Читать книгу Approaching Victimology as social science for Human rights a Spanish perspective онлайн

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To reiterate what was mentioned above let me emphasize that in the multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi religion, multi class society in which we live, conflicts and frictions are common and hard to avoid. Peace and harmony are not easy to achieve. At the risk of stating the obvious, let me offer an advice, based on my life experience that I always gave to my criminology students: it is impossible to legislate love just as it is not possible to outlaw hate. The most we could do as responsible citizens is to strongly condemn, monitor and try by democratic policies and peaceful methods to prevent violence of all types, regardless of what the motivation is and what the contexts are: predatory, retaliatory, political, sexual, hatemotivated, etc.. Although the means to achieve such prevention differed, this has always been the primary goal of social reformers. Regrettably, for millennia society’s policy to prevent victimizing behaviours has been to inflict harsh punitive sanctions which achieved little or no success. Restorative justice has shown that a more effective means of changing people’s behaviour is to appeal to their human instincts and to sensitize them to the pain and suffering their behaviour causes to fellow humans. This is precisely the humanitarian message that Victimology teaches. Empathy and compassion are not inborn, they are learned, and need perpetual nurture and reinforcement. In an attempt to inculcate a better understanding and sharper sensitivity in the minds of the young, it is not inconceivable that Victimology courses may, in the not too distant future, be made a compulsory subject, not just at the college or university levels but in school curricula as well.