Ezzat Fattah

• Simon Fraser University

How is it that punishment has become synonymous with justice and that justice has become a euphemism for punishment? How is it that justice and punishment have become almost interchangeable terms? How is it that slogans such as ‘justice for victims’ are invariably interpreted as demands for more and harsher punishments. Is punishment truly synonymo...

The international course in criminology has an impressive history and is universally considered to be one of the major scholarly events in the field of criminology. Organized jointly by the International Society of Criminology (Paris) and one of the world's leading universities, the course has been held in various cities and capitals all over the g...

The tragic accidental death of Nils Christie was a huge loss to the scholarly worlds of criminology and victimology. An old dear friend and highly esteemed colleague, Christie has been hailed as one of the most innovative criminological thinkers of the 20th century. He left an outlasting legacy to both criminology and victimology. His contributions...

Despite dramatic social changes and unprecedented technological innovations penal philosophy has undergone little change. Retribution continues to be the key principle in sentencing and judges continue their hopeless struggle to make the punishment fit the crime. It is truly baffling that the CJS has remained archaic in its philosophy, its outlook...

Populaires à la naissance de la victimologie, les études individuelles de victimes de crimes spécifiques ont été éclipsées, dans les années 1970, par des enquêtes de victimisation à grande échelle, l’approche micro cédant alors la place à une approche macro. Le but premier de ces enquêtes consistait à déterminer le volume de victimisation, à identi...

It would be unthinkable to speak about the penal system and penal reform without remembering and referring to one of the greatest penal reformers of all time, the pioneer after whom this society is named, the great John Howard, the man who spent the best years of his life in continuous efforts and indefatigable attempts to improve prison conditions...

In most geotechnical problems, it is too difficult to predict soil and structural behavior accurately, because of the large variation in soil parameters and the assumptions of numerical solutions. But recently many geotechnical problems are solved using Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, by presenting new solutions or developing existing ones...

In most geotechnical problems, it is too difficult to predict soil and structural behavior accurately, because of the large variation in soil parameters and the assumptions of numerical solutions. But recently many geotechnical problems are solved using Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, by presenting new solutions or developing existing ones...

Die gewalttätige Viktimisierung ist in keiner Gesellschaft gleichmäßig auf alle Menschen verteilt. Die Opfer von Gewalt stellen daher nie einen unverzerrten Querschnitt der Gesamtbevölkerung dar. Das Erleiden von Gewalttätigkeit häuft sich vielmehr in bestimmten Gruppierungen, die weitaus verletzlicher für Gewalt sind und ihr eher zum Opfer fallen...

This is not my publication! Thank You! I am a criminolgist/victimologist. Ezzat A. Fattah

As popular as victimology has become, it is surprising that no comprehensive history of the discipline has ever been written and there are no systematic assessments of its present state or of likely future developments. The present paper is an attempt to remedy this situation. Victimology is a young, promising discipline and a fascinating subject....

Since the dawn of scientific criminology, criminologists have tried to find out why some individuals become criminal while others do not. They conducted countless studies to discover whether criminals are different in any respect from non-criminals. An equally interesting and thought-provoking question is ‘Why do some individuals become victims of...

In his introduction to the edited book The Futures of Criminology, Nelken (1994:2) has this to say about the future of criminology: … if futurology were the aim, the safest prediction of the immediate future of the discipline (as in the prediction of recidivism) would be that it would see more of the same sort of work which currently represents the...

Since it emerged as a scientific discipline in the 19th century, criminology has exhibited and continues to exhibit a clear bias. Research and theory have focused on crimes by the powerless, not the powerful; crime in the streets, not crime in the suites; conventional crime, not white collar crime; crime by individuals, not crime by governments and...

The term criminal, as currently used, has a strong pejorative connotation. It is a value-laden term, which conveys, more than most other terms used to designate those who violate the law, society’s hatred, contempt, and disapproval. In recent years, there has been a tendency in criminological literature to replace the term ‘criminal’ with more neut...

During the second half of the 20th century, criminology gradually established itself as a scientific discipline. The existing body of knowledge, the volume of research being carried out, the number of publications, the number of learned journals, and the number of colleges and universities offering courses and degrees in criminology, as well as the...

Throughout the Middle Ages, humans were perceived as selfish by nature and irremediably bad. The individual had to be severely contained and restrained, to be protected against natural selfishness, and preserved from temptation.

Since crime is as old as society, why is it that the scientific search for its causes did not begin until the 19th century? Prior to the 18th century human actions were attributed to a ‘Divine Will’, and it was generally believed that both natural and social phenomena obey ‘Divine Laws.’ Supernatural forces were held responsible for pushing people...

Before devoting his entire time to teaching and writing, Tarde worked for several years as a magistrate, and was at one time head of the Statistics Service within the French ministry of justice. In addition to numerous articles, Tarde published many books, three of which are of particular interest to criminology. These are: Comparative Criminality...

Mainstream criminologists are generally criticized for accepting the criminal law and the legal definitions of crime as givens and for paying little attention to the historical origins of the criminal law or to the social processes by which the criminal law is made and changed. In contrast, critical criminology questions the raison d’être of the cr...

If criminology is the science of crime, then we might start this book by asking: Why study crime? What is so important or specific about crime that makes it necessary to have a distinct and specialized field of study devoted to it? The popular answer, found in most criminology textbooks, that ‘crime is a major social problem’ masks the enormous var...

The general public is generally under the impression that crime can be easily and reliably counted in much the same way that inches of rainfall or snow, hours of sunshine, traffic or labour accidents, are counted. And although people may occasionally exhibit some scepticism regarding crime figures or crime rates they are usually unaware of how diff...

The term ‘crime’ is as central to criminology as the term ‘society’ is to sociology. Criminology may be loosely defined as ‘the study of crime’ or as ‘the science of crime’, and a definition of crime is therefore essential for our understanding of what criminology is all about. A definition of crime is also necessary for determining who is a crimin...

In the 1930s criminology was the subject of a scathing critique by Michael and Adler (1933) (see Chapter 7). Half a century later, Albert Reiss Jr. (1981b:3) reminded criminologists that: The body of knowledge that we think of as criminology owes more to models and theories from psychology and sociology than from any other discipline. Criminology,...

The purpose of the paper is to present some reflexions on the cultural relativity of victimization. It argues against the widely held belief among victimologists that victimization can be universally defined. Like crime, victimization can be seen as a cultural construct. The paper presents many examples illustrating the cultural relativity of victi...

In her penetrating analysis of the emergence of child abuse as a social issue and its rapid placement on the policy agenda, Barbara Nelson (1984) borrowed from electoral research a distinction between ‘valence issues’ and ‘position issues’. A valence issue, she explains, is one that elicits a single, strong, fairly uniform emotional response and do...

The United Nations declaration owes its existence to a few dedicated individuals within and outside the UN. Miss Irene Mellup, who used to work in the Crime Prevention Section of the UN in New York, was mainly interested in a declaration on victims of abuse of power, while Professor Irvin Waller of the University of Ottawa was primarily preoccupied...

Towards a Critical Victimology offers a serious challenge to the law and order perspective on victims' rights and the false contest that is usually created between those rights and the rights of offenders. It sheds light on the way victim initiatives emerged, the timing of those initiatives, their seemingly ulterior motives, and the political inter...

This is a book different from the usual criminology texts, dozens of which are published every year. . . . Instead of asking why some people commit crime whereas others do not, the main purpose here is to find out why some individuals, households, or businesses become victims while others do not; why some are more frequently victimized than others;...

The study concerned 50 cases occurring throughout Austria between 1950 and 1962 where murder was committed for the purpose of robbing the victim. Fifty-nine convicted killers and 61 victims were involved and 1950 was chosen as the starting point of the research in order to avoid undue influence from the extraordinary factors affecting criminality d...

Early victimological notions were developed not by criminologists or sociologists but by poets, writers and novelists. These include Thomas De Quincey, Khalil Gibran, Aldous Huxley, Marquis de Sade, Franz Werfel among others. The first systematic treatment of victims of crime appeared in 1948 in Hans von Hentig’s book The Criminal and his Victim.1...

Even though the elderly may be victimized less frequently than we might expect, this does not necessarily mean that crime does not touch the lives of many older people. If large numbers of the elderly, even though they have not been personally victimized, anticipate that they may become objects of criminal harm, then in a sense, they may be said to...

The continuing growth in the size of the elderly population means that increasing numbers of elderly people will come into contact with the criminal justice system in one capacity or another. As mentioned in chapter two, the numbers of those who come into conflict with the law and who are handled by the justice authorities seem to be growing. It is...

The next several chapters shift attention away from the study of elderly persons as offenders and toward the study of elderly victims of crime. Social scientific interest in the analysis of victim processes is relatively recent and may be seen as representing one aspect of a significant broadening of the criminological paradigm which began in the 1...

In this chapter we will explore patterns and causes of criminal victimization of the elderly. More specifically, we are interested in an exploration of the types and levels of victimization risks, the social settings within which elderly victimizations occur and the theoretical accounts that are intended to explain these patterns. In order to accom...

What occurs in the aftermath of criminal vicitmization? How do individuals assess the problems that Victimization has created for them and how do they cope with these problems? Thus far in our examination of criminal victimization of the elderly we have focused upon the determinants and the content of victimization experiences. We have discussed th...

At what age should a person, male or female, be considered old? When does “middle age” cease and “old age” begin? There is no satisfactory or universal answer to these questions. Aging is a process and there is no agreed cut-off age between these two phases of life. The selection of age 65 as the demarcation between middle and old age is, therefore...

Since the dawn of scientific criminology, age has been identified as the most important criminological variable. On the basis of their statistical studies of criminality, Guerry and Quetelet declared that age is the factor that has the greatest impact on crime. In 1839 Quetelet wrote: of all the causes which influence the development of propensity...

Criminal etiology is probably the most problematic and least successful field of study in the discipline of criminology. One reason, of course, is the complex nature of crime. No crime can be traced to a single cause. Causes of crime are multiple, varied and interwoven. Some causes may be endogenic (characteristic of the individual or his or her or...

For many people, elderly victimization is more a pragmatic than a theo­retical concern. Thus, they may be interested in this issue not because of the intellectual puzzles that it presents but because they believe that it is necessary to “do something” about it. In this chapter we focus upon programs, services and strategies intended to ameliorate t...

Within recent years, criminological images of the elderly have undergone a significant modification. As Gordon (1987:116) notes: The image of the elderly as victims of conventional “street” crime is being replaced by a view in which the family and private nursing home settings appear as more hazardous environments.

It is difficult to trace the movement of elderly offenders in and out of the provincial prison and federal penitentiary systems in Canada. It is also difficult to tell how many old inmates there are at any given time in Canadian prisons and penitentiaries. The numbers will vary according to which age is taken as the starting point beyond which a pr...

As mentioned earlier, elderly offenders are, like the criminal population in general, a very heterogeneous group. Their only common denominator is their old age. They differ as to the age of onset of their delinquency, the nature, frequency and intensity of their criminal activities, the length and persistence of their delinquent careers, the time...

Children are easy victims. They are weak, frail, and extremely vulnerable. Under certain age, they are incapable of defending themselves, retaliating or even complaining and constitute, therefore, ideal targets for victimization. Victimization of children is as old as mankind itself. Infanticide was probably one of the earliest crimes. It is the ul...

What is power? What is abuse of power? Although these may seem to be easy questions there is no universal or unanimously agreed upon definition of what power is or of what constitutes abuse of that power. Weber viewed power as the opportunity to fulfil one’s own wishes despite the resistance of other participants in the social act in question. Lern...

Crime and Victimization of the Elderly provides a "state-of-the-art" review of the social scientific literature relating to the crime problems of older persons. Building upon a broad interdisciplinary base, the volume addresses a wide range of issues that will prove to be of interest and value to criminology and gerontology students and to practici...

An examination of the impact of victimization on those who are victimized, their response to the crimes and the services needed for crime victims. It looks at the traditional victims, women and children, as well as some usually neglected groups such as victims of abuse of power and state terrorism.

Elderly people have a relatively low likelihood of becoming a victim of crime, compared with other age groups. Theft rather than violence constitutes the bulk of offences against them. Criminological research indicates that it is not vulnerability but lifestyle and the amount of time spent out of the home which are pre-disposing factors. However, w...

Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in the victims of crime. Today there seems to be a genuine concern in our society for this disenfranchised and neglected group of citizens who suffer the direct consequences of criminality. Ever since the State monopolized the right to criminal prosecution and converted the “Wergeld,” i.e. the indem...

The behavior of victims during victimization and responses to confrontational victimization have received scant attention from researchers. Very little research has been done to determine how victims react to face-to-face victimization, why they react the way they do, and why, in identical or similar situations, some persons are more likely to suff...

Literature on terrorists and terrorism is abundant, but very little is written on the victim. Whether the studies are published by psychologists or political scientists, by psychiatrists or sociologists, data on the victim are conspicuous by their absence. There is hardly any mention of how victims of terrorism are chosen, their characteristics, th...

Most theories of criminal and deviant behavior, whether attempting to define causation or association, offer only static explanations. However, since criminal behavior is dynamic, the present author contends that it can be explained only through a dynamic approach, in which the delinquent, the act, and the victim are inseparable elements of a total...

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