The victimization of women: Law, policies and politics

Abstract

The American criminal justice system has always placed an emphasis on apprehending and punishing criminals. However, an often overlooked and forgotten party that can play a pivotal role in the ' crime equation ' is the victim. This has changed in recent years with victimology successfully carving out its space within criminology as a thriving and vibrant theoretical and empirically driven subdiscipline. Within victimology, a particularly vexing issue is victimization that often occurs out of the public sphere -the victimization of women and girls. In their book The Victimization of Women: Law, Policies, and Politics Michelle L. Meloy and Susan L. Miller poignantly unravel the complexities that shape experiences of victimization suffered by women. In the opening pages, the authors clearly state that the goal of writing this book is ' … to present in a readable, coherent manner the major debates, controversies, quagmires, unintended consequences, and unanswered questions about victims, victims ' rights, and victim-centered policies ' (p. 4). The authors have accomplished these goals and then some. One of the greatest strengths of this book is that the authors have successfully paid attention to the details, yet managed to do so in such a way as to make the writing accessible to a broader audience. This book is not for a novice, but rather is catered to the college student or academic wishing to expand their knowledge on the topic of violence against women and girls.Meloy and Miller ' s book is divided into seven chapters with Chapters 1 through 4 focusing on macro-level factors, and Chapters 5 and 6 focused on micro-level factors that impact female victimization. Chapter 7 concludes with a discussion that recaps the important arguments raised in previous chapters, as well as suggestions for future research and policies related to violence against women and girls. Chapter 1 provides a typical introduction to the book with a brief overview of each of the chapters. The latter half of Chapter 1 provides a good overview of the parameters of the book and how the authors are operationalizing violence against women and girls. According to Meloy and Miller, they are focusing specifi cally on ' crimes of personal violence committed by (mostly) men against (mostly) women and girls, such as sexual assault and rape, battering and, to a lesser extent, stalking ' (p. 11). During the course of providing this explanation, the authors acknowledge that violence committed by women against men and violence in homosexual relationships does occur, but for the sake of drawing boundaries, they focus solely on female victims and male aggressors.Chapter 2 focuses of how society views and treats victims of crime, a process the authors refer to as the social construction of ' the victim ' (p. 22). The authors discuss two competing