In cybersecurity, we often spend millions of dollars and countless hours studying the threat actor. We map infrastructure, dissect malware, and reverse-engineer code. But any experienced security consultant knows that looking at the exploit only tells part of the story. To truly understand how and why a breach happened, you also have to examine the target.
The same principle applies in the physical world of criminal investigation. Victimology is the study of the victim’s role in a crime, not as a way of assigning blame, but as a way of understanding how the offense happened. In many cases, the victim’s history, habits, environment, and last known actions provide some of the most useful information available to investigators. Think of it as analyzing an enterprise attack surface to understand why a specific system was compromised.
What Is Victimology?
Victimology is the systematic study of victims and their relationships to offenders and criminal events. In forensic practice, it can involve examining a victim’s lifestyle, personal history, routine, relationships, and circumstances surrounding the crime.
When investigators look at a victim, they are usually trying to answer two basic questions:
Risk factor: What made this person more exposed or vulnerable to a particular crime?
Selection criteria: Why was this person chosen, at this time, in this place?
Offenders often prefer opportunities that improve their odds and reduce their risk. A victim’s personal, situational, and behavioral traits can therefore offer clues about the offender’s motives, methods, and level of planning.
To organize that analysis, investigators often look at three broad categories:
1. Personal characteristics
These are traits tied to the individual, such as age, sex, physical condition, psychological traits, or aspects of lifestyle. Some traits may be relatively stable, while others can change over time. For example, certain risk-taking behaviors may increase exposure to harm.
In some cases, especially sexual offenses, investigators may also consider patterns in offender preference or victim selection, such as age group, gender, or other recurring characteristics.
2. Situational characteristics
These refer to the environment and circumstances around the crime. Investigators may examine the victim’s usual routines, commute routes, places visited, and the timing of events.
If a crime occurs in a well-lit, crowded, or heavily monitored area, that may suggest the offender was especially confident, determined, or unconcerned about detection.
3. Behavioral characteristics
These describe what the victim did before, during, and after the incident. Did they trust the offender? Did they resist? Did they freeze? Did they try to escape or negotiate?
Behavioral evidence can help investigators understand whether the offender relied on deception, coercion, force, or some combination of tactics.
The Mendelsohn Framework
Benjamin Mendelsohn is often described as one of the founders of victimology. His work focused on the relationship between victim behavior and the criminal event. The goal was not to excuse the offender, but to better understand how the crime unfolded.
Mendelsohn’s typology is usually presented in six categories:
1. Completely innocent victim: no contribution to the crime, such as a child abused by an adult.
2. Victim with minor guilt: unintentionally increases risk.
3. Victim as guilty as the offender: voluntarily participates in an illegal or dangerous situation.
4. Victim more guilty than the offender: provokes or initiates the conflict that leads to the offense.
5. Most guilty, or solely guilty, victim: primarily responsible for the harmful event.
6. Imaginary or simulated victim: falsely claims victimization.
Mendelsohn’s framework was historically important because it helped establish victim-offender interaction as a serious subject of study. At the same time, modern scholars often criticize the language of “guilt,” since it can be misunderstood as victim-blaming. Contemporary victimology tends to focus more on risk, vulnerability, and interaction patterns than on assigning moral responsibility to the victim.
Historical Case Files: Tracking the Signatures
These ideas can be seen in well-known criminal cases.
Ted Bundy, for example, used deception as part of his method. He often appeared injured, disabled, or in need of help, which allowed him to exploit the empathy of his victims. Investigators and writers have also noted that some of the women he targeted shared physical or behavioral traits that may have fit a pattern of preference.
A very different case is Brazilian serial offender José Paz Bezerra, also known as Monstro do Morumbi. He is described as having maintained a respectable public image while attacking women in isolated situations, using physical force to overpower them.
Looking at who was selected, how they were approached, and how their defenses were breached can help investigators recognize the offender’s behavioral pattern. Criminals often leave signatures in the lives of the people they target.
Victimology doesn’t exist to place responsibility on the victim. It exists to help investigators understand the crime more clearly. If you want to understand the attacker, you often have to begin with the target.
