Now I want to make a significant distinction between the two theorists here. Von Hintick is working in the 1940s. Mendelssohn is working within the 1950s when he first sees his work. Von Hintick is a professor, a scholar, working inside the academy.
and Mendelsohn is a practicing attorney. Now, automatically, what you see is two different visions of reality. In the academy, I mean, even though there was a lot of qualitative work being done...
in some academic environments like University of Chicago for example Robert Merton and strain theory and all that comes to mind a lot of researchers you know just did their work in offices and they never went out anywhere they theorize things but they had no understanding of reality because most of the things that they came up with was a result of what's going on inside their head as opposed to someone like Mendelson who's a practicing attorney he's in the court system he deals with criminals, he deals with victims, he deals with lawyers, he deals with judges. He understands that reality so he sees a different reality so his vision is different. He's not an academic, he's an attorney, but he has ideas about victimology though that he wants to propose then and because of that what we see then is two specifically different visions of society and theoretical development that emerges then out of the two different perspectives then.
It's very important in terms of understanding the nature of the qualitative structure and the nature of the quantitative structure where quantitative researchers are more involved in statistics and numbers and things of that nature, qualitative researchers are more involved in the quality of a phenomena, life itself. This is why we consider Mendelssohn the father of victimology because like Hintzik, he was intrigued by the dynamics that take place between victims and offenders. But what he decided discovered something that von Hintzik overlooked completely or was that there is a strong interpersonal relationship between the victims and the offender. Now go back and picture the criminal victim dyad. Put those two variables side by side and from a structural functional standpoint what's missing?
How do you explain what brings them together in time and space? Because von Hintzik does not explain that. So we have no idea how they created the dyad but a dyad is not interested in how they come together they're just interested in structure here they are accept them as they are and let me go off the deep end theoretically now see because von hentick is not studying it within the context of as sutherland argued within the social structural context he's not studying it from that framework where mendelsohn is saying yeah you have to study it within the social structural context because guess what that's where crime is occurring and so So how do people come together in time and space?
Because you know what? Theoretically, maybe there's an interpersonal relationship between them. It doesn't have to mean that they're like boyfriend and girlfriend or husband and wife or anything like that.
It doesn't have to mean that. What it means is that because of the fact that they are human beings, they live in the social world, and so there is an interpersonal relationship that's socially oriented that brings them together. So you have to examine it within that context to understand, then, the integration between them. the crime and the victimization. If you can understand what brings them together in time and space then guess what?
You can build a research model then that looks at those characteristics and then set up a framework to prevent them from coming together or a way to intervene which is what a research model is supposed to be designed to do. To get at this he produced in a six-step classification based on legal considerations. considerations of the degree of the victim's blame. See, not just subjective considerations, but legal. And what he is looking at, he says, you have to consider the degree of the victim's blame.
So he's not saying, okay, well, Von Hintzik is entirely wrong, but I mean, but is that the way it happens in every situation? Because like we said, yeah, there's a possibility of an agent provocateur somewhere, but the thing is he's saying, but everything that Von Hintzik said was blamed. the victim but he's saying but maybe there's degrees of it and we have to look at within that period so instead of developing a set of categories let's do a classification system here and what you'll find in his work is a system that reflects more measurement although it's not truly empirically based because because Mendelsohn is an attorney he's not you know working within the context of you know you quantitative research but look at how he develops this typology and then think about it in comparison to von hendrix first of all he says there is the completely innocent victim and then there are victims with minor guilt of victims due to innocence then he says there are victims as guilty and the offender and that there are voluntary victims and that there's victims more guilty than the offender And also there are simulating or imaginary victims. So here's a six-step classification.
This six-step classification has an error of measurement to it because it goes from one extreme to another. There's a sense of degrees here, from completely innocent to someone who's simulating or imagining themselves as a victim then. So, for example, when he says there's a completely innocent victim, Well, look, there are situations where he says there's no provocative or facilitating behavior prior to the attack. So you don't blame the victim.
They had nothing to do with it. There are obviously the situations and cases like that. But he says also, OK, but then there could be victims with minor guilt.
OK, well, maybe they did something that inadvertently placed them in a compromising position before the victimization. You didn't say necessarily that they were to blame, but they inadvertently. place themselves. That means you made a mistake.
You walked into a situation and maybe you didn't read the room correctly. You didn't understand what was going on and so you became a victim. But that's not your fault. You don't blame the victim.
But there are also victims guilty as defender and the voluntary victim. So he talks about suicides and people that are injured while engaging in vice crimes and other victimless offenders. Okay. So interestingly, suicide is considered a crime.
And in fact, it's considered a homicide. So when a person commits an act of suicide, well, they're the offender and the victim. And so homicide detectives will come to the scene, and once the coroner or pathologist, medical examiner, determines this is a suicide, okay, they'll do just basic investigation and then label it a suicide.
And so there you have the victim and the offender all in one spot. So is the victim to blame? Yeah, they are guilty as the offender because they're both the victim and the offender. The voluntary victims.
So these people, parties are injured while engaging in vice crimes and other victimless offenders. These are interesting people, okay? So you're, you know, playing dice in a back alley someplace, okay? And you lose your entire paycheck or something like that, okay? You come home, honey, I got robbed on the way home, okay?
Well, the reality of the situation is, no, you are involved in a vice yourself, okay, and you lost all your money, so now, you know, you're the victim. Yeah, but you're the victim of your own nefarious devices here. So it's your fault that you are to blame for your own victimization then.
He also says victimless offenders. That was kind of strange. Victimless offenders. I don't know.
Make up your own mind about that. You're an offender and you have no victim, but somehow you offend somebody. What does that mean? I'll leave that to you all to decide. Then the victim more guilty than the offender.
Well, these are situations where the victim instigates or provokes the criminal act. Okay, are there situations like that? Yeah, just like the agent provocateur. Of course there are.
Offender who ends up the victim, the criminal who ends up the victim is the most guilty victim. Because they are criminals, they went out to commit a crime, and somehow in the process of committing that crime, the tables got turned on them, so they are the most guilty victim then. Simulating or imaginary victim, well, this is a person that lay claims to having been victimized to cover up other activities, just like I was just saying. You know, you were gambling someplace, you lost all your money, okay, and so now you come home, you can't explain that, so you claim to have been robbed or something like that.
And honey, I lost it. the check, you know, because I got robbed. And when in fact, no, you gambled the money away. So that then is the six-step classification. Now, this is considered a major advancement in the research in victimology between 1948, 1956, and of course, then his criteria for victimization, which I talked about in the first chapter in 1976. So this is considered then a significant advancement because While it is not completely empirical in nature, I mean it doesn't establish causation, but what it does is it establish degrees, which then could lead to measurement.
The next step in theoretical evolution should be an empirical study that actually evolves into measurable variables. This work is so important. We validate him as the father of victimology because he's the first person to come along and establish something that actually makes sense. In terms of trying to understand the reality of the victim-offender relationship, because he's trying to identify that there's a relative culpability of the victim in the criminal act. It's a relative culpability.
It doesn't say that the person that is to blame, it means that you have to look at the crime itself. You have to study the crime. And this is part of his fundamental criteria also for the scientific endeavor. in the study of victimology and criminology is that you have to study the crime itself and you have to determine then okay well what's happening here and you have to be able to explain what happened before you just jump to a conclusion based on to some subjective categorization here and so establishing a relative culpability then is useful then to modern detective work because it teaches then investigators then that you have to examine the scene and professionals then know how to then look at crime scene, look at the victim positions, etc., etc., and begin then to develop theories then through deductive and inductive reasoning that then can lead them then to an actual explanation of the crime, but also capture of the offender.
So in that, he coins several terms that we use today in the study of victimology. So first of all, the term victimology, well, That comes from Mendelsohn's work, The Study of Victims, meaning this is the first place where we see the actual academic establishment of victimology, the study of victims. He establishes also what's considered a penal couple. And this is where there is the establishment of a criminal-victim relationship.
Study the relationship between the criminal and victim. In a lot of crimes, there is an even more closer, deeper interpersonal relationship that can tell you a lot. About this things like domestic violence for example He was like date rape for example some homicides robberies will tell you a lot about the causes of it based on that interpersonal relationship he establishes terms more scientific terms like victim all and Victimity which I think are just really interesting because he's trying to establish a language But what he's talking about is victim all meaning criminal victimity meaning criminality And then finally, the potential of victim receptivity. Is there the possibility of an individual propensity to be victimized?
That question just sort of lays there, and it definitely involves examination, but are there people out there that actually have a propensity to be victimized? Is that type of personality out there? It really creates the need for examination of these types of things. But there are different psychological characteristics of some individuals where you might find in them then that yes, some people may have a propensity to be victimized.
It just depends on what the act is. For example, bondage. A very, very strange and elusive kind of social psychology. And if you're not part of the bondage community, well then there's absolutely no way that you can truly understand.
What that means, you know, I mean, I'm not, and so I can't say that I truly understand it, so I can't condemn it or condone it one way or the other, but as a theorist, I can understand it from that context, and that there is a relationship between the bondsman and the slave, the master and the slave, and it's an interpersonal relationship, it's a mutual relationship, and there is pain involved. psychoanalytic terms, you know, you would say one is a masochist, one is a sadist. Sadist enjoys inflicting the masochist as the person who enjoys receiving the pain.
And so while the pain between the offender can be brutal and predatory, but arguably it is a mutual relationship and so therefore because there is a need of both individuals to be involved in this form of victimization. Strange maybe, but... from a realistic standpoint, yes, possible.
Why? Because it exists.