Victimology

In the rush to investigate crime, it is not difficult to become distracted by an understandable interest in criminal behaviors and motivations and forget the value of understanding victims. Those with an interest in criminal profiling, for example, often raise the question of how emotionally taxing and intellectually challenging it must be to see through the eyes of a criminal- as though criminal profiling has everything to do with this and as though the criminal should be more important than the victim. Overfocus on the offender is understandable as the victim is not always front and centre in the justice system, or during the investigation for that matter. There can be no doubt that part of the reason for this absence of attention is because it is not easy to study victims, emotionally or politically.