Victimology
A Discipline in Transition
2019
Ezzat A. Fattah
The motivation to perpetrate a victimizing act comes into being through needs, urges and drives. It emerges from contacts, communications, interactions, attitudes and counter-attitudes. Not infrequently, the prospective victim is involved consciously or unconsciously in the motivational process as well as in the process of mental reasoning and rationalization the victimizer engages in prior to the commission of the crime. The study of crime victims has become an integral part of criminology. In fact victimology has the potential of reshaping the entire field of criminology. It may very well provide the long-awaited paradigm shift that criminology badly needs, given the dismal failure of its traditional paradigms, such as the search for the causes of crime, deterrence, rehabilitation, treatment, just deserts, etc. Unfortunately, this highly ambitious goal remains, to date, an unfulfilled promise.