Criminal behavior must necessarily involve a perpetrator and a victim.

Despite the obvious necessity of this relationship, it is the perpetrator

who has historically received the lion's share of the public's and the
legal system's attention. Victims have been largely the domain of
special interest groups whose sole reason for existence is the care
and welfare of victims of crime, either generically or within the context
of specific criminal victimization such as domestic violence or sexual
assault. This attentional bias has extended to academic enquiry where
the historical focus has been on exploring offender characteristics in
order to understand the circumstances, motivations, and behavioral
factors that lead to the perpetration of a criminal act. However, there is
an increasing merit being given to the provision of a more balanced
exploration of the two sides of the criminal act. Accordingly,
contemporary discourse has begun to recognize the value in
improving our knowledge of victims and their unique role in the
criminal process. Several models have been proposed to help explain
the characteristics of both offenders and victims, and the way in which
these characteristics influence the risk of offending and/or becoming a
victim of a criminal act. The “seven-factor model of victim
characteristics” is the latest iteration of these typological models and
represents an empirically founded culmination of several previous
victim typologies. This chapter presents the story of the emergence of
the field of victimology, the concepts and controversies surrounding
the field, the major offender and victim typology models that have
been proposed, and finally, the details of the new “seven-factor model
of victim characteristics.”