The Victimology

Victimology as a discipline (Mendelsohn) was born of criminology, after the Second World War, in order to deal with the scientific study of the victims, in response to the fact that both law, criminology and even forensic psychology were had focused only on the offender or offender, paying little attention to the aggrieved party.

Classification and types of victims (Landrove)

1.- Non-Participating Victims (or Fungible): also called entirely innocent or ideal. His intervention does not trigger the criminal act; the relationship between the offender and the victim is irrelevant. In turn, within this category are distinguished between accidental and indiscriminate victims. The former are replaced by chance in the path of criminals, as is the case, for example, of the client who is on a bench at the time of an armed robbery, or who suffers a violation derived from the reckless driving of an inebriated person. The latter comprise an even broader sector than the previous one, since at no time supports any link with the culprit. The traditional example is the anti-terrorist, in which there are often no personal reasons against the injured (collateral damage).

2.Participant Victims (or Infungibles): play a certain role in the origin of crime, voluntarily intervening or not, in the criminal dynamics. This is the case in some cases of unpredictability of the victim (when he does not close the access roads to the home, leaves a valuable object in the vehicle, walks into the night through a dangerous neighborhood, etc.). intervention is more decisive, provoking the event, which arises as retaliation or revenge against his performance. Likewise, there is talk of alternative victims, alluding to those who voluntarily stand in a position of being, depending on chance as a victim or victimizer (as in a duel or fight). Finally, the greatest contribution occurs in the case of voluntary victims, who instigate the crime or freely agree (euthanasia, homicide, suicide ...)

3. Family Victims: they belong to the family nucleus of the offender, and are in a situation of special vulnerability because of their living or domestic relationship with him (which in turn explains the wide "black figure" of the crimes produced in this environment) . Abuse and sexual assault in the home mainly have the weakest members as the passive object: women and children.

4. Collective Victims: In crimes that harm or endanger certain assets whose ownership does not correspond to a natural person, but to a legal entity, the community or the state: financial crimes, consumer fraud, computer crime, and other frauds of what is often called white-collar crime. In all these infractions, it is worth noting the depersonalization, collectivization and anonymity with respect to the relationships between offender and offender.

5. Especially Vulnerable Victims: those subjects who for various reasons offer a specific victimogenic predisposition. These circumstances include age, as it is often harder for children and the elderly to provide effective resistance. Also the physical or psychic state of the subject, due to the greater weakness caused by certain diseases and disabilities; race, which motivates the victimization of some minorities; and sex, being generally female the victim of certain crimes produced in the family environment, labor, etc. Homosexuality is at the base of some infractions (blackmail, physical aggression ...). There are also social factors that provide this greater victimization: the economic position, the lifestyle, the location of the house, the treatment of marginal groups, etc., as well as the risk inherent in the exercise of some professions (policemen, , employees of banks, pharmacists ...), and particularly the practice of prostitution.

6. Symbolic victims: some people suffer acts aimed at undermining a certain system of values, political party, ideology, sect or family, to which the aggrieved belongs, being a representative element of them; the murders of Martin Luther King or Aldo Moro are often cited as examples.

7. False victims: they denounce in crime that in fact it has not existed, offering a double modality: simulators, who act consciously putting the process in order in order to provoke a judicial error; e, imaginary, who mistakenly believe (for psychological reasons, or psychic immaturity) to have suffered a criminal act.

In conclusion, we could roughly consider how a physical / behavioral interaction, observable and multivariable, that for its commission needs the "criminal or criminal couple" composed of the actions and omissions of both the aggressor or the victimizer, as well as the victim in question.

Thus the study of the victim (from the Latin "defeated") for the forensic psychology, is particularly important as far as the "participant or triggering role" that corresponds to them. Psychologists, as well as professionals in the field of forensics, authorities and even citizens, should be aware of the causal relationship that exists between the occurrence of the crime and the contribution of the aggrieved in their victimization, for which and for the analysis of behavior criminal, it is essential the technical exercise of being able to determine what are the contributions of both the aggressor and the victim in the criminal act.

The word victim does not have a unique meaning, but is attributed different meanings according to the context in which it is used, so that sometimes it is synonymous with aggrieved or offended by crime, while in others it is presented in a more loose and considers any person (natural and legal) or number of these who suffer from natural or human causes.