Review of The Victim of a Crime

Theoretical treatment of questions pertaining to the individual victimized by a crime and his behavior and role in the commission of the crime is essential for purposes of practical struggle with crime and for crime prevention. This book not only centers its attention on this subject, important for theory and practice, but also contains a further development of the subject. The authors have chosen to study questions pertaining to the victim, analysis of which was furthered by the completeness with which the subject is dealt with, the high level of scholarship, and the practical usefulness of the approach. Moreover, they did not confine themselves to questions relating to purely legal disciplines but examined a range of social relationships (criminological, psychological, and moral). The book interprets the concept of victimization-prone as "the possibility of becoming the sufferer from a crime in a situation when the outcome could, objectively, have been prevented" (p. 13). It would appear to us that the most successful aspect of the book is the treatment of the qualities and actions of the citizen leading to his being a victim and, consequently, placing him in the position of a damaged party.