This book situates the contemporary preoccupation with criminal victimisation within the broader socio-cultural changes of the last twenty five years. In so doing it addresses not only the policy possibilities that have been generated as a consequence of those changes but also concerns itself with the ability of victimology to help make sense of this change. Written in the post 9/11 context this book considers the efficacy of theory and policy relating to questions of victimhood to accommodate the current political and cultural climate and offers a critical understanding of both. It adopts an explicitly cross-cultural position on these questions. It will be vital reading for anyone interested in the problems and possibilities posed by criminal victimisation understood in the broadest terms.