Go Ahead, Hit Me

The luckless person who complains that "everything happens to me" may be stating a scientific fact. Many victims of crime practically ask for it: they stand in the path of the crime and "tempt" the criminal. So said a noted criminologist last week. This theory is not new to science, but it was advanced with new force by Dr. Hans von Hentig in a new book, The Criminal and His Victim (Yale University Press; $6).

The characteristics and forces that tend to make a man a criminal, says Dr. von Hentig, are diverse and complicated. A contributing factor may be ugliness, deafness, a physical handicap. Even the time of year and day has an effect (crimes of violence and sex reach their peak in late spring; most women, are murdered between 6 and 8 p.m.).

Victims, Dr. von Hentig believes, are born or shaped by society much as criminals are. In many cases, they are governed by the same factors. Some types of criminals are attracted to slum areas; so are their victims. Feeblemindedness, common among some types of criminals, is also common among their victims.

Dr. von Hentig contends that certain characteristics of law-abiding citizens arouse a counterreaction in the criminal. The inexperienced businessman, for example, invites embezzlement; the nagging wife is flirting with murder; the alcoholic is a natural for robbery. Thus the victim becomes the "tempter."

Since society does not yet recognize the close relationship between criminal and victim, Dr. von Hentig says, the whole machinery of prisons, parole boards and probation is drastically out of date. Until a new theory of crime prevention is adopted, he believes that victims will go on being a self-perpetuating group, as dangerous to society as criminals.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.