Victim of Crime: Stigma or Concatenation of Circumstances

The definition and differentiation of the concepts of “affected person”, “victim” and “victim of a crime” are extremely important, because many branches of jurisprudence operate with these terms, and, as the authors of this article show, even in seemingly closely related criminal and criminal procedure law approaches are somewhat different. As an example, the authors propose, among other things, to pay attention to the rather debatable question in the scientific literature about whether state authorities and local self-government bodies can act as victims. The article presents and correlates the concepts of “victim of a crime” and “victim”, while taking into account both victimological and criminal procedural approaches. On this basis, the authors ventured to offer their own vision of the concept of “victim of a crime”. A number of socially dangerous acts are considered and the role of the victim in the commission of each of them is analyzed. The authors of the article particularly focus on controversial issues of domestic violence, as well as on some victimological aspects of murder, rape and fraud. The typification of victims of crimes is proposed.