ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to strike a balance between a descriptive overview of what is known about victims and vulnerability and an analysis of how social conditions can be used to explain the way in which we have come to think about these two concepts. The objective is to construct an argument that demonstrates how victimisation and vulnerability have been socially constructed to serve political and economic interests. The purpose of doing this is to explain why it is that despite the research evidence very little time is spent addressing victimisation among the group most at risk: the heavily offending, young, male, economically disadvantaged. It will be argued that this is because debates and policies around victims and vulnerability are neither neutral nor independent from wider ideological and economic interests. An analysis of these interests is used to reconsider what is meant by both the ‘ideal’ victim (Christie 1986) and the concept of vulnerability.
