Introduction

Victimology is about human suffering. Its interests are fundamentally focused on the consequences generated by crime and how it affects all kinds of victims and their lives. It analyses, using different social and scientific methodologies, how we can manage pain as a society. In that sense, concern about victims’ statuses and needs ought to be an important issue in open and democratic societies. However, victimology has an undeservedly bad reputation (Karmen, 2010) in some academic circles, often being accused of exercising a kind of ‘commiseration’ towards certain victims while forgetting others. Similarly, it has been criticised by some as providing an excuse for punitive turns in criminal policy (see Cressey, 1992; Elias, 1996; Garland, 2001; Fatah, 2012).

In the context of the increasing importance of emotions in victim-oriented policies, challenging some of the inadequate understandings of ‘compassion’ and its limits may help provide scholars with a useful policy of compassion as a public virtue. In turn, this may generate stronger and more accurate institutions for victim support. Such an approach requires being especially aware of the processes of differentiation and hierarchies of victims (Tamarit, 2013) that ultimately distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ victims: those victims worthy of support and compassion, and those that inspire only oblivion or contempt. To achieve this goal, further reflections about the impacts and negative effects of the stereotype of the ‘ideal victim’ present in Nils Christie’s (1986) work could be a good starting point in order to achieve a truly inclusive victimology.

Human suffering, compassion and crime victims

According to Van Dijk (2009: 9), the use of the word ‘victim’ in most Western languages to name the people affected by the consequences of crime implies the idea – in the shadow of Jesus Christ and the Christian tradition – that ‘they are socially constructed both as suffering objects worthy of society's compassion and as the active subjects of a sacrifice’. Once they have been labelled as crime victims, the community can acknowledge their deep and innocent suffering and, at the same time, express its firm expectation that victims will sacrifice their right of revenge. General compassion and respect for people who comply with the label's expectations are expected, while the victim, as an ideal, remains ‘innocent, suffers deeply but is ready to forgive their offender nevertheless’ (Van Dijk, 2009: 8).