Thinking About Victimization: Context and Consequences

Bringing together cutting-edge theory and research that bridges academic disciplines from criminology and criminal justice, to developmental psychology, sociology, and political science, Thinking About Victimization offers an authoritative, comprehensive, and refreshingly accessible overview of scholarship on the nature, sources, and consequences of victimization.

Written in a lively style with sharp storytelling and an appreciation of international research on victimization, this book is rooted in a healthy respect for criminological history and the foundational works in victimization studies. It provides a detailed account of how different data sources can influence our understanding of victimization; of how the sources of victimization―individual, situational, and contextual―are complicated and varied; and of how the consequences of victimization―personal, legal, and political―are just as complex. This book also engages with contemporary issues such as cybervictimization, intimate partner violence and sexual victimization, prison violence and victimization, and terrorism and state-sponsored violence.

Thinking About Victimization is essential reading for advanced courses in victimization offered in criminology, criminal justice, sociology, social work, and public policy departments. With its unapologetic reliance on theory and research combined with its easy readability, undergraduate and graduate students alike will find much to learn in these pages.

Jillian J. Turanovic is an Assistant Professor in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University. Her research focuses broadly on victimization and its consequences, criminological theory, and correctional policy. She is the author of a number of peer-reviewed articles that have been published in journals such as Criminology, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, and Journal of Pediatrics. Her most recent work focuses on variability in the effects of adolescent violent victimization on the life course, as well as on the sources of violence and victimization at school.

Travis C. Pratt is a Fellow in the University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute. His research focuses primarily on linking structural theories and individual theories of crime/delinquency and victimization, as well as correctional policy and practice. He is the author of Addicted to Incarceration: Corrections Policy and the Politics of Misinformation in the United States (2019) and Key Ideas in Criminology and Criminal Justice (2011), and he is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed publications that have appeared in outlets such as Criminology, Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and Justice Quarterly. His most recent work focuses on the effects (or lack thereof) of formal sanctions on the behavior of offenders under community supervision, as well as how individuals’ attitudes concerning the legitimacy of the criminal justice system change over time.