving puzzling and troubling issues, better appreciating life’s subtle- ties, seeing phenomena more clearly, and under- standing complex situations more profoundly. Second, intellectually curious individuals can profit from pursuits that expand their horizons, trans- cend the limits of their own experiences in the familiar routines of everyday life, free them from irrational fears and unfounded concerns, and enable them to overcome gut reactions of fatalism, cynicism, emotionalism, and deep-seated prejudices. Third, the findings generated from theorizing and applied research have practical applications that

The next set of hypotheses to be tested is whether the measures to curb road rage are working effectively. Legisla- tures in a number of states passed tough new laws against recklessly aggressive driving, hoping to deter or weed out the problem drivers who are at high risk of causing road rage incidents. Police departments and state highway patrol agencies devised new ways of monitoring and videotaping traffic flow and accidents, and launched crackdowns to vig- orously enforce traffic laws. Criminologists need to evaluate whether these crime control strategies are bringing roadway violence under control.

At the same time, the National Safety Council, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, insurance companies, and government agencies such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration developed awareness and education campaigns, warning the public about how quickly minor traffic confrontations could escalate into dangerous show- downs. Is there much that fearful motorists can do to mini- mize their chances of becoming the target of another driver’s wrath, or at least to halt the up-and-back interplay before it spirals out of control? As soon as the problem was recog- nized, articles in the popular press and road safety educa- tional materials alerted motorists about “How to avoid getting shot at” and “How to handle on-the-road hostility” plus other practical suggestions for those on the receiving end of aggressive driving (see Best, 1991; and Mizell, 1997). In 2007, the governor of Michigan, and in 2009, the governor of Alabama, responding to an educational campaign against “emotional driving” sponsored by a self-help group founded by a parent of a woman killed in an incident, proclaimed the

middle of July as “Road Rage Awareness Week” (Targeted News Services, 2009). Are the pragmatic tips disseminated in driver education campaigns really effective as a way of pre- venting victimization? If road rage incidents decline after practical advice is widely disseminated, then these victim- oriented countermeasures might deserve some credit for helping concerned motorists stay out of trouble. Comparisons of changes in the levels of reported road rage crimes in sim- ilar jurisdictions that did and did not implement these strat- egies should shed light on this matter.

Finally, what have been the long-term trends over the decades? Is road rage (as distinct from changes in media coverage) genuinely increasing or decreasing as the years roll by? In 1997, the House Subcommittee on Surface Transpor- tation held hearings about a reported epidemic of “auto anarchy” that was “transforming the nation’s roadways into crime scenes.” In the midst of all this publicity, however, skeptics pointed out that statistics showed that the numbers of accidents, highway deaths, and crash-related injuries actually were trending downward, especially when the increases in the number of drivers, registered vehicles, and the total miles traveled were taken into account. Perhaps the entire road rage problem had been blown way out of propor- tion right at the outset by journalists trying to attract large audiences, politicians seeking campaign donations and votes, therapists looking to profit from heightened fears of a newly recognized emotional “disorder,” and lobbyists representing publicity-hungry agencies and organizations (see Drivers.com staff, 1997; Fumento, 1998; Rathbone and Huckabee, 1999; Hennessy and Wiesenthal, 2002; and “Rising Rage,” 2005).

B O X 1.5 (Continued)

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simultaneously ease the distress of others and foster a sense of purpose, self-worth, accomplishment, and satisfaction that comes from combating social injustices.

Those who study how individuals shape and in return are influenced by the realities around them are developing their “sociological imagination” (Mills, 1959)—a recognition of how their particular personal troubles usually are outgrowths of and can be traced back to larger social problems (like pov- erty, unemployment, dysfunctional families, and failing schools). Specifically, by exercising their “criminological imagination” (see Young, 2011), those who focus on lawbreaking can raise their consciousness about the connections between indi- vidual difficulties, historic injustices, prevailing social institutions and ideologies, contemporary cul- ture, and the shortcomings of academic research and theorizing in order to recognize the sharp con- trast between what is and what could be.

Besides paying these dividends, it’s possible to profit in other ways by studying various aspects of victimization.

Scrutinizing victim–offender interactions can shed light on how miscommunication, misunder- standings, desires, obsessions, demands, stereotypes, reckless behavior, and provocative acts can trigger harsh reactions that can lead to needless conflict and avoidable tragedies.

Analyzing the way that certain victims are crit- icized and blamed for their own downfall raises vital questions about the degree to which individuals are able to determine their own fate as opposed to the extent to which larger social forces and pressures shape a person’s behavior and social circumstances.

Exploring how some victims are assisted by social programs while others are left to fend for themselves raises profound issues about the proper role of government and its collectively funded and organized safety net meant to cushion the fall of individuals reeling from the impact of serious losses and major expenses.

Examining how some individuals and groups stress self-reliance and taking responsibility for one’s well-being, especially in terms of arming in self-defense against troublemakers, while others

emphasize relying on police protection and collec- tive undertakings meant to eradicate the social roots of crime, helps to clarify the differing assumptions and values that underlie political conflicts between those believing in right wing as opposed to left wing ideologies.

Delving into the dark side of family life—child abuse, spouse abuse, and elder abuse—sheds light on the all-too-common dysfunctional relationships that undermine the notion of being “safe at home” as a sanctuary from the cruelties of the outside world, and suggests ways to prevent or correct these difficult situations.

Investigating how the police and courts handle the casualties of interpersonal violence uncovers the criminal justice system’s priorities, and the extent to which agencies that are supposed to deliver “blind justice” and treat persons equally actually take into account the victim’s social class, race, sex, and age. It also reveals how injured parties define the elusive ideal of “justice” in terms of varying beliefs about vengeance, penitence, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

Examining the way victims were treated in the past and how they are responded to in other socie- ties reveals what has been, what might be, what should be avoided, and what ought to be emulated and adopted.

RECOGNIZING EXEMPLARY BEHAVIOR UNDER VERY DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES

Criminologists generally study people who are labeled as “predators” and “convicts” because of the most antisocial and harmful acts they are known to have committed. Those who are sympa- thetic to offenders as troubled souls argue that people should not be judged solely by the worst things they have done. Victimologists generally study individuals at the most vulnerable and miserable points in their lives. But examining the range in reactions of persons under attack sometimes provides an oppor- tunity to see people at their very best, not just at

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their low points. Consider how these individuals who were targeted by offenders responded in ways that are worthy of respect, even admiration:

A mother visiting a friend’s house logs in to her sophisticated home-surveillance system to see if a snowstorm has started yet, and using her infrared camera trained on her backyard is startled to spot an intruder climbing into her house. As he begins to ransack her home, she watches in real time video, and then hurriedly calls 911. When the burglar spies the flashlight beams of the responding officers, he panics and bolts outside. She directs the police to his hiding spot, and after a brief chase, he is captured. (Yan, 2014)

■ ■ ■

A 15-year-old girl opens the door to what appears to be a deliveryman in uniform. She recognizes him as her former uncle who is furiously looking for his ex- wife, and tries to slam the door shut, but he kicks it in. He pulls out a gun and ties her up, along with her four sisters and brothers. When her parents return home, the man ties them up too and orders all seven members of the family to lie face-down on the floor and to tell him where he can find his ex-wife. When his former in-laws and their children insist they don’t know where she is, he methodically shoots each one in the head. The girl is wounded but plays dead until he runs out. Then she quickly calls 911, tells the police that her parents and siblings have been murdered, and warns them that the killer is on his way to his ex-wife’s parents’ home. He is intercepted and apprehended before he can shoot anyone else. (Fredericks, 2014)

■ ■ ■

A 27-year-old woman who stands four feet, five inches and weighs 90 pounds is behind the counter of her family’s suburban convenience store when a six- foot-tall man wearing a mask pulls a gun and brandishes it in her face. The angry gunman screams, “Hurry up! Give me the money!,” but she stalls and makes believe she can’t open the cash register. When the robber turns to see if anyone is looking, she grabs a three-foot ax hidden behind the counter and starts

swinging it wildly, yelling, “Get out of here!” He flees empty-handed. She confides to detectives and a reporter that “I was scared, I was shaking. I didn’t want to hit him, I just wanted him to get out.” (Crowley, 2007)

■ ■ ■

A 31-year-old social worker is about to go to dinner after a long day on a cold night when he is suddenly confronted by a teenager wielding a knife. He hands over his wallet to the young robber and then offers him his coat too, surmising, “If you are willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money.” Then he takes the emotionally confused adolescent to a restaurant. When it is time to pay for the meal, the teenager gives back his wallet, and even hands over his knife. The social worker sums up their encounter to an interviewer: “If you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. That’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.” (NPR, 2008)

■ ■ ■

A “gentleman” holds a lobby door open for a 101- year-old woman who is on her way to church. But then he hits her so hard that blood spurts out her mouth and nose. A surveillance camera in the hall- way shows the robber striking her over and over until she finally relinquishes her grip on her handbag con- taining $23. Her face bleeds for two weeks and her right arm never heals properly. But nearly a year later, she hobbles into a courtroom to identify the 45- year-old defendant as the man who mugged her. Her testimony at this special evidentiary hearing is pre- served on videotape just in case she is unable to appear as a witness for the prosecution at the trial. (Farmer, 2008)

■ ■ ■

A 35-year-old woman is beaten, robbed, and repeatedly raped for two hours in a dingy garage. In court, the courageous single mother testifies that while the gunman kept sexually assaulting her, “I had to keep myself from going crazy. I just hummed to myself.” Realizing that the humming also calmed the rapist, she begins to give him a massage and to talk

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soothingly to him. As they converse, the 45-year-old assailant apologizes, and then discloses his name and even his date of birth, which later enables detectives to track him down. (Shifrel, 2007a)

■ ■ ■

A 45-year-old teacher is kidnapped in a shopping mall parking lot by a gun-toting teenage carjacker. She secretly turns on a micro-cassette recorder to gather evidence just in case she can’t convince the youth to let her go. During her final 46 minutes, she persuades the carjacker to discuss his childhood and his experiences in the military, descriptions which later provide detectives with valuable clues. She also reads passages to him from a psychology textbook; urges him to live a meaningful life and to find God; promises to help him land a job; and sobs as she describes how she treasures being a mother to her young son. But it is all to no avail. He doesn’t shoot her, but smothers her with her own coat, which con- tains the tape recorder in a pocket that leads to his capture. (Jones, 2007)

Victimology is not the cold or dismal discipline it might appear to be at first glance. Victimologists are not morbidly curious about or preoccupied with misfortune, loss, tragedy, pain, grief, death, and mourning. Of course, because of its inherently negative subject matter, the discipline is problem- oriented by nature. However, victimologists also take part in furthering positive developments and constructive activities when they seek to discover effective ways of coping with hardships, transcend- ing adversity, reimbursing financial losses, speeding up the healing process, promoting reconciliation between parties enmeshed in conflicts, and restor- ing harmony to a strife-torn community.

What insights that could advance an under- standing of resilience in the struggle to fully recover from a shattering, life-threatening experience might be gleaned from these cases?

A mentally deranged 60-year-old woman shoots a member of a sheriff’s department SWAT team in the neck. Formerly known as “the most in shape” dep- uty by his fellow officers, he wakes up as a quadri- plegic, confined to a wheel chair. But with great

determination he remains focused on his goal of returning to work at a desk job in the narcotics squad, observing “Your future is kind of bleak when you’ve got tubes coming out of you and everyone is saying you’ll never walk again.… But if you stay mad about it all the time, you’re not doing anything good for yourself.” Supported by his family and colleagues, he optimistically reports signs of progress. “There have been a lot of little instances, like being able to pick up a … potato chip and eat it with my hands.” (Young, 2008)

■ ■ ■

As part of a gang initiation ritual, a thirteen-year-old boy is given a gun and told to use it. He confronts a young mother, yells, “Give it up!” and shoots her in a panic when she screams. The bullet rips through her jaw and teeth, requiring her to undergo ten years of agonizing reconstruction surgery. When he is caught, he is prosecuted as an adult and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. And yet, when he telephones her from prison after several years, she accepts the collect charges, even though she still is in terrible pain and can’t eat. He apologizes for his “mistake” and for decades afterwards, they write letters to each other. She becomes friends with her assailant’s mother and brother, and despite con- cerns by her husband and friends, urges the judge (unsuccessfully) to release him from prison (Kristof, 2014).

■ ■ ■

A member of congress is shaking hands with consti- tuents at a supermarket, when a deranged college student emerges from the crowd and opens fire. Six people are killed, and thirteen are wounded, includ- ing the congresswoman, who is shot in the forehead. Doctors estimate she has a one in ten chance to live, but she pulls through. At her lowest ebb, she is not even able to smile, and experts doubt that she will ever speak or walk again. But with the help of her astronaut husband, her family, and dedicated mem- bers of the hospital staff, she summons up astonishing tenacity and one breath and one hard fought word at a time, recovers from her catastrophic head wound better than expected. When asked in a television

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interview if she was ever angry about what happened to her, she replies haltingly, “No. No. No. Life. Life.” A few years later, she tells a crowd “I am working hard, lots of therapy: speech therapy, phys- ical therapy, and yoga too.” She insists, “My spirit is strong as ever”… and “I am still fighting to make the world a better place and you can too.” (Curry, 2011; Freking, 2011; and Walshe, 2014)

Evidently, studying how injured parties respond to their plight can yield some unanticipated benefits. Victimologists can gain a more complete understanding and appreciation of the full range of possible reactions to attacks. Some individuals cope with their misfortunes in ways that are clever, bold, even courageous, and demonstrate a determination to behave with dignity and to pursue an unwaver- ing commitment to justice. These persons can serve as positive role models for other wounded people who are seeking to recover from setbacks and over- come hardships.

“SURVIVOROLOGY:” TOWARD A MORE INSPIRING AND UPBEAT TRAJECTORY WITHIN VICTIMOLOGY

Some people who have been seriously harmed by criminals prefer to be called survivors rather than victims because of the term’s positive connotations— that they are rebounding are exercising “agency” to take charge of their lives and demonstrating their resiliency to adversity. They see the term “victim” as carrying a lot of unwanted baggage, such as being “bested,” “vanquished,” and a “loser.” Already, the expressions “survivors of incest, rape, intimate partner violence, and child abuse” are widely used (but not of robberies or shootings—at least not yet).

Similarly, some people initially attracted to the discipline of victimology may begin to fear that it is mired in negativity and preoccupied with pain, loss, sorrow, hostility, and recriminations. Learning bitter lessons from mistakes and feeling empathy toward those who are suffering may not be sufficient incen- tives to study victimology. What advocates, members of the helping professions, and injured parties

themselves need to find out more about is how cer- tain seriously wounded persons are able to go beyond “just coping.” As it is put glibly in everyday language, some seem able to “get over it,” “get past it,” “put it behind them,” and “get on with their lives.” How do they do it? What is the secret of their success? What personality traits, coping skills, inner resources, and belief systems enable individuals who have endured shattering experiences to emerge from a period of bereavement, depression, and anger, reconsider their priorities, and return to their previous lives or perhaps reorient themselves to new lifestyles (see Ai and Park, 2005; and Underwood, 2009).

This potentially upbeat tendency within vic- timology could be termed survivorology. Just as gravely ill persons, refugees from war-torn coun- tries, captives who were cruelly tortured, or severely wounded soldiers can demonstrate great resolve to make the most out of their remaining time on earth and make impressive strides to piece back together their disrupted lives, so too might individuals who sustained vicious attacks want to make the transition from victim to survivor. Researchers—and the general public—can find the outlooks and actions of certain exemplary indi- viduals who have suffered through shocking ordeals to be admirable, uplifting, and even inspiring. Within victimology, survivorology could focus on these success stories, in which individuals whose lives looked so bleak in the immediate aftermath of a terrible crime made great progress, surmounted obstacles, overcame severe limitations, and trans- formed a crisis into an opportunity.

The overarching theme of survivorology could be to “discover the common threads that underlie the secrets of their success” and determine how they did it: Was their recovery and new trajectory built upon faith and spirituality, inner strengths and outstanding character traits, the crucial support provided byothers (family members, close friends, volunteers and men- tors, or perhaps fellow sufferers in self-help groups), government-funded social programs, immersion in activism, or some other source of courage and perseverance? And what special opportunities would other individuals in similar dire straits need to make a successful reentry back into society? To spur the

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development of survivorology as an area of concentra- tion within victimology that accentuates the positive, two key concepts need to be operationalized: resiliency (roughly speaking, the ability to rebound after a serious setback) and recovery (basically, regaining control over one’s life, recuperating, restoring, returning to the con- dition the person was in before the crime took place). Once these two concepts of resiliency and recovery are

operationalized as variables whose magnitude can be estimated numerically and not designated simply as a dichotomous all or nothing situation, then different degrees of resilience and rates of recovery need to be investigated for various groups of victims.

The more survivorology is developed, the less victimology will be preoccupied solely with suffer- ing, loss, and negativity (see Box 1.6).

SUMMARY

Victimization is an asymmetrical relationship that is abusive, parasitical, destructive, unfair, and illegal. Offenders harm their victims physically, financially, and emotionally. Until recently, the plight of crime victims was largely overlooked, even by most crim- inologists. When some researchers began to study victims, their initial interest betrayed an antivictim bias: They sought evidence that the victims’ behav- ior before and during the incidents contributed to their own downfall. Since the 1960s, the majority of the social scientists attracted to this new discipline have labored to find ways to ease the suffering of victims and to prevent future incidents. But a com- mitment to strive for objectivity rather than to be

reflexively pro-victim is the best stance to adopt when carrying out research or evaluating the effec- tiveness of policies.

Victimology is best viewed as an area of spe- cialization within criminology. Both criminologists and victimologists seek to be impartial in their roles as social scientists when investigating lawbreaking, its social consequences, and the official responses by the justice system. But much of criminology in the past can be characterized as “offenderology,” so the new focus on those who are on the receiving end of interpersonal violence and theft provides some balance and rounds out any analysis of problems arising from lawbreaking behavior.

B O X 1.6 Questions to Spur the Development of Survivorology

■ How can the concept of “survivor” be operationalized so that it is not too restrictive and yet not too inclusive?

■ What is resilience, and how can it be measured as a matter of degree?

■ What is recovery, and how can it be measured as a matter of degree?

■ Which groups of victims (such as those who have endured repeated beatings, childhood sexual abuse, rapes, shootings, or the loss of a loved one who died violently) have the most success—and the most difficulty—recovering from their ordeals?

■ Which groups of victims show the most resilience in terms of characteristics such as age, sex, race and ethnicity, education, income, and occupation?

■ What forms of social support (such as strong family ties, close bonds with friends, financial reimbursement, gov- ernment programs, individual and group counseling, and camaraderie from a self-help group) improve the prospects for as well as the rate of recovery?

■ What aspects of an individual’s character and which personality traits foster resiliency and recovery?

■ What can crime victims learn about resiliency and recovery from the travails of individuals who endured devastating losses due to political oppression, natural disasters, life-threatening illnesses, and other near- death experiences—and vice-versa.

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Victimologists carry out studies that seek to identify, define, and describe all the ways that illegal activities harm targeted individuals; to measure the seriousness of the problem; to discover how victims’

cases are actually handled by the legal system; and to test research hypotheses (for example, about bystanders or survivors) to see if they are supported by the available evidence.

KEY TERMS DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY

bystanderology, 20

criminology, 18

direct or primary victims, 2

ideal type, 5

ideology, 14

indirect or secondary victims, 2

just deserts, 23

muggability ratings, 25

needs assessment, 27

objectivity, 3

offenderology, 20

operationalize, 26

operationalized, 30

post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 22

prevalence rate, 29

principle of homogamy, 30

socially constructed, 24

Stockholm syndrome, 26

subjective approach, 3

survivorology, 36

survivors, 36

victim, 2

victimism, 14

victimization, 2

victimology, 2

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND DEBATE

1. Why should victimologists strive for objectivity rather than automatically adopt a pro-victim bias?

2. Give several examples of the kinds of research questions that victimologists find interesting and the kinds of studies they carry out.

3. In what ways are victimology and criminology similar, and in what ways do they differ?

4. Should bystanders be required to notify the police about serious crimes that they directly witness?

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS

1. How should the police and the public react when hardcore criminals, such as mobsters, drug dealers, and street gang members fight among themselves and become casualties of violence?

2. Generate a list of questions about stabbings that would be of great interest to a victimologist working within (a) an anthropological frame- work, (b) a historical approach, and (c) an economic perspective.

SUGGESTED RESEARCH PROJECTS

1. Perform a keyword search of a comprehensive database of magazines and newspaper articles and blog postings to discover whether the term victimology is still being misused and confused with the ideology of victimism.

2. Use a comprehensive database of magazines and newspaper articles to determine whether any cases currently in the news illustrate the difficulty of identifying which party clearly is the criminal and which is the victim.

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2 The Rediscovery of Crime Victims

CHAPTER OUTLINE The Discovery, Decline, and Rediscovery of Crime

Victims

Social Movements: Taking Up the Victims’ Cause

Elected Officials: Enacting Laws Named after Victims The News Media: Portraying the Victims’ Plight Commercial Interests: Selling Security Products and

Services to Victims Victimology Contributes to the Rediscovery Process

Rediscovering Additional Groups of Victims

The Rediscovery Process in Action, Step by Step

Stage 1: Calling Attention to an Overlooked Problem Stage 2: Winning Victories, Implementing Reforms Stage 3: Emergence of an Opposition and Development

of Resistance to Further Changes Stage 4: Research and Temporary Resolution of

Disputes

Summary

Key Terms Defined in the Glossary

Questions for Discussion and Debate

Critical Thinking Questions

Suggested Research Projects

LEARNING OBJECTIVES To trace how changes in the criminal justice system

over the centuries have impacted the role of victims in the legal process.

To find out how and why the plight of victims has been rediscovered in recent decades by various social movements and groups.

To become familiar with the stages of the rediscovery process.

To apply the concept of rediscovery to specific groups of victims mentioned in the news.

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THE DISCOVERY, DECLINE, AND REDISCOVERY OF CRIME VICTIMS

Each law that prohibits a certain act as being harm- ful defines the wrongdoer as a criminal subject to punishment and at the same time specifies that the injured party is a victim deserving some sort of redress. The laws forbidding what are now called street crimes—murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, and theft—can be traced back several thousand years. Hence, victims of interpersonal vio- lence and theft were “discovered” ages ago, in the sense that they were formally identified and offi- cially recognized.

Scholars of the history of the legal system report that in past centuries victims played a leading role in the resolution of criminal matters. To dis- courage retaliation by victims and their families— acts that could lead to endless feuding if offenders and their kin counterattacked—societies in simpler times established direct repayment schemes. Legal codes around the world enabled injured parties to receive money or valuables from wrongdoers to compensate for the pain, suffering, and losses they endured.

This process of victim-oriented justice pre- vailed mostly in small villages engaged in farming, where social relations were based on personal obli- gations, clear-cut family ties, strong religious beliefs, and sacred traditions. But the injured party’s role diminished as industrialization and urbanization brought about business relations that were volun- tary, secular, impersonal, rationalized, and contrac- tual. Over the centuries, victims lost control over the process of determining the fate of the offenders who hurt them. Instead, the local governmental structure dominated judicial proceedings and extracted fines from convicts, physically punished them, or even executed them. The seriousness of the wounds and losses inflicted upon victims were of importance only for determining the charges and penalties wrongdoers faced upon conviction. Restoring injured parties to the condition they were in before the crimes occurred was no longer the main concern. In fact, the recovery of damages

became a separate matter that was handled in another arena (civil court) according to a different set of rules (tort law) after criminal proceedings were concluded (Schafer, 1968).

Historically, in the United States and in other parts of the world, the situations of victims followed the same evolutionary path from being at the center of the legal process to being relegated to the side- lines. When the 13 American colonies were settled initially by immigrants from Great Britain in the 1600s, the earliest penal codes were based on reli- gious values as well as English common law. During the colonial era, police forces and public prosecutors had not yet been established. Victims were the key decision makers within the rudimen- tary criminal justice system and were its direct ben- eficiaries. They conducted their own investigations, paid for warrants to have sheriffs make arrests, and hired private attorneys to indict and prosecute their alleged attackers. Convicts were forced to repay those they harmed up to three times the value of the goods they had damaged or stolen (Schafer, 1968).

But after the American Revolution and the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, crimes were reconceptualized as hostile acts directed against the authority of the government, which was defined as the representative of the peo- ple. Addressing the suffering imposed upon indivi- duals was deemed to be less important than dealing with the symbolic threat to the social order posed by lawbreakers. Public prosecutors, acting on behalf of the state and in the name of the entire society, took over the powers and responsibilities formerly exercised by victims. Federal, state, and county (district) attorneys were granted the discre- tion to decide whether to press charges against defendants and what sanctions to ask judges to impose upon convicts.

The goals of deterring crime through punish- ment, protecting society by incapacitating danger- ous people in prisons or through executions, and rehabilitating transgressors through treatment came to overshadow victims’ demands to be restored to financial, emotional, and physical health.

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Over the last two centuries, the government increasingly has assumed the obligation of providing jail detainees and prison inmates with food, cloth- ing, housing, supervision, medical care, recreational opportunities, schooling, job training, psychological counseling, and legal representation—while leaving victims to fend for themselves. As they lost control over “their” cases, their role dwindled to just two contributions: filing a complaint with the police that initiated an investigation and, if necessary, tes- tifying for the prosecution as another piece of evi- dence in the state’s presentation of damning facts against the accused.

When plea negotiation (a settlement worked out by the prosecutor and the defense attorney) replaced a trial as the most common means of resolving criminal cases, victims lost their last opportunity to actively participate in the process by presenting their firsthand experiences on the witness stand to a jury. Victims rarely were included and consulted when the police and prosecution team decided upon their strategies and goals. To add insult to injury, often they were not even informed of the outcomes of “their” cases. Thor- oughly marginalized, victims frequently sensed that they had been taken advantage of twice: first by the offender and then by a system that ostensibly was set up to help them but in reality seemed more intent on satisfying the needs of its core agen- cies and key officials (see Schafer, 1968; McDonald, 1977; and Davis, Kunreuther, and Connick, 1984).

After centuries of neglect, those on the receiv- ing end of violence and theft were given renewed attention and, in effect, were rediscovered during the late 1950s and early 1960s. A small number of self-help advocates, social scientists, crusading journalists, enlightened criminal justice officials, and responsive lawmakers helped channel the public’s attention to a festering problem: the total disregard of the needs and wants of victims. Through publications, meetings, rallies, and petition drives, these activists promoted their mes- sage: that victims were forgotten figures in the criminal justice process whose best interests were systematically overlooked but merited attention. Discussion and debate emerged during the late

1960s and has intensified throughout the following decades over why this injustice existed and what could be done about it. Various groups with their own distinct agendas formed coalitions and mobilized to campaign for reforms. As a result, new laws favorable to victims are being passed, and criminal justice policies are being overhauled.

A number of distinct groups and constituen- cies are responsible for this ongoing process of rediscovery. They include a wide variety of social movements; elected officials; commercial interests; the news media; and scholars, researchers, and advocates.

Social Movements: Taking Up the Victims’ Cause

Aside from suffering harm at the hands of criminals, victims as a group may have very little else in com- mon. They differ in terms of age, sex, race/ethnic- ity, religion, social class, political orientation, and many other important characteristics. Therefore, it has been difficult to organize them into self-help groups and to harness their energies into a political force for change. Despite these obstacles, a crime victims’ movement emerged during the 1970s. It has developed into a broad alliance of activists, support groups, and advocacy organizations that lobbies for increased rights and expanded services, demonstrates at trials, maintains a variety of web- sites, educates the public, trains criminal justice professionals and caregivers, sets up research insti- tutes and information clearinghouses, designs and evaluates experimental policies, and holds confer- ences to share experiences and develop innovative programs.

The guiding principle holding this diverse coa- lition together is the belief that victims who other- wise would feel powerless and enraged can attain a sense of empowerment and regain control over their lives through practical assistance, mutual sup- port, and involvement in the criminal justice pro- cess (see Friedman, 1985; Smith, 1985; Smith, Sloan, and Ward, 1990; and Weed, 1995).

The victims’ movement has greatly benefited from the work of advocates, who, by definition,

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speak in behalf of someone else, especially in legal matters. Originally, advocates were referred to as “ombudsmen.” Rape crisis centers and shelters for battered women were the first to empower their clients in the early 1970s by furnishing them with the services of dedicated and knowledgeable people to consult with who understood how the criminal justice process worked and how to make the system more responsive to their clients’ needs. These pio- neers in advocacy usually were former victims who knew firsthand what the injured parties were going through. A Florida police department and a Chicago legal services organization were the first components of the justice system to routinely pro- vide advocates in the mid-1970s. Shortly afterward, prosecutors’ victim–witness assistance programs (VWAPs) and family courts (responsible for assign- ing guardians ad litem to represent the best interests of abused children) followed suit. In addition to survivors and volunteers, professionals in the help- ing fields (such as social workers, nurses, psycholo- gists, psychiatrists, counselors, and lawyers) began to offer their specialized skills. Agencies provided short-term training in crisis intervention techniques and practical assistance with financial claims, court proceedings, and referrals to medical, mental health, and legal services. Courses and career preparation became available on college campuses. Two forms of advocacy developed: Case advocacy involves a one-on-one relationship with a client who needs specific assistance and focused guidance for a short period of time. System advocacy involves repre- senting an entire group as part of an organized lob- bying campaign to bring about procedural reforms that will ease their plight (Dussich, 2009a).

Major Sources of Inspiration, Guidance, and Support Several older and broader social move- ments have greatly influenced the growth and orienta- tion of the victims’ movement. The most important contributions have been made by the law-and-order movement, the women’s movement, and the civil rights movement.

The law-and-order movement of the 1960s raised concerns about the plight of victims of street crimes of violence and theft. Alarmed by surging

crime rates, conservatives adopted the “crime con- trol” perspective and campaigned for hard-line, get- tough policies. They insisted that the criminal jus- tice system was society’s first line of defense against internal enemies who threatened chaos and destruc- tion. The “thin blue line” of law enforcement needed to be strengthened. A willingness to tolerate too much misbehavior was viewed as the problem, and a crackdown on social and political deviants who disobeyed society’s rules and disrupted the lives of conventional people was offered as the solution. To win over people who might have been reluctant to grant more power to gov- ernment agencies—police, prosecutors, and prison authorities—they argued that the average American should be more worried about becoming a victim than about being falsely accused, mistakenly con- victed, and unjustly punished (Hook, 1972). Con- servative crime control advocates pictured the scales of justice as being unfairly tilted in favor of the “bad guys” at the expense of the “good guys”—the innocent, law-abiding citizens and their allies on the police force and in the prosecutor’s office. In a smooth-running justice system that they envi- sioned, punishment would be swift and sure. Attor- neys for defendants would no longer be able to take advantage of practices that were dismissed as “loop- holes” and “technicalities” that undermined the government’s efforts to arrest, detain, convict, imprison, deter, incapacitate, and impose retribu- tion on wrongdoers.

“Permissiveness” (unwarranted leniency) and any “coddling of criminals” would end: More offenders would be locked up for longer periods of time, and fewer would be granted bail, proba- tion, or parole. Liberals and civil libertarians who opposed these policies as being too repressive and overly punitive were branded as “pro-criminal” and “antivictim” (see Miller, 1973; and Carrington, 1975).

In contrast, liberal activists in the women’s movement have focused their energies since the late 1960s on aiding one group of victims in partic- ular: females who were harmed by males and then failed to receive the support they deserved from the male-dominated criminal justice system. Feminists

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launched both an antirape and an antibattering movement. The antirape movement set up the first rape crisis centers in Berkeley, California, and Washington, D.C., in 1972. These centers were not just places of aid and comfort in a time of pain and confusion. They also were rallying sites for outreach efforts to those who were suffering in isolation, meeting places for consciousness-raising groups exploring the patriarchal cultural traditions that encouraged males to subjugate females, and hubs for political organizing to change laws and policies (see Rose, 1977; Largen, 1981; and Schechter, 1982). Some antirape activists went on to protest the widespread problem of sexual harassment on the street, uniting behind the slogan “Take back the night” (see Lederer, 1980).

Other feminists helped organize battered women’s shelters. They established the first “safe house” in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1974. Campaigns to end battering paralleled activities to combat rape in a number of ways. Both projects were initiated for the most part by former victims who viewed their plight as an outgrowth of larger societal pro- blems and institutional arrangements, rather than as personal troubles stemming from their own indi- vidual shortcomings. Both sought to empower women by confronting established male authority, challenging existing procedures, providing peer support and advocacy, and devising alternative places to turn to in a time of need. The overall analysis that originally guided these pro-victim efforts was that male versus female offenses (such as rape, wife beating, sexual harassment in the streets and at work, and incest at home) pose a threat to all women and slows progress toward equality between the sexes. The gravest dangers are faced by women who are socially disadvantaged because of racial discrimination and economic inse- curity. According to this philosophy, girls and women victimized by boys and men cannot count on the privileged males at the helm of criminal jus- tice agencies to lead the struggle to effectively pro- tect or assist them—instead, women must empower each other (see Brownmiller, 1975).

Similarly, liberal activists in the civil rights movement focused their energies on opposing

entrenched racist beliefs and discriminatory prac- tices that encouraged members of the white major- ity to intimidate, harass, and attack people of color. Over the decades since the 1950s, this movement has brought together organizations representing the interests of a wide range of minority groups, in order to direct attention to the special threats posed by racist violence, from lynch mobs to Ku Klux Klan terrorism in the form of bombings and assassinations.

In recent years, one of the movement’s major concerns has been convincing the government to provide enhanced protection to individuals who are the targets of bias crimes, which are motivated by the perpetrators’ hatred of the “kind of person” the victim represents. Bias crimes can range from harassment and vandalism to arson, beatings, and slayings. Civil rights groups have been instrumental in lobbying state legislatures to impose stiffer penal- ties on attackers whose behavior is fueled by bigotry and in establishing specialized police squads to more effectively deter or solve these inflammatory viola- tions of the law. Otherwise, these divisive crimes could polarize communities along racial and ethnic lines and thereby undermine the ongoing American experiment of fostering multicultural tolerance and the celebration of diversity (see Levin and McDevitt, 2003).

Civil rights organizations also try to mobilize public support to demand evenhandedness in the administration of justice. A double standard, although more subtle today than in the past, may still infect the operations of the criminal justice sys- tem. Crimes by black perpetrators against white victims always have been taken very seriously— thoroughly investigated, quickly solved, vigorously prosecuted, and severely punished. However, crimes by white offenders against black victims, as well as by blacks against other blacks (see Ebony, 1979) have rarely evoked the same governmental response and public outrage. The more frequent imposition of the death penalty on murderers who kill whites, especially blacks who slay whites, is the clearest example of a discriminatory double standard (see Baldus, 2003). Civil rights activists also point out that members of minority groups

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continue to face graver risks of becoming victims of official misconduct in the form of racial profiling and police brutality—or even worse, the unjustified use of deadly force—as well as false accusations, frame-ups, wrongful convictions, and other miscar- riages of justice.

Additional Contributions by Other Social Movements Social movements that champion the causes of civil liberties, children’s rights, senior citizens’ rights, homosexual rights, and self-help also have made significant contributions to bettering the situation of victims.

The civil liberties movement’s primary focus is to preserve constitutional safeguards and due pro- cess guarantees that protect suspects, arrestees, defendants, and prisoners from abuses of govern- mental power by overzealous criminal justice offi- cials. However, civil liberties organizations have won court victories that have benefited victims of street crime in two ways: by furthering police pro- fessionalism and by extending the doctrine of “equal protection under the law.”

In professionalized police departments, officers must meet higher educational and training require- ments and must abide by more demanding stan- dards. As a result, victims are more likely to receive prompt responses, effective service, and sensitive treatment. If they don’t, channels exist through which they can redress their grievances. Guarantees of equal protection enable minority communities to gain access to the police and pros- ecutorial assistance to which they are entitled and to insist upon their right to improved, more profes- sionally trained law enforcement in contrast to the under-policing they endured until recently. This improves the prospects for careful and respon- sive handling for complainants whose calls for help were given short shrift in the past when offi- cials discriminated against them due to their race, ethnicity, sex, age, social class, disability, or some other disadvantage (Walker, 1982; and Stark and Goldstein, 1985).

Children’s rights groups campaign against sexual abuse, physical abuse, severe corporal punishment, gross neglect, and other forms of

maltreatment of youngsters. Their successes include stricter reporting requirements of cases of suspected abuse; improved procedures for arrest, prosecution, and conviction of offenders; greater sensitivity to the needs of victimized children as complaining witnesses; enhanced protection and prevention services; and more effective parenting instruction programs.

At the other end of the age spectrum, activists in senior citizens’ groups have pressured some police departments to establish special squads to protect older people from younger robbers and swindlers and have brought about greater awareness of the problem of elder abuse—financial, emo- tional, and physical mistreatment by family mem- bers or caretakers (see Smith and Freinkel, 1988).

The gay rights movement originally called attention to the vulnerability of male homosexuals and lesbians to blackmail, exploitation by organized crime syndicates that ran bars and clubs, and police harassment of those who deserved protection (see Maghan and Sagarin, 1983). The movement now focuses on preventing street assaults (“gay-bashing”) against suspected homosexuals and lesbians—hate crimes that are motivated by the offenders’ disdain for the victims’ presumed sexual orientation.

Groups that are part of the self-help move- ment have set up dependable support systems for injured parties by combining the participatory spirit of the grassroots protest movements of the 1960s with the self-improvement ideals of the human potential movement of the 1970s. The ideology of self-help is based upon a fundamental organizing principle: that people who have directly experi- enced the pain and suffering of being harmed and are still struggling to overcome these hardships themselves can foster a sense of solidarity and mutual support that is more comforting and effec- tive than the services offered by impersonal bureau- cracies and emotionally detached professional caregivers (Gartner and Riessman, 1980).

Even the prisoners’ rights movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s may have inspired victim activism. Inmates rebelled at a number of cor- rectional institutions, often in vicious and counter- productive ways. They protested overcrowded

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conditions; demanded decent living standards; insisted on greater ways of communicating with the outside world (via uncensored mail, access to the mass media, more family visits, and meetings with lawyers); asked for freedom of religion; called for more opportunities for rehabilitation, education, and job training; and complained about mistreat- ment and brutality by guards (see ACLU, 2008). Many people harmed by these incarcerated offen- ders surely wondered, “if convicts deserve better treatment from the authorities, don’t we, too?”

The task for victimologists is to assess the impact that all these other social movements have had on shaping the course of the victims’ move- ment over the decades, as well as on alleviating the suffering of persons harmed by criminals these days. How effective and influential have the victo- ries of these campaigns really been?

Elected Officials: Enacting Laws Named after Victims

Legislators engaged in the political process of enact- ing new laws have helped to rediscover specific groups and address their plight. Starting in the 1980s, federal, state, and local representatives real- ized that if they proposed a new law and named it after someone who had suffered terribly in a highly publicized crime, their campaign would gain a great deal of favorable media coverage that would help build support for the law’s passage as well as for their own reelection. All suggestions for revisions and additions to the existing body of laws can be controversial and might provoke opposition, but officeholders who dare to argue against proposed legislation that enshrines the name of an innocent person harmed by a vicious predator run the risk of being branded “antivictim.”

Probably the best-known example of a law bearing the name of a crime victim is the Brady Bill, or more formally, the Handgun Violence Preven- tion Act. The title honors James Brady, President Reagan’s press secretary, who was shot in the head in 1981 by an assassin trying to kill the president (the gunfire killed two persons guarding the president). Passed in 1993, it imposed a computer-based FBI

criminal background check on anyone who seeks to buy a firearm from a federally licensed dealer, in a stepped-up attempt to protect the public from individuals deemed to be dangerous (who had been forbidden by federal law from purchasing fire- arms since 1968, as a reaction to the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963).

Another bill bearing a victim’s name is the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (originally referred to as the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act). Named to memorialize a 19-year-old freshman who was raped and murdered in her dorm by another student, it was enacted in 1990. This fed- eral law requires all colleges that receive federal aid to maintain and disclose annual reports about a long list of crimes that take place on or near their cam- puses so that prospective students and their parents can assess the relative risks of attending various insti- tutions of higher learning.

The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act went into effect in 2008. It set up a cold case unit within the U.S. Department of Justice to reopen and investigate bias-motivated murders committed before 1970. Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black teenager, was kidnapped, tortured, shot, and dumped into a river in 1955 by two white racists for flirting with the wife of one of the two men at a grocery store in rural Mississippi (see Anderson, 2011).

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act was passed by Congress in 2009. Named to commemorate a gay college stu- dent who was beaten to death by bigots, and an African-American man who was dragged to his death behind a pickup truck by white supremacists, the legislation expanded the coverage of the federal government’s hate-crime law, which was originally passed in 1969.

The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, also known as the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), was enacted by Con- gress in 2006. Named in the memory of a six- year-old who was abducted from a department store and then viciously murdered, the act strength- ened sex offender registration requirements, stiffened

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the penalties of existing laws forbidding sexually abusing and exploiting children, and extended federal authority over kidnappings.

Over the decades, many state legislatures have passed statutes named after victims, such as New Jersey’s Megan’s Law. Commemorating a seven- year-old girl slain in 1994 by her next-door neigh- bor, a habitual child molester, each state’s version of Megan’s Law mandates that convicted sex offenders register with their local police department and that community residents be notified of their where- abouts, so that parents—in theory, at least—can take steps to better shield their children from these potentially dangerous strangers.

Since the 1980s, state and county legislatures nationwide have enacted thousands of new laws named after victims (see Editors, New York Post, 2006; and Lovett, 2006). Two very different con- clusions about the rediscovery of the victim’s plight by lawmakers can be drawn. The first is to view certain headline-making tragedies as a “final straw” that focused much-needed attention on a festering problem, mobilized public opinion, and triggered long overdue legislative action by well- meaning elected officials. The other response is to suspect that vote-seeking politicians are exploiting the media attention surrounding highly emotional but very complicated situations for their own per- sonal advantage (to advance their careers). They grab headlines by proposing a change in the existing body of law that will allegedly prevent such an inci- dent from happening again. The strong feelings evoked by a recent tragedy make it difficult for opponents to question the wisdom of implement- ing the “reforms” these ambitious, headline-seeking politicians propose in the name of the victim.

The task for victimologists is to start out as impartial observers and to gather data to see whether the legislation bearing the name of a vic- tim actually offers any tangible assistance to ease the plight of individuals harmed in this particular man- ner. Also, are these measures really effective in pre- venting innocent people from being hurt by these kinds of offenses in the future, or do they just pun- ish offenders more severely on behalf of those they already injured? Some of these recent legal reforms

enacted to ostensibly reduce the occurrence of a certain kind of victimization might turn out to be ill-conceived, seriously flawed, ineffective, or even counterproductive (for example, see Cooper, 2005).

The News Media: Portraying the Victims’ Plight

The news media deserve a great deal of credit for rediscovering victims. In the past, offenders received the lion’s share of coverage in newspapers and maga- zines and on radio and television stations. Stories delved into their backgrounds, their motives, and what should be done with them—usually how severely they should be punished. Scant attention was paid to the flesh-and-blood individuals who suf- fered because of the offender’s illegal activities.

But now those who are on the receiving end of criminal behavior are no longer invisible or forgot- ten people. Details about the injured parties are routinely included to inject some human interest into crime stories. Balanced accounts can vividly describe the victims’ plight: how they were harmed, what losses they incurred, what intense emotions distressed them, what helped or even hindered their recovery, how they were treated by care- givers, and how their cases were handled by the legal system. By remaining faithful to the facts, journalists can enable their audiences to transcend their own limited direct experiences with law- breakers and to see emergencies, tragedies, and tri- umphs through the eyes of the injured parties. Skillful reporting and insightful observations allow the public to better understand and empathize with the actions and reactions of those who suffered harm. In certain highly publicized cases, interviews by journalists have given victims a voice in how their cases ought to be resolved in court, and even how the problem (such as child snatchings by an angry ex-spouse, easy access to firearms, or collisions caused by drunk drivers) should be han- dled by the criminal justice system. Media coverage also has given these individuals with firsthand experiences a public platform to campaign for wider societal reforms (Dignan, 2005).

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However, victims—and if they perish vio- lently, their next of kin—often complain about sensationalism, a kind of coverage that has been branded as “scandal-mongering,” “pandering,” “yellow journalism,” and “tabloidism.” Newspa- pers, magazines, radio stations, and television net- works are prone to engage in sensationalism because they are profit-oriented businesses. Shock- ing stories attract readers, listeners, and viewers. Blaring headlines, gripping accounts, colorful phrases, memorable quotes, and other forms of media hype build the huge audiences that enable media enterprises to charge advertisers high rates. Producers, editors, and reporters who seek to play up the human-interest angle may exploit the plight of persons who have suffered devastating losses and debilitating wounds. Not surprisingly, the “info- tainment” shows have found that crime stories attract a lot more notice if they are spiced up with a heavy dose of sex, gore, and raw emotions. In the quest for higher ratings, market-driven coverage can sink to an “If it bleeds, it leads” rule of thumb. If reporters turn a personal tragedy into a media circus and a public spectacle, their intrusive behavior might be considered an invasion of pri- vacy. Overzealous journalists frequently are criti- cized for showing corpses lying in a pool of blood, maintaining vigils outside a grieving family’s home, or shoving microphones into the faces of bereaved, dazed, or hysterical relatives at funerals. The injured party receives unwanted publicity and experiences a loss of control as others comment upon, draw lessons from, and impose judgments on what he or she allegedly did, or did not do, or should have done.

Incidents receive intensive and sustained cover- age only when some aspect of the victim–offender relationship stands out as an attention-grabber: The act, the perpetrator, or the target must be unusual, unexpected, strange, or perverse. Suffering harm in ways that are typical, commonplace, or predictable is just not newsworthy. Editors and journalists sift through an overwhelming number of real-life trag- edies that come to their attention (largely through contacts within the local police department) and

select the cases that are most likely to seize center stage, go viral, shock people out of their compla- cency, and either stir up deep-seated fears or arouse the public’s empathy and social conscience.

The stories that are featured strike a responsive chord in audiences because the incidents symbolize some significant theme—for example, that anyone can be chosen at random, simply for being at the wrong place at the wrong time; that complete strangers cannot be trusted; and that bystanders might not come to a person’s aid, especially in anonymous, big-city settings (Roberts, 1989). His- torically, heinous crimes that have received the most press coverage have had one or more of these elements in common: Either the injured party or the defendant is a child, woman, or a prominent or wealthy person; intimations of “pro- miscuous” behavior by the victim or defendant help explain the event; some doubts linger about the guilt of the convict; and the circumstances sur- rounding a slaying seemed unusual (Stephens, 1988; and Buckler and Travis, 2005).

Furthermore, media attention may reflect the unconscious biases of talk show hosts, correspon- dents, and editors who work in the newsroom. For example, members of minority communities have charged that national news outlets, especially those on cable TV, focus relentless attention on the disappearance of attractive white people, particu- larly young women and children, but overlook equally compelling cases involving individuals who do not share these characteristics (see Lyman, 2005; Memmott, 2005; and Barton, 2011).

Hence, it is predictable that the unsolved Christmas Eve murder of a six-year-old beauty contest winner in her own upscale home, with her parents and brother upstairs, would be the sub- ject of incessant tabloid sensationalism (Johnson, 2008). Similarly, the disappearance of a 24- year-old intern after jogging in a park set off an avalanche of lurid speculation when it was revealed that she was having an affair with a married con- gressman (the case was solved years later when her killer turned out to be a complete stranger who had attacked other women in that same park at about

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the same time) (Tavernise, 2011). If these charges are true, the problem may go deeper and may reflect the shortcomings of market-driven journal- ism. The gatekeepers, under organizational pres- sures to sell their product, sift through a huge pool of items and select stories they perceive will resonate with the general public, at the expense of presenting an accurate sampling of the full range of tragedies taking place locally, nationally, and around the world (see Buckler and Travis, 2005).

And yet, it can be argued that media coverage of crime stories is an absolute necessity in an open society. Reporters and news editors have a consti- tutional right, derived from the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press, to present information about lawbreaking without interference from the government. Illegal activities not only harm partic- ular individuals but also pose a threat to those who may be next. People have a right as well as a need to know about the emergence of dangerous condi- tions and ominous developments, and the media has an obligation to communicate this information accurately.

The problem is that the public’s right to know about crime and the media’s right to report these incidents clash with the victim’s right to privacy. Journalists, editors, and victims’ advocates are addressing questions of fairness and ethics in a wide variety of forums, ranging from blogs and posted comments on the Web and letters to the editor in newspapers, to professional conferences and lawsuits in civil court.

Several remedies have been proposed to curb abusive coverage of a victim’s plight. One approach would be to enact new laws to shield those who suffer from needless public exposure, such as an unnecessary disclosure of names and addresses in dispatches or on websites. An alternative approach would be to rely on the self-restraint of reporters and their editors. The fact that most news accounts of sexual molestations of children and of rapes no longer reveal the names of those who were harmed is an example of this self-policing approach in action. A third remedy would be for the media to adopt a code of professional ethics. Journalists who

abide by the code would “read victims their rights” at the outset of interviews, just as police officers read suspects their Miranda rights when taking them into custody (see Thomason and Babbilli, 1987; and Karmen, 1989).

Victimologists could play an important role in monitoring progress by studying how accurate widely broadcast initial accounts are; how fre- quently and how seriously reporters insult and defame the subjects of their stories; and how suc- cessfully the different reform strategies prevent this kind of exploitation, or at least minimize any abu- sive invasions of privacy (see Duwe, 2000).

Commercial Interests: Selling Security Products and Services to Victims

Just as the rediscovery of victims by elected offi- cials and the news media has benefits as well as drawbacks, so too does the new attention paid to injured parties by businesses. An emerging market of people seeking out protective services and anti- theft devices simultaneously raises the possibility of meeting consumer needs but also of commercially exploiting these eager customers. Profiteers can engage in fear mongering and false advertising in order to cash in on the legitimate concerns and desires of individuals who feel particularly vulner- able and even panicky. In situations where entre- preneurs issue bold claims about some gadget’s effectiveness, objectivity takes the form of scien- tific skepticism. Victimologists must represent the public interest and demand, “Prove those asser- tions about this product or service! Where is the evidence?”

Consider the question of whether expensive automobile security systems actually work as well as their manufacturers’ advertisements say they do. For instance, do car alarms really deliver the layer of protection against break-ins that their purchasers seek and that sales pitches promise? In New York, the City Council passed regulations restricting the installation of new car alarms because the devices were deemed to be largely ineffective as well as a serious source of noise pollution. Rather than

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agreeing with frustrated motorists that the wailing sirens do no good, or trying to defend the alarm indus- try’s reputation and profits, nonpartisan victimologists can independently evaluate the effectiveness of these antitheft devices. Are car alarms really useful in deter- ring break-ins; in minimizing losses of accessories such as car stereos, navigation systems, or air bags; in pre- venting vehicles from being driven away; and in aid- ing the police to catch thieves red-handed?

Similarly, research projects could attempt to determine whether burglar alarms actually deter or cut short intruders’ invasions and are therefore worth the price of installation and monthly moni- toring fees, and whether identity theft insurance protection is a wise investment.

VICTIMOLOGY CONTRIBUTES TO THE REDISCOVERY PROCESS

The emergence and acceptance of victimology as a scholarly endeavor has propelled the rediscovery process onward.

The beginnings of the academic discipline of vic- timology can be traced back to several articles, books, and research projects initiated by criminologists dur- ing the 1940s and 1950s. Until that time, criminol- ogy’s attention was focused entirely on those who violated the law: who they were, why they engaged in illegal activities, how they were handled by the criminal justice system, whether they should be incar- cerated, and how they might be rehabilitated. Even- tually, perhaps through the process of elimination, several criminologists searching for solutions to the crime problem were drawn to—or stumbled upon—the important role played by victims.

These criminologists considered victims to be worthy of serious study primarily because they were the completely overlooked half of the dyad (pair). The first use in English of the term victimology to refer to the scientific study of people harmed by criminals appeared in a book about murderers writ- ten by a psychiatrist (Wertham, 1949). The first scholars to consider themselves victimologists examined the presumed vulnerabilities of certain

kinds of people, such as the very young, the very old, recent immigrants, and the mentally incompe- tent (Von Hentig, 1948); the “kinds of people,” (in terms of factors such as age and sex), whose actions contributed to their own violent deaths (Wolfgang, 1958); and the degree of resistance put up by rape victims (Mendelsohn, 1940).

Beniamin Mendelsohn, a defense attorney in Romania, wrote and spoke during the 1940s and 1950s about how victims were ignored, disre- spected, and abused within the criminal justice pro- cess. He proposed ways to help and protect them by creating victim assistance clinics and special research institutes, and he campaigned for victims’ rights. For his foresight, he might be deemed “the father of victimology” (Dussich, 2009b).

During the 1960s, as the problem of street crime intensified, the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice argued that criminologists ought to pay more atten- tion to victims (thereby inspiring some to become victimologists). The Commission’s Task Force on Assessment (1967, p. 80) concluded:

One of the most neglected subjects in the study of crime is its victims: the persons, households, and businesses that bear the brunt of crime in the United States. Both the part the victim can play in the criminal act and the part he could have played in preventing it are often overlooked. If it could be determined with sufficient specificity that people or businesses with certain characteristics are more likely than others to be crime victims, and that crime is more likely to occur in some places rather than in others, efforts to control and prevent crime would be more productive. Then the public could be told where and when the risks of crime are greatest. Measures such as preventive police patrol and installation of burglar alarms and special locks could then be pursued more efficiently and effectively. Individuals could then substitute objective estimation of risk for the general apprehensiveness that today restricts—perhaps unnecessarily and at best haphazardly—their enjoyment of parks and their freedom of movement on the streets after dark.

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In this call for a shift in focus, the Commis- sion’s Task Force stressed the potential practical benefits: More crimes could be prevented and more criminals caught, unrealistic fears could be calmed and unwarranted complacency dispelled, and needless expenditures could be eliminated or reduced. These ambitious goals have not yet been attained. Other goals not cited by the commission that have been added over the years include reducing suffering, making the criminal justice sys- tem more responsive, and restoring victims to the financial condition they were in before the crime occurred.

During the 1960s and 1970s, criminologists, reformers, and political activists argued persuasively that offenders themselves were in some sense “victims” too—of the desperation caused by pov- erty in the midst of plenty, dysfunctional families, failing school systems, rundown housing, job shortages, discrimination, police brutality, and other social problems (for example, see Ryan, 1971). In reaction to this sympathetic characteriza- tion of lawbreakers, many people asked, “But what about the real flesh-and-blood individuals that they preyed upon who were innocent, law-abiding, and vulnerable? What can be done to ease their suffer- ing?” While grappling with that question, reformers came to recognize that persons targeted by crim- inals were being systematically abandoned to their fates and that institutionalized neglect had prevailed for too long. A consensus began to emerge that people harmed by illegal acts deserved better treat- ment. Plans for financial assistance were the focus of early discussions; campaigns for enhanced rights within the legal system soon followed.

By the 1970s, victimology had become a rec- ognized field of study with its own national and international professional organizations, confer- ences, and journals. Courses in victimology sprang up on many campuses, in part because students wanted to discuss their own personal experiences— which must be explored with great sensitivity (see Cares, 2012). By the end of the 1990s, students were taking victimology classes at more than 240 colleges and universities.

The milestones that mark victimology’s rela- tively brief history, plus the major pioneering efforts to provide tangible help to crime victims are pre- sented in Box 2.1.

REDISCOVERING ADDITIONAL GROUPS OF VICTIMS

This process—in which people whose plight was recognized long ago but is neglected for many years until it finally attracts the attention it deserves—goes on and on with no end in sight. Some rediscovered groups that have received a great deal of study and support include abused children, battered women; females who have suf- fered date rapes; kidnapped youngsters; people targeted by bigots; individuals attacked by enraged motorists; pedestrians, passengers, and drivers killed in collisions caused by drunk dri- vers; and prisoners sexually assaulted by fellow inmates or members of the custodial staff. The suffering of other groups unfortunately is also becoming quite well known and increasingly attended to: students shot in high schools and colleges, employees subjected to workplace vio- lence, and police officers assaulted and fired at by felons.

And yet, there are still other groups under the radar or waiting in the wings to be rediscovered by those academics and scholars, practitioners, social movements, elected officials, the news media, and commercial interests who continue to drive the process forward. A steady stream of fresh revelations serves as a reminder that these neglected groups still are “out there” and that they have compelling stor- ies to tell, unmet needs, and legitimate demands for assistance and support. Usually, they continue to escape public notice until some highly unusual or horrific incident reveals how they are being harmed. The types of victims whose plight is now being rediscovered—but who require much more scrutiny and analysis, and creative remedies—are listed in Box 2.2.

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B O X 2.1 Highlights in the Brief History of Victimology and Victim Assistance

Year Event

1924 Edwin Sutherland writes the first criminology textbook that includes a short discussion about victims.

1941 Hans Von Hentig publishes an article focusing on the interaction between victims and criminals.

1947 Beniamin Mendelsohn coins the term victimology in an article written in French.

1957 In Great Britain, Margery Fry proposes legislation that would authorize the government to reimburse victims for their losses.

1958 Marvin Wolfgang studies the circumstances sur- rounding the deaths of murder victims and discovers that some contributed to their own demise.

1964 The U.S. Congress holds hearings on the plight of crime victims but rejects legislative proposals to cover their losses.

1965 California becomes the first U.S. state to set up a spe- cial fund to repay victims for crime-inflicted expenses.

1966 The first nationwide victimization survey to find out about crimes that were not reported to the police is carried out, and its findings are considered so enlight- ening that it becomes an annual undertaking.

1967 A presidential commission recommends that crimin- ologists study victims.

1968 Stephen Schafer writes the first textbook about victims.

Early 1970s

The first sex crime squads and rape crisis centers are established.

1972 The federal government initiates a yearly National Crime Victimization Survey of the general public to uncover firsthand information about street crimes.

1973 The first international conference of victimologists is convened in Jerusalem.

1974 The first shelter for battered women is set up in Minnesota. The first victim advocates in law enforcement are assigned by the police department in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The first lawyers serving as advocates for victims in legal proceedings are made available on the South East Side of Chicago.

Mid- 1970s

Prosecutors initiate victim–witness assistance programs.

1976 The first scholarly journal devoted to victimology begins publication. A National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA) is established to bring together service providers working for government agencies and nonprofits. The probation department in Fresno, California, is the first to instruct its officers to interview victims to find out how the crime impacted them physically, emotionally, socially, and financially.

1977 New York State enacts the first “Son of Sam” law to prevent offenders from profiting from telling about their exploits.

1979 The World Society of Victimology is founded.

Year Event

1981 President Reagan proclaims Victims’ Rights Week every April.

1982 Congress passes a Victim and Witness Protection Act that suggests standards for fair treatment of victims within the federal court system.

1983 The President’s Task Force on Victims of Crime recommends changes in the Constitution and in federal and state laws to guarantee victims’ rights.

1984 Congress passes the Victims of Crime Act, which provides federal subsidies to state victim compensa- tion and assistance programs.

1985 The United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopts a resolution that urges all members to respect and extend the rights of victims of crimes and of abuses of power.

1986 Victims’ rights activists seek the passage of consti- tutional amendments on the federal and state levels guaranteeing victims’ rights.

1987 The U.S. Department of Justice opens a National Victims Resource Center in Rockville, Maryland, to serve as a clearinghouse for information.

1990 Congress passes the Victims’ Rights and Restitution Act.

1994 Congress passes the Violence Against Women Act. 2003 The American Society of Victimology is set up to

encourage collaboration between academicians, researchers, and practitioners.

2004 Congress enacts the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, which pledges fair treatment and opportunities for input in federal court proceedings.

2005 A bipartisan group of 18 members of Congress forms a Victim’s Rights Caucus.

2007 VictimLaw, a user-friendly website set up by the National Center for Victims of Crime, provides a searchable database about state legislation concern- ing restitution and compensation for financial losses.

2008 The National Museum of Crime & Punishment opens in Washington, D.C., with exhibits that dramatize the plights of victims.

2011 The Office of Justice Programs (OJP) of the federal government’s Department of Justice (DOJ) launches a website, www.crimesolutions.org, that evaluates the effectiveness of programs on behalf of crime victims.

2014 The Bureau of Justice Statistics develops a webpage that presents tables of data about victims in a user- friendly format.

2014 California becomes the first state to pass a “Yes Means Yes” law that requires explicit mutual consent before engaging in sex in college campus settings.

SOURCE: Galaway and Hudson, 1981; Schneider, 1982; Lamborn, 1985; National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA), 1989, 1995; Dussich, 2003; Walker, 2003; Garlock, 2007; Rothstein, 2008; Dussich, 2009a, 2009b; and Chappell, 2014.

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B O X 2.2 The Process of Rediscovery Goes On and On

These recently recognized groups of victims face special pro- blems that require imaginative solutions. They eventually will receive the assistance and support they need as the rediscovery process continues to focus attention and resources on their plight:

■ Individuals who are deaf, blind, mentally retarded, mentally ill, or afflicted by other disabilities that attracted molesters, assailants, robbers, or other crim- inals who preyed upon them more often than other potential targets (Office for Victims of Crime, 2003; Barrow, 2008; and Harrell, 2014), particularly when they were young (Smith and Harrell, 2013; and Tabachnick, 2013).

■ People whose attackers cannot be arrested and prose- cuted because as members of foreign delegations they have been granted “diplomatic immunity” and are able to escape justice by returning home (Ashman and Trescott, 1987; Sieh, 1990; Lynch, 2003; and Grow, 2011)

■ Pedestrians and passengers killed by drivers who speed, run red lights, or ignore stop signs and may be guilty of criminally negligent homicide (Goodman, 2013; and Lerner, 2014).

■ Motorists and pedestrians slammed into during high-speed chases by fugitives seeking to avoid arrest or by squad cars in hot pursuit (Gray, 1993; Crew, Fridell, and Pursell, 1995; and Schultz, Budak, and Alpert, 2010)

■ Motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians injured or killed by hit-and-run drivers (Bisnar and Chase, 2011).

■ Native Americans living on the nation’s 310 Indian reservations who suffer much higher victimization rates for murder, rape, and other interpersonal crimes but receive less protection and redress from the criminal justice system than other U.S. citizens (Williams, 2012a, 2012b; and Erdrich, 2013).

■ Immigrants who feel they cannot come forward and ask the police for help without revealing that they are “illegal aliens” who lack the proper documents and are subject to deportation (Davis and Murray, 1995; Davis, Erez, and Avitabile, 2001; Chan, 2007; and Hoffmaster, Murphy, McFadden, and Griswold, 2010)

■ Homeless adults robbed, assaulted, and murdered on the streets and in shelters (Fitzpatrick, LaGory, and Ritchey, 1993; and Green, 2008)

■ Homeless runaway teens who are vulnerable to sexual exploitation and rape (Tyler, Whitbeck, Hoyt, and Cauce, 2005)

■ Hotel guests who suffer thefts and assaults because of lax security measures (Prestia, 1993; Owsley, 2005; and Ho, Zhao, and Brown, 2009)

■ Cruise ship passengers who suffer attacks and thefts from fellow voyagers and members of the crew (Anderle, 2013).

■ Tourists who blunder into dangerous situations avoided by streetwise locals and are easy prey because they let their guard down (Rohter, 1993; Glensor and Peak, 2004; Lee, 2005; and Murphy, 2006)

■ Delivery truck drivers who are targeted by robbers, hijackers, and highway snipers (Sexton, 1994; and Duret and Patrick, 2004)

■ Prostitutes soliciting complete strangers on the streets or over the Internet who face risks of being beaten, raped, and murdered that are many times higher than for other women in their age bracket (Boyer and James, 1983; Salfati, James, and Ferguson, 2008; and Mueller, 2014)

■ Unwanted newborns abandoned or killed by their distraught mothers (Yardley, 1999; and Buckley, 2007)

■ Suspects brutally beaten by police officers who used more force than the law allows (Amnesty International USA, 1999; and Davey and Einhorn, 2007)

■ Teachers attacked, injured, and even killed by their students (Fine, 2001; Parker, 2014; and Freie Universi- taet Berlin, 2014)

■ Underage students who experience statutory rape when they are seduced by their high school teachers (Zernike, 2014).

■ Youngsters sexually molested or physically abused through prohibited forms of corporal punishment by parents and teachers (Goodnough, 2003; and Larzelere and Baumrind, 2010)

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■ High school and college students subjected to abusive hazing and bullying by older students that results in injury or death (Salmivalli and Nieminen, 2002; Montague, Zohra, Love, McGee, and Tsamis, 2008; and Zernike and Schweber, 2014)

■ Terrified residents whose homes were invaded by armed robbers (Hurley, 1995; Copeland and Martin, 2006; and Thompson, 2011)

■ “Mail-order brides,” lured to the United States by unregulated international matchmaking services on the Internet, who fear deportation if they complain to the authorities about their husbands’ violence (Briscoe, 2005; Morash, Hoan, Yan, and Holtfreter, 2007; and Greenwood, 2008)

■ Teenage girls and young women kidnapped and held captive as “sex slaves” by vicious rapists (Hoffman, 2003; Jacobs, 2003; Maslin, 2011; Kaufman, 2012; and Williams, 2013)

■ Unsuspecting people, usually women, who feel symbol- ically violated sexually after being secretly videotaped during private moments by voyeurs using hidden spy cameras (Lovett, 2003; and Williams, 2005)

■ Female motorists sexually abused by highway patrol officers (Tyre, 2001)

■ People deceived by robbers and rapists impersonating uniformed officers as well as plainclothes detectives (Long, 2008; and Van Netta, 2011)

■ Persons arrested for drug law violations who are pres- sured by detectives to become confidential informants and end up wounded or murdered by dealers (Goodman, 2013)

■ Good Samaritans who try to break up crimes in progress and rescue the intended victims but wind up injured or killed themselves (Mawby, 1985; Time, Payne, and Gainey, 2010; and Cunningham et al., 2012)

■ Innocent bystanders wounded or killed by bullets intended for others, often when caught in crossfire between rival street gangs or drug dealers fighting over turf (Sherman, Steele, Laufersweiler, Hoffer, and Julian, 1989; and Williams, 2009)

■ People being blackmailed who are reluctant to turn to the authorities for help because that would lead to

exposure of their embarrassing secrets (see Katz, Fletcher and Altman, 1993; and Robinson, Cahill, and Bartels, 2010)

■ Recipients, some of them children, of crank phone calls laced with threats or obscenities, made by individuals who range from “heavy breathers” and bored teenagers to dangerous assailants (Savitz, 1986; Warner, 1988; Leander, Granhag, and Christianson, 2005; and Renshaw, 2008)

■ Residents injured by fires or burned out of their homes, unaware that they were harmed by acts of arson until fire marshals determine that the suspicious blazes were intentionally set (Sclafani, 2005)

■ Homeowners who wind up evicted because of swindles like mortgage fraud and foreclosure-rescue fraud (FBI, 2008b)

■ Consumers who lose money in Internet cyber swindles and “dotcons,” such as online pyramid investment (Ponzi) schemes, bogus auctions, fake escrow accounts, and other computer-based frauds (Lee, 2003b; and Stajano and Wilson, 2011)

■ “Missing persons” who have vanished and are presumed dead by their frantic relatives, but, since they were adults with a right to privacy, cannot be the objects of intense police manhunts unless there is evidence of foul play (McPhee, 1999; Gardiner, 2008; and NCMA, 2008). Sometimes their remains lie unidentified until “cyber- sleuths” and other amateur detectives poring over online coroners’ files and missing-persons databases are able to match a body to a disappearance and notify the local police department about solving one of their cold cases, thereby helping these deceased individuals get a proper burial, and maybe even securing “justice” for them if their killer is convicted (Halber, 2014; and Latson, 2014)

■ Unrelated individuals whose lives are snuffed out by vicious and demented serial killers (Holmes and DeBurger, 1988; Hickey, 1991; Egger and Egger, 2002; Pakhomou, 2004; Flegenheimer and Rosenberg, 2011; and AP, 2011c); and especially prostitutes, hitchhikers, and stranded motorists, whose bodies are dumped near highways by violence-prone long-haul truckers (Glover, 2009; and Dalesio, 2011)

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THE REDISCOVERY PROCESS IN ACTION, STEP BY STEP

The rediscovery process is more than just a well- intentioned humanitarian undertaking, media cam- paign, or example of special pleading. It has far- reaching consequences for everyday life, and the stakes are high. Injured people who gain legitimacy as innocent victims and win public backing are in a position to make compelling claims on government resources (asking for compensation payments to cover the expenses they incurred from their physical wounds, for example). People who know from first- hand experience about the suffering caused by illegal acts also can advance persuasive arguments about reforming criminal justice policies concerning arrest, prosecution, trial procedures, appropriate sentences, and custodial control over prisoners. Finally, redis- covered victims can assert that preventing others from suffering the same fate requires a change in prevailing cultural values about tolerating social con- ditions that generate criminal behavior. Victims even can make recommendations that are taken seriously about the ways people should and should not behave (for instance, how husbands should treat their wives, and how closely parents should supervise their chil- dren) and even the proper role of government (such as how readily the state should intervene in “private” matters such as violence between intimates).

The process of rediscovery usually unfolds through a series of steps and stages. The sequential model that is proposed below incorporates observa- tions drawn from several sources. The notion of devel- opmental stages arises from the self-definition of the victimization process (Viano, 1989). The natural his- tory, career, or life-cycle perspective comes from examining models of ongoing social problems (see Fuller and Myers, 1941; Ross and Staines, 1972; and Spector and Kitsuse, 1987). The focus on how con- cerns about being harmed are first raised, framed, and then publicized arises from the constructionist approach (see Best, 1989b). The idea of inevitable clashes of opposing interest groups battling over gov- ernmental resources and influence over legislation comes from sociology’s conflict approach. The realiza- tion that there is an ongoing struggle by victimized

groups for respect and support in the court of public opinion is an application of the concept of stigma con- tests (Schur, 1984).

Stage 1: Calling Attention to an Overlooked Problem

The rediscovery process is set in motion whenever activists begin to raise the public’s consciousness about some type of illegal situation that “everybody knows” happens but few have cared enough to investigate or try to correct. These moral entrepre- neurs, who lead campaigns to change laws and win people over to their point of view, usually have first- hand experience with a specific problem as well as direct, personal knowledge of the pain and suffering that accompany it. Particularly effective self-help and advocacy groups have been set up by parents who endured the ordeal of searching for their missing children, mothers whose children were killed in col- lisions caused by drunk drivers, and the families of offi- cers slain in the line of duty, among others. Additional individuals who deserve credit for arousing an indiffer- ent public include the targets of hate-driven bias crimes, adults haunted by the way they were molested when they were young, women brutally raped by acquaintances they trusted, and wives viciously beaten by their husbands. They called attention to a state of affairs that people took for granted as harmful but shrugged off as “What can anyone do about it?” These activists responded, “Things don’t have to be this way!” Exploitative and hurtful relationships don’t have to be tolerated—they can be prevented, avoided, and outlawed; governmental policies can be altered; and the criminal justice system can be made more accountable and responsive to its “clients.”

As Stage 1 moves along, activists function as the inspiration and nucleus for the formation of self- help groups that provide mutual aid and solace and also undertake campaigns for reform. Members of support networks believe that only people who have suffered through the same ordeal can really understand and appreciate what others just like them are going through (a basic tenet borrowed from therapeutic communities that assist substance abusers to recover from drug addiction).

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Activists also state that victims’ troubles stem from larger social problems that are beyond any individual’s ability to control; consequently, those who suffer should not be blamed for causing their own misfor- tunes. Finally, activists argue that recovery requires empowerment within the criminal justice process so that victims can pursue what they define as their own best interests, whether to see to it that the offender receives the maximum punishment permitted by law, is compelled to undergo treatment, and/or is ordered to pay their bills for crime-related expenses.

To build wider support for their causes, moral entrepreneurs and self-help groups organize them- selves into loosely structured coalitions such as the antirape and antibattering movements. Usually, one or two well-publicized cases are pointed to as sym- bolic of the problem. Soon many other victims come forward to tell about similar personal experiences. Then experts such as social workers, detectives, and lawyers testify about the suffering that these kinds of victims routinely endure and plead that legal reme- dies are urgently needed. Extensive media coverage is a prerequisite for success. The group’s plight becomes known because of investigative reports on television, talk radio discussions, magazine cover stories, news- paper editorials, and the circulation of these accounts on blogs. Meanwhile, press conferences, demonstra- tions, marches, candlelight vigils, petition drives, bal- lot initiatives, lawsuits, and lobbying campaigns keep the issue alive and the pressure on.

Sociologically, what happens during the first stage can be termed the social construction of a social prob- lem, along with claims-making and typification (see Spector and Kitsuse, 1987; and Best, 1989b). A con- sensus emerges that a pattern of behavior is harmful and should be subjected to criminal penalties. This crystal- lization of public opinion is a product of the activities of moral entrepreneurs, support groups, and their allies. Spokespersons engage in a claims-making process by airing grievances, estimating how many people are hurt in this manner, suggesting appropriate remedies to facilitate recovery, and recommending measures that could prevent this kind of physical, emotional, and financial suffering from burdening others. Through the process of typification, advocates point out classic cases and textbook examples that illustrate the menace to society against which they are campaigning.

Stage 2: Winning Victories, Implementing Reforms

The rediscovery process enters its second stage whenever activists and advocacy groups begin to make headway toward their goals.

At first, it might be necessary to set up indepen- dent demonstration projects or pilot programs to prove the need for special services. Then government grants or funding from private foundations can be secured. Next, federal, state, and local agencies or nonprofit organizations can copy successful models or take over some responsibility for providing infor- mation, assistance, and protection. For instance, the battered women’s movement set up shelters, and the antirape movement established crisis centers. Eventu- ally, local governments funded safe houses where women and their young children could seek refuge, and hospitals and universities organized their own 24-hour rape hotlines and crisis-intervention services.

Individuals subjected to bias crimes were redis- covered during the 1990s. During the 1980s, only private organizations monitored incidents of hate- motivated violence and vandalism directed against racial and religious minorities, as well as homosexuals. But in 1990, the government got involved when Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act, which authorized the FBI to undertake the task of collecting reports about bias crimes from local police departments. Achievements that mark this second stage in the rediscovery process include the imposition of harsher penalties and the establishment of specially trained law enforcement units in many jurisdictions to more effectively recognize, investigate, solve, and prosecute bias crimes. Self-help groups offer injured parties tangible forms of support. The best example of a rediscovery campaign that has raised conscious- ness, won victories, and secured reforms is the struggle waged since the early 1980s by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). These anguished parents argued that for too long the “killer drunk” was able to get away with a socially acceptable and judicially excusable form of homicide because more people identified with the intoxicated driver than with the innocent person who died from inju- ries sustained in the collision. Viewing themselves as the relatives of bona fide crime victims, not merely

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persons who perished from accidents, these crusa- ders were able to move the issue from the obituary page to the front page by using a wide range of tac- tics to mobilize public support, including candle- light vigils, pledges of responsible behavior by children and family cooperation by their parents, and demonstrations outside courthouses. Local chapters of their national self-help organizations offered concrete services: Pamphlets were distrib- uted through hospital emergency rooms and funeral parlors, bereavement support groups assisted griev- ing relatives, and volunteers accompanied grieving families to police stations, prosecutors’ offices, trials, and sentencing hearings.

Buoyed by very favorable media coverage, their lobbying campaigns brought about a crackdown on DUI (driving under the influence) and DWI (driving while intoxicated) offenders. Enforcement measures include roadblocks, license suspensions and revoca- tions, more severe criminal charges, and on-the-spot confiscations of vehicles. Their efforts also led to reforms of drinking laws, such as raising the legal drinking age to 21 and lowering the blood alcohol concentration levels that officially define impairment and intoxication (Thompson, 1984). Along with the 55 mph speed limit, mandatory seat belt laws, improved vehicle safety engineering, better roads, and breakthroughs in emergency medical services, the achievements of MADD and its allies have saved countless lives (Ayres, 1994).

Stage 3: Emergence of an Opposition and Development of Resistance to Further Changes

The third stage in the rediscovery process is marked by the emergence of groups that oppose the goals sought by victims of rediscovered crimes. The victims had to overcome public apathy during Stage 1 and bureau- cratic inertia during Stage 2. During Stage 3, they encounter resistance from other quarters. A backlash arises against perceived excesses in their demands. The generalargument ofopponents is that the pendulum is swinging too far in the other direction; that people are uncritically embracing a point of view that is too extreme, unbalanced, and one-sided; and that special

interests are trying to advance an agenda that does not really benefit the law-abiding majority.

Spokespersons for a group of recently rediscov- ered victims might come under fire for a number of reasons. They might be criticized for overestimating the number of people harmed when the actual threat to the public, according to the opposition, is much smaller. Advocates might be condemned for portraying all those who were hurt as totally innocent of blame—and therefore deserving of unqualified support—when in reality some are partly at fault and shouldn’t get all the assistance that they demand. Activists might be castigated for making unreasonable demands that will cost the government (and taxpayers) too much money. They also might be denounced for insisting upon new policies that would undermine cherished con- stitutional rights, such as the presumption of inno- cence of persons accused of breaking the law. For example, allegations about child abuse or elder abuse can lead to investigations that permanently stigmatize the alleged wrongdoers even if the charges later turn out to be unfounded (see Crystal, 1988).

When the antirape movement claimed to have discovered an outbreak of date rapes against college students, skeptics asked why federally mandated sta- tistics about incidents reported to campus security forces showed no such upsurge. They contended that hard-to-classify liaisons were being redefined as full-fledged sexual assaults, thereby maligning some admittedly sexually aggressive and exploitative col- lege men as hard-core criminals (see Gilbert, 1991; Hellman, 1993; and MacDonald, 2008a). When the battered women’s movement organized a clemency drive to free certain imprisoned wives who had slain their abusive husbands (in self-defense, they contended, but prosecutors and jurors disagreed), critics charged that these abused women would be getting away with revenge killings. When adults who believed that they had endured incest insisted that new memory retrieval techniques were helping them recall repressed recollections of sexual moles- tations by parents, stepparents, and other guardians, some accused family members banded together and insisted they were being unfairly slandered because

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of a therapist-induced false memory syndrome (see Chapters 8, 9, and 10 for an in-depth analysis of these three controversies).

Even the many accomplishments of the entire victims’ movement can be questioned (see Weed, 1995). Under the banner of advancing victims’ rights, pressure groups might advocate policies that undermine whatever progress has been made toward securing humane treatment for offenders and reentry opportunities for ex-prisoners. Victim activism can unnecessarily heighten fear and anxiety levels about the dangers of violence and theft and divert funds toward repressive measures and away from social programs designed to tackle the root causes of street crime.

Groups that focus their energies on the plight of individuals injured by interpersonal violence also can distract attention from other socially harmful activities such as polluting the environment or mar- keting unsafe products, and their reforms can raise expectations about full recovery that just cannot be reasonably met (Fattah, 1986). It is even possible that what was formerly a grassroots movement run by volunteers who solicited donations has metamorphosed into a virtual “victim industry.” It engages in a type of mass production, churning out newly identified groups of victims by dwelling on kinds of suffering that can arise from noncriminal sources such as bullying, emotional abuse, sexual harassment, sexual addiction, eating disorders, and credit card dependency (see Best, 1997).

Stage 4: Research and Temporary Resolution of Disputes

It is during the fourth and last stage of the rediscov- ery process that victimologists can make their most valuable contributions. By getting to the bottom of unsolved mysteries and by intervening in bitter conflicts, researchers can become a source of accu- rate assessments, by helping to evaluate competing claims about whether the problem has or has not been brought under control, and by determining whether treatment and prevention measures are genuinely effective. By maintaining objectivity,

victimologists can serve as arbiters in these heated disputes.

For example, during the 1980s, a series of shocking shootings by disgruntled gun-toting employees led to the rediscovery of victims of workplace violence. In the aftermath of these slaughters, worried employees insisted that employ- ers call in occupational safety specialists to devise protection and prevention programs. Anxious man- agers usually acceded, fearing expensive lawsuits and lowered morale and productivity. But research- ers have determined that these highly publicized multiple murders accounted for just a tiny fraction of a multifaceted but far less newsworthy set of dangers. Most of the cases of workplace violence across the country involve robberies, unarmed assaults, and complaints about stalkers acting in a menacing way. Many incidents that disrupt the smooth functioning of factories and offices are not even criminal matters, such as instances of verbal abuse, bullying, and sexual harassment (Rugala, 2004).

During Stage 4, a standoff, deadlock, or truce might develop between victims’ advocates who want more changes, and their opponents who resist any further reforms. But the fourth phase is not necessarily the final phase. The findings and policy recommendations of neutral parties such as victi- mologists and criminologists do not settle questions once and for all. Concerns about some type of vic- timization can recede from public consciousness for years, only to reappear when social conditions are ripe for a new four-stage cycle of rediscovery of (1) claims making, (2) reform, (3) opposition, and (4) temporary resolution.

A number of types of formerly overlooked vic- tims have reached Stage 4 in the rediscovery pro- cess. Recently collected data can be analyzed to try to put the public’s fears into perspective, to attempt to resolve ongoing controversies, and to assess the impact of countermeasures designed to assist those who are suffering and to prevent others from sharing their same fate (an example that stirs up strong emotions in a great many people, trafficking in human beings, appears in Box 2.3).

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B O X 2.3 An Illustration of the Four Stages in the Rediscovery Process: The Plight of Victims of Human Trafficking

Stage One: Reviving Public Outrage About a Longstanding Problem:

Trafficking in human beings is widely recognized as a lucrative racket and a major aspect of the crime problem in a great many source, transit, and destination countries across the globe. But it is not a new development: Its victims were first discovered over 100 years ago. (The slave trade that brought Africans in chains to the Americas during the age of European colonialism is a different problem that goes back further in history, and its horrors transcend the confines of crime and victimization.)

During the early years of the twentieth century, a world- wide movement against “white slavery” arose. Its stated goal was to stop prostitutes from Europe from being sent to brothels throughout the colonial empires of the Western powers. The sexual enslavement of white females eventually proved to be what social scientists call a moral panic because the problem turned out to be far smaller and less significant than was pop- ularly depicted. And yet, the campaign to stop it led to a series of treaties, including the International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic (1904), the League of Nation’s International Convention for the Suppression of Traffic in Women and Children (1921) and its Convention for the Suppression of Traffic in Women of Full Age (1933), and the United Nation’s Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (1949) (Lobasz, 2009).

Compelling girls and women to take part in the sex trade is only part of this problem. The other part is the eco- nomic exploitation of migrant workers who are smuggled across borders to toil in homes, factories, and fields. Starting in the late 1980s, reformers began to call attention to their plight. A number of factors came together to heighten con- cern and provoke outrage: a new focus by human rights groups on the many ways females are exploited around the world; the growing desperation in many societies of single mothers to find ways to support their children (what sociol- ogists call the feminization of poverty); the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites, which caused many young women to search for a means of survival abroad; environmental degradation due to the mismanage- ment of natural resources that triggered large-scale migra- tions across national borders of workers seeking opportunities in a rapidly globalizing economy; and the con- solidation of organized crime’s hold over the smuggling of weapons, drugs, and people (Jahic and Finckenauer, 2005; Lobasz, 2009;Chuang, 2010; and Smilowitz, 2014).

When prominent people began to characterize human trafficking as “a form of modern-day slavery” and warn that profiting from the “controlled service” of others was one of the fastest growing criminal industries in the world, a social move- ment developed to oppose it. It brought together international organizations, human rights groups, religious leaders, charitable organizations, political figures, criminal justice officials, social workers, victim advocates, and thousands of well-intentioned grassroots “abolitionists” motivated by stirring phrases like “free the slaves” and “break the chains of bondage.” Two rather unlikely allies joined together to campaign for stronger laws against sex trafficking. The first were certain American feminists who viewed prostitution as an entrenched institution of male dominanceandits female providers assubordinatescompelled to sell their bodies because of a lack of meaningful economic alternatives. The second political force was a coalition of con- servative evangelical Christians, whose concerns about men who take advantage of “fallen women” stemmed from matters of conscience and strongly held beliefs about purity, innocence, virtue, sin, evil, and immorality. Their religiously motivated crusade centered on preserving traditional marriages and fami- lies rather than on liberating women from subordination to patriarchal control by opening up better opportunities that would enable them to become financially independent (see Chuang, 2010; and Bernstein, 2010).

The rediscovery process moved forward quickly after prominent figures spoke out.

President Clinton (2000) announced “…anti-trafficking provisions represent a major step forward in my Administra- tion’s ongoing effort to eradicate modern-day slavery. In 1998, I issued an Executive Memorandum directing my Administration to combat this insidious human rights abuse through a three-part strategy of prosecuting traffickers, pro- tecting and assisting trafficking victims, and preventing trafficking.… Over the past several years, we have taken every opportunity to shine a bright light on this dark corner of the criminal underworld, in part by continually raising with leaders around the world the need to work together to combat this intolerable and reprehensible practice.…”

President Bush (2003) intoned, “It takes a special kind of depravity to exploit and hurt the most vulnerable members of society. Human traffickers rob children of their innocence, they expose them to the worst of life before they have seen much of life. Traffickers tear families apart. They treat their victims as nothing more than goods and commodities for sale to the highest bidder.… Many victims are beaten. Some are killed. Others die spiritual and emotional deaths, convinced

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after years of abuse that their lives have no worth. This trade in human beings brings suffering to the innocent and shame to our country, and we will lead the fight against it.”

President Obama advanced similar arguments. He echoed the views of previous chief executives that human trafficking should be called by its real name, “modern slavery” and that the focus of strategies to combat this crime should continue at home, not just abroad. He declared, “The bitter truth is that trafficking also goes on right here. It’s the migrant worker unable to pay off the debt to his trafficker.... The teenage girl— beaten, forced to walk the streets. This should not be happen- ing in the United States of America” (Flock, 2012).

The discovery that sex trafficking wasn’t only a problem in distant lands but that it was cropping up here too added a sense of urgency that spurred people to action. As President Bush (2004) put it, “It is estimated that between 14,500 and 17,500 victims of trafficking cross our borders every year. U.S. law enforcement has documented cases of Latvian girls traf- ficked into sexual slavery in Chicago, or Ukrainian girls traf- ficked in Los Angeles, and Maryland, or Thai, Korean, Malaysian and Vietnamese girls trafficked in Georgia, or Mexican girls trafficked in California, New Jersey and here in Florida. Many of the victims are teenagers, some as young as 12 years old.”

In order to gain the greatest amount of support for the campaign, advocates socially constructed a “perfect victim” who did not voluntarily choose to leave her family and to sell her body. They promoted the image of an innocent young girl who was kidnapped from her remote village and then drugged, beaten, and broken in spirit until she was obedient and submissive; passed around and then sold into slavery; and later transported from her poverty-stricken source country through some transit country until she wound up as a virtual prisoner in a cruelly run brothel in some strange, far-off destination country. This socially constructed perfect victim—young, female, helpless, yearning to be rescued, protected, assisted, and given sanctuary—captured the pub- lic’s imagination. But what about those who did not fit this sympathy-evoking stereotype of the perfect victim? Women who were willing to be smuggled across borders and agreed to be “sex workers” in foreign settings, but did not foresee that they would be intimidated, stripped of their false identity papers, and strictly controlled, do not evoke the same degree of compassion from the public, police officers, prosecutors, judges, and immigration officials. Indifference can easily turn to outright hostility toward these “illegal aliens” who chose and consented to “prostitute themselves.” Somewhere in between are those naïve young women who were procured by

organized crime recruiters via employment scams: false pro- mises of decent-paying legitimate jobs in domestic settings as maids or nannies, or in modeling, or even as dancers in strip clubs. Instead, after overstaying their visa limits or entering the country with counterfeit documents that were later con- fiscated by the trafficker, they wound up as exploited undocumented workers, forced to submit to the demands of pimps, brothel managers, and customers in the commercial sex trade in order to pay off their border-crossing debts and to protect their families abroad from retaliation by the traf- ficker’s syndicate (Rieger, 2007; Lobasz, 2009; and Uy, 2011).

The United Nations declared its first “World Day against Trafficking in Persons” on July 30, 2014. Its Protocol to Pre- vent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons defined human trafficking as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduc- tion, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of pay- ments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.” Banned activities included “the exploitation of the prostitu- tion of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, ser- vitude, or the removal of organs” (Smilowitz, 2014).

In the United States, the definition of sex trafficking has broadened substantially over the years. Physical trans- port across international borders no longer was an essential part of the definition; crossing state boundaries within the United States became a sufficient trigger for federal prosecu- tion (U.S. Department of State, 2007). Later expansions of the definition even dropped the requirement of movement across state lines and simply focused on the use of force, coercion, or fraud to keep someone trapped in a condition of servitude (Farrell, McDevitt, and Fahey, 2010). The work- ing definition of sex trafficking used by local law enforce- ment agencies often boils down to a simple formulation: adult prostitution that involves coercion and any sexual exploitation of children (Gonzalez, 2013).

Because the definition has evolved so dramatically, activists currently work to raise awareness by dispelling the following myths and misconceptions: Trafficking does not necessarily involve smuggling or forced movement, transpor- tation, or border-crossing; physical force, physical abuse, or physical restraint does not have to take place; victims are not only foreign nationals or immigrants but can be males as well as females, adults as well as minors, and even well educated

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and affluent persons, not just poorly educated, poverty-stricken people; and the offense oftraffickingcan occureven if the victim consents and receives payment. However, certain populations remain especially vulnerable: undocumented immigrants; refu- gees and asylum seekers; runaways and homeless youth; mem- bers of groups that have been oppressed, marginalized, and impoverished; and individuals who have been severely abused and traumatized. Trafficked persons were mostly mired in the sex trade (brothels, escort services, massage parlors, street prostitution, and even strip clubs), or they were stuck perform- ing backbreaking labor, like planting and picking crops or land- scaping and construction, or menial jobs, especially in the hotel and hospitality industry; janitorial services; home, health, and elder care; and factories and sweatshops (Polaris Project, 2012). For example, a woman from another country who is hired as a nanny totendtoa child aroundthe clock without any timeoff, is provided with sparse meals and cramped quarters, and then is threatened with exposure and deportation (because she has overstayed her visa) if she complains about her predicament can be considered trafficked. Similarly, an undocumented day laborer who picks up occasional construction jobs but then is cheated out of his wages and intimidated from protesting because the employer warns him about a call to the immigration authorities is also being coercively exploited (Grant, 2013). As the original definition broadened to encompass so many more people and such a wide variety of situations, the number of persons designated as victims and the number of programs designed to assist them grew dramatically.

A search of journalism databases revealed that media coverage of the problem grew exponentially from a mere handful of articles at the start of the 1990s to about 3,750 in 2008 alone (Farrell et al., 2010).

Stage Two: Passing Legislation and Setting Up Assistance Programs

Raids against transnational trafficking rings, statements by world leaders, international conferences, and articles as well as popular movies depicting sexual slavery heightened pressures to “do something.” In response, the Clinton administration drafted a comprehensive approach that embodied the prosecution of profiteers, protections for trafficked persons, and prevention measures. In 1994, the U.S. Department of State declared traf- ficking across borders to be a severe violation of human rights and began to issue an annual “Trafficking in Persons Report” that monitored what other countries were doing to try to bring the problem under control. The State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons originally focused on the sexual exploitation of women and girls smuggled by inter- national rings feeding the demand for prostitutes but broadened its scope to include forced labor. Foreign nationals who assist investigations and prosecutions are eligible for the designation

“qualified victims,” and they might be granted “continued presence” and immigration relief (from deportation), which can lead to permission to work in legitimate jobs, legal residency, and eventual citizenship. Federally funded services (provided through contracts with NGOs) include medical, dental, and mental health care; sustenance and shelter; help with transla- tion and interpretation; legal assistance; and transportation (Jahic and Finckenauer, 2005; Lobasz, 2009; Chuang, 2010; and U.S. Department of State, 2011). However, to be eligible for these forms of support, plus possibly restitution and a visa, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services must certify that the person meets the hard to prove standards of a “severe traf- ficking victim” (George, 2012).

In 2000, an international agreement went into effect: the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. That same year, Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA). Both laws defined trafficking as the recruitment and movement of children, women, and men for the purpose of subjecting these victims to involuntary servitude in labor- intensive activities. The TVPA was reauthorized and strengthened in 2003, 2005, 2008, and 2013. The 2013 reauthorization strengthened efforts to ban child marriage and to prevent the purchase of products made by labor traf- ficking victims. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 enables government agencies to terminate any con- tracts with organizations and individuals that engage in or support trafficking (Polaris Project, 2014a; 2014b).

An Anti-Trafficking in Persons Division was set up in the Office of Refugee Resettlement that is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It funds the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC), which staffs a hotline and tipline.

The U.S. Department of Justice runs a Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and an Office for Victims of Crime (OVC). The BJA in cooperation with the OVC has funded 42 Anti-Human Trafficking Task Forces across the country, which pair law enforcement agencies with service providers in order to offer effective first responses to exploited persons. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division of the Department of Home- land Security runs a Human Smuggling and Trafficking Unit that seeks to locate individuals brought in from other countries. A Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center is a collaborative effort that involves the Department of State, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that functions as a repository of infor- mation about these illegal activities (Polaris Project, 2014a).

Besides the Department of Health and Human Services, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Justice, at least 15 international organi- zations participate in the global struggle to suppress human

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trafficking, including the United Nations, the International Labor Organization, the Organization of American States, the Association of Southeast Nations, and the World Bank (Lobasz, 2009).

On the home front, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation to combat sex and labor trafficking. However, most states still lack adequate laws to support and assist persons who have escaped, and 12 states had failed by 2014 to make even minimal efforts to pass such legislation, according to a rigorous rating system. The FBI’s efforts to disrupt human trafficking draw upon its Civil Rights Unit (CRU) and the Violent Crimes Against Children Section (VCACS). The CRU investigates forced labor; sex trafficking of adults by force, fraud, or coercion; and the sexual exploita- tion of foreign minors, while the VCACS focuses on the com- mercial exploitation of Americans under the age of 18 who have been drawn into the sex trade. The FBI has established close to 70 Child Exploitation Task Forces that operate around the country, in which its agents work in tandem with victim specialists from its Office for Victim Assistance, as well as state and local law enforcement agencies. The Bureau announced in 2014 that a nationwide crackdown on the sex trafficking of underage persons, part of its Innocence Lost initiative, swept up about 280 pimps and similar exploiters and led to the rescuing of nearly 170 minors from their con- trol. Since its creation in 2003, the Innocence Lost sting operations have resulted in the identification and recovery of approximately 3,600 sexually exploited minors (FBI, 2014a).

Activists have identified the immediate needs of per- sons extracted from the clutches of traffickers that ought to be provided by local law enforcement and social welfare agencies: temporary housing, assistance to relocate to another area, transportation on a daily basis, legal advice, and of course physical protection. Ideally, a trained counselor should be assigned to the rescued person’s case within a few hours (Gonzalez, 2013). Advocacy groups are developing and then recommending various “best practices” that fit within a victim-centered approach to prevent the smuggling and sale of human beings across national boundaries, to safeguard these rescued individuals from further harm, and to repatriate them to their country of origin or else reintegrate them into the destination society, at first with legal immigrant status and eventually with citizenship rights.

Stage Three: Challenges Arise and Opposition Emerges

No one approves of or defends involuntary servitude and sexual violence, but the crusade against human trafficking has provoked some opposition among thoughtful people and concerned groups for a number of reasons.

First of all, some activists share the moral outrage of the crusaders but feel that the widespread use of the

shocking phrase modern-day slavery is overly dramatic and an historically inaccurate equation of contemporary forms of servitude with the horrific institutionalized barbarism of the transatlantic slave trade that for several centuries relent- lessly brought fresh supplies of captive Africans to the new world as chattel to be bought, sold, and worked to near death (similarly, the very serious terms lynching, genocide, and holocaust can be inappropriately applied to lesser crimes).

Other critics are dismayed that this reform movement has become drawn into a divisive and intractable debate over the “oldest profession”: whether the sale of sexual favors is inherently coercive, invariably embodies female subordina- tion, and must be driven out of business by punishing prof- iteers, pimps, the women themselves, and their customers. Some argued that becoming a sex worker as an adult can be a voluntary and rational choice, and that these employees or independent contractors deserve economic rights, medical care, and basic legal protections rather than further stigma- tization and permanent criminal records that just drive their forbidden exchanges of erotic acts for money deeper under- ground where they become even more dangerous (see Grant, 2013). In 2003, the Bush administration reaffirmed its oppo- sition to pimping, pandering, and maintaining brothels as inherently harmful and dehumanizing and as furnishing an incentive for the international sex trade in females. This stance prohibited any nongovernmental service organizations that receive federal funding to help victims from supporting any toleration of prostitution as a solution to the trafficking problem. As a result, advocacy groups have become embroiled in a debate over prostitution, instead of focusing their ener- gies on devising improved services for individuals who feel trapped (see DeStefano, 2007; Chuang, 2010; Cavalieri, 2011; and Uy, 2011). Some defense attorneys representing indigents estimate that many, but not all, of their clients arrested on prostitution charges are, in fact, trafficked according to the current broadened definition, and many more have survived an extensive amount of brutality and trauma. But they ask why hyperbolic rhetoric that conflates prostitution with slavery usually leads to crackdowns in which the ostensible victims who are supposed to be rescued by raids instead are prosecuted, resulting in their facing jail time, possible deportation, warrants for failure to appear in court, and rap sheets that undermine their efforts to find jobs and housing in order to leave “the life” (Mugulescu, 2014).

Many concerned activists and advocacy groups feel that the media’s preoccupation with lurid stories about sex traf- ficking causes lawmakers and law enforcement agencies to lose sight of the more pervasive forms of people smuggling for the purposes of taking terrible advantage of them as migrant

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laborers as they toil in the fields, factories, and private homes of their exploitive employers (see Chuang, 2010; and Uy, 2011).

Similarly, an emphasis on the criminal justice approach to trafficking as a threat to border security (especially in a post-9/11 world) and as a way of smashing transnational organized syndicates draws substantial amounts of very lim- ited resources toward “crime-fighting” and away from efforts to protect and address the needs of victims (see Lobasz, 2009; Chuang, 2010; and Uy, 2011).

Finally, some skeptics suspect that the true magnitude of the problem has been exaggerated by campaigners who dissemi- nate shocking overestimates in order to arouse an otherwise jaded public (see Grant, 2013). They point out that the actual number of cases, successful prosecutions, and verified victims are tiny fractions of these large, widely circulated figures. For example, between 2000 and early 2007, federal agencies had certified only 1,175 people from 77 countries as victims of human trafficking (U.S. Department of State, 2007). During 2009, the State Department issued only about 600 T visas and Continuing Presence orders to cooperating victims (U.S. Department of State, 2011). Yet a CIA report in 2000 estimated that up to 50,000 women and children are trafficked into the United States each year for the sex trade (see Rieger, 2007). Other estimates came in lower; the yearly figure cited above by President Bush was about one-third the size of the CIA estimate but still way beyond the tiny number of rescued persons. On New York’s Long Island, an area reputed to be a hotbed of trafficking, not one arrest was made during 2005, and only one woman was rescued from pros- titution (Mead, 2006). As for the importation of teenage girls from abroad and from other parts of the United States to the streets of New York City for the purposes of prostitution, a fed- erally funded ethnographic study of underage sex workers found very few that could be considered “trafficked.” The estimates derived from the field interviews were surprising: Nearly half were boys; almost half were recruited into the sex trade by friends; only 1 in 10 were involved with pimps; over 9 in 10 were born in the United States; and more than half were native New Yorkers (see Curtis et al., 2008; and Hinman, 2011).

Several explanations attempt to account for this dis- crepancy between rough estimates and actual statistics. One is that the low numbers indicate that the U.S. government has not allocated sufficient resources to thoroughly train law enforcement officers and to fund extensive investigations into this problem and extract people from the clutches of traffickers and exploiters. A variation on this theme is that there is insufficient cooperation and coordination between the agencies tasked by the TVPA enforcement provisions with bringing this problem under control. But others suspect that the low numbers of substantiated cases reveal that political figures and advocacy groups may have greatly overestimated the prevalence of trafficking into (as well as within) the United States (see Farrell et al., 2010).

Stage Four: Research Findings Temporarily Resolve Disputes

The true intensity of the problem remains unknown since trafficking often goes undetected and unreported due to its covert nature, the reluctance of victims who feel vulnerable and fear reprisals to turn to the authorities for help, mis- conceptions about its definition, and a lack of awareness about it in some localities (Polaris Project, 2014b).

The first set of reasonably accurate statistics about the profiles of victims in human trafficking cases was derived from those federal task forces that collected “high-quality” data about their investigations during the period of 2008– 2010. A little over 525 confirmed victims were located in about 390 cases. Most of the investigations concerned sex trafficking rather than labor trafficking. In the sex trafficking cases, the overwhelming proportion of victims were female (94 percent). Also, the vast majority were younger than 25 years old (87 percent) and U.S. citizens (83 percent). As for the victims’ race and ethnicity, more were black (40 percent) and white (26 percent) than Hispanic or Asian. In the labor trafficking cases, most of the victims were over 24 years of age (62 percent), and more were males (32 percent), Hispanics (63 percent), and Asians (17 percent). None were U.S. citizens (Banks and Kyckkelhahn, 2011).

A portrait of the problem was drawn from nearly 1,500 individuals who considered themselves to be caught up in sex and labor trafficking and who directly contacted a hotline for victims during the five-year period from 2007 to 2012. The most common complaints about sex trafficking involved prostitutes controlled by pimps. The majority of these pimps recruited these young women in social settings by feigning romantic interest, by promising them that they would earn enough to enjoy the material comforts they longed for, and by discouraging them from having casual sex “for free.” Then they pressured them to perform sex acts at hotels, motels, truck stops, brothels, and streets for customers solicited through online advertisements. Most of the complaints about labor trafficking came from women from foreign nations stuck doing domestic work in the Northeast as well as in southern Florida and southern California, and from migrant farm workers. Minors were more likely to be exploited sexu- ally than through unpaid labor. Callers reported that they most often became trapped because of lies, false promises, and debts (Polaris Project, 2013).

Victimologists want to discover why many individuals caught up in these oppressive situations do not run to the authorities for help. In other words, what can be done to increase the reporting rate? Exactly how do the traffickers lure or deceive their targets (presumably through false promises of a better life and ploys about legitimate jobs); how do they recruit children (perhaps by capitalizing on their innocence and

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naïveté, sometimes with parental complicity); and how do they dominate and intimidate those who find themselves trapped into involuntary servitude, even when chances to escape their predicament repeatedly arise? Are victims immobilized because their exploiters confiscate all their documents, take advantage of language barriers, threaten reprisals against loved ones at home in the source country, and scare them about deportation if they dare seek help? Perhaps some individuals who enter the country improperly and toil mightily don’t perceive themselves to be trafficking victims—they don’t realize that exploitive relationships that might be acceptable back home may fall under the heading of trafficking here. Whether these explana- tions are sufficient, relevant, and comprehensive needs to be further researched by directly interviewing victims who have been extracted, perhaps unwillingly, from their perilous life- styles (see George, 2003; Landesman, 2004; Bureau of Public Affairs, 2005; Glaberson, 2005; Saunders, 2005; Rieger, 2007; Uy, 2011; and Dank, 2014).

The murder of several border crossers in Arizona by smugglers (called “coyotes”) holding them hostage in frus- trated attempts to extort more money from their families back home indicated the depth of the perils victims face (Fulginiti, 2008). A surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America across the nation’s southern border during 2014 raised the specter of homeless youth ripe for sexual

exploitation (Hulse, 2014). Furthermore, studies based on surveys completed by municipal and county police depart- ments have concluded that most of these law enforcement agencies lacked sufficient policies and adequate training to accurately identify trafficking victims and successfully investigate their cases (Wilson, Walsh, and Kleuber, 2006; Farrell et al., 2010; and George, 2012).

The FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have compiled lists of behaviors and situations to help investigators from the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and state and local law enforce- ment and child protection agencies, to better recognize traf- ficking victims if they encounter them in their daily duties. Officers and concerned members of the general public should be on the lookout for the potential signs of being trafficked for the purpose of exploitation in the sex trade or for debt peonage. These clues appear in Table 2.1.

Whether the problem is growing or subsiding and whether specific government assistance and rescue efforts are effective remain subjects of controversy that require addi- tional research. This is why the plight of trafficking victims within the United States can be considered to have arrived at Stage 4 of the rediscovery process.

T A B L E 2.1 Possible Indicators That a Person Is a Trafficking Victim

Does the individual …?

■ Live on or very close to the work premises ■ Bunk in a sparse place with many other occupants ■ Lack personal space and possessions ■ Frequently move from one work site to another ■ Appear unfamiliar with how to get around the neighborhood ■ Seem unable to travel around freely ■ Admit that he/she cannot socialize with outsiders and attend religious services ■ Disclose that he/she was recruited for one line of work but then was compelled to perform other tasks ■ Confide that earnings are garnished and held by someone else ■ Indicate that identification and travel documents are held by someone else ■ Appear to have been coached about what to say to immigration and police officers ■ Seem unable to talk openly and to communicate freely with family and friends ■ Look injured from beatings or show signs of malnourishment or lack of medical treatment ■ Defer to someone else who insists on speaking or interpreting for him/her ■ Claim to be represented by the same attorney that handles the cases of many other

undocumented workers (illegal aliens)

SOURCES: Blue Campaign, 2010; Walker-Rodriguez and Hill, 2011.

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SUMMARY

Laws that recognized that individuals harmed by offen- ders deserved governmental support and economic aid were passed centuries ago, but until the middle of the twentieth century, the plight of crime victims was largely overlooked, even by most criminologists.

Today, the plight of victims is being brought to the public’s attention by journalists covering the crime beat, social movements mobilizing in behalf of certain individuals and groups who embody their causes and agendas, elected officials seeking voters’ support, and commercial interests advertising pro- ducts and services to guard against victimization.

The rediscovery process goes through four stages. After a group’s plight becomes known and reforms are implemented, an opposition frequently arises that resists further changes that might be to the group’s advantage. When conflicts arise, victi- mologists can help resolve them by studying how seriously these newly rediscovered groups actually suffer, if their numbers are really growing or declin- ing, and whether reform measures and efforts designed to assist them are genuinely working as intended.

KEY TERMS DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY

bias crimes, 43

Brady Bill, 45

children’s rights groups, 44

civil court, 40

civil liberties movement, 44

civil rights movement, 42

claims-making, 55

elder abuse, 44

English common law, 40

false memory syndrome, 57

law-and-order movement, 42

Megan’s Law, 46

plea negotiation, 41

public prosecutors, 40

self-help movement, 44

sensationalism, 47

street crimes, 40

tort law, 40

trafficking in human beings, 58

women’s movement, 42

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND DEBATE

1. Identify some of the most important milestones in the history of academic victimology.

2. Highlight some of the first breakthroughs in victim assistance.

3. Summarize what happens at each stage of the rediscovery process.

4. Explain how the campaign to rescue victims of human trafficking has sparked some controversies.

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS

1. Identify a group of victims of some specific illegal activity who still has not been rediscov- ered and was not mentioned in this chapter. Describe the kinds of harm this group might be experiencing.

2. Argue that the rediscovery of victims by the news media, elected officials, and commercial enterprises is a “mixed blessing” by stressing the downside: the potential for exploiting their plight for some ulterior purpose such as per- sonal gain or profiting from their suffering.

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SUGGESTED RESEARCH PROJECTS

1. Find out about some recently proposed or passed laws in your state that have been named in honor of crime victims. In each case, ask whether this legislation offers anything specific—other than ratcheted-up punishment of the offender—to ease the victim’s plight.

2. Choose a group from the list in Box 2.2 whose plight is currently being rediscovered. Pose questions that researchers ought to examine. Find out about the composition of this group,

the nature of its losses, and the efforts now underway to ease its suffering.

3. Choose several groups whose plight is now well known, such as physically abused children, kidnapped children, battered women, abused elders, or carjacked motorists. Find out about how their plight was first rediscovered by looking up the oldest or earliest articles that appear in a comprehensive database of news- paper, magazine, and journal articles.

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