Samenvatting - Victimology and the Criminal Justice System
Outline of the course
o Within the programme: part of the criminology programme
o However here the focus is on crime and the reaction to crime from the perspective of the
victim
o Explicitly interdisciplinary: legal, sociological, psychological and cultural perspectives, as well
as the interaction between these perspectives;
o Complementary to other introduction courses
Goals:
Acquiring knowledge of and insight into victimological perspectives
Development of competencies: applying social science theories to societal phenomena,
approaching societal phenomena from different perspectives
Developing a critical attitude to criminological-victimological phenomena
Victimology: history and perspectives
Victimology: since when?
A: 33 AD -> Jezus was born
B: 1885 -> term criminology was launched
C: 1948 -> Victimology!
D: 1985
Outline
At the end of this lecture you:
Have a clear sense of the history of victimology
Have an overview of the main perspectives in victimology
Different perspectives on victimology - here the real lesson starts
International legal perspectives?
Criminological perspectives
Social psychological perspectives
Justice perspectives
Clinical psychological perspectives
Critical perspectives
Narrative perspectives
1
, The crime of genocide
1948: Lemkin: the crime of genocide (Sands, 2016)
Genocide convention:
International crimes/ Crimes against humanity”
1947: If this is a man
Primo Levi: If this is a man, aka Survival in Auschwitz
See also Jean Amery At the minds limits
Experiences with the Shoah as important victimological work
International legal perspectives
Truth commissions à most well-known Truth and
Reconciliation Commission of South Africa
International Criminal Tribunals of Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s
Rome-statute 1998
Supranational victimology/ criminology: very recent à most work in this area does not refer
to victimology
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/22/east-west-street-origin-genocide-crimes-against-
humanity-philippe-sands-review
https://www.law.kuleuven.be/home/eredoctoraat-voor-philippe- sands
Coined the word victimology? Benjamin Mendelsohn
2
Outline of the course
o Within the programme: part of the criminology programme
o However here the focus is on crime and the reaction to crime from the perspective of the
victim
o Explicitly interdisciplinary: legal, sociological, psychological and cultural perspectives, as well
as the interaction between these perspectives;
o Complementary to other introduction courses
Goals:
Acquiring knowledge of and insight into victimological perspectives
Development of competencies: applying social science theories to societal phenomena,
approaching societal phenomena from different perspectives
Developing a critical attitude to criminological-victimological phenomena
Victimology: history and perspectives
Victimology: since when?
A: 33 AD -> Jezus was born
B: 1885 -> term criminology was launched
C: 1948 -> Victimology!
D: 1985
Outline
At the end of this lecture you:
Have a clear sense of the history of victimology
Have an overview of the main perspectives in victimology
Different perspectives on victimology - here the real lesson starts
International legal perspectives?
Criminological perspectives
Social psychological perspectives
Justice perspectives
Clinical psychological perspectives
Critical perspectives
Narrative perspectives
1
, The crime of genocide
1948: Lemkin: the crime of genocide (Sands, 2016)
Genocide convention:
International crimes/ Crimes against humanity”
1947: If this is a man
Primo Levi: If this is a man, aka Survival in Auschwitz
See also Jean Amery At the minds limits
Experiences with the Shoah as important victimological work
International legal perspectives
Truth commissions à most well-known Truth and
Reconciliation Commission of South Africa
International Criminal Tribunals of Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s
Rome-statute 1998
Supranational victimology/ criminology: very recent à most work in this area does not refer
to victimology
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/22/east-west-street-origin-genocide-crimes-against-
humanity-philippe-sands-review
https://www.law.kuleuven.be/home/eredoctoraat-voor-philippe- sands
Coined the word victimology? Benjamin Mendelsohn
2
