ABSTRACT
Victims have emerged from the shadows to play an increasingly important role in the politics and practice of criminal justice, as an intellectual topic in their own right and as a significant source of change within criminology proper. Theories based upon them have even been grouped together and awarded their own title, victimology, amounting to a kind of sub-discipline of criminology, although those who practise it usually open with the half-apologetic statement that it is rather thin and underdeveloped and then speculate why that should be so. There are a number of conventional accounts of the genesis and evolution of victimology and, although there may be room for dispute about some of their particulars their very acceptance has become a shaping academic and ideological influence that must be taken seriously. Feminist victimology heralded the emergence of what Haug and Sussman called the 'revolt of the client', a challenge to professional expertise in the name of experiential knowledge.
