Victimology and crime prevention are growing, interrelated areas cutting across several disciplines. Victimology examines victims of all sorts of criminal activity, from domestic abuse, to street violence, to victims in the workplace who lose jobs and pensions due to malfeasance by corporate executives.

Crime prevention is an important companion to victimology because it offers insight and techniques to prevent situations that lead to crime and attempts to offer ideas and means for mitigating or minimizing the potential for victimization.

.In many ways, the two fields have developed along parallel yet separate paths, and the literature on both has been scattered across disciplines as varied as sociology, law and criminology, public health and medicine, political science and public policy, economics, psychology and human services, and more.

The Encyclopedia of Victimology and Crime Prevention provides a comprehensive reference work bringing together such dispersed knowledge as it outlines and discusses the status of victims within the criminal justice system and topics of deterring and preventing victimization in the first place and responding to victims' needs.

Two volumes containing approximately 375 signed entries provide users with the most authoritative and comprehensive reference resource available on victimology and crime prevention, both in terms of breadth and depth of coverage.

In addition to standard entries, leading scholars in the field have contributed Anchor Essays that, in broad strokes, provide starting points for investigating the more salient victimology and crime prevention topics.

A representative sampling of general topic areas covered includes: interpersonal and domestic violence, child maltreatment, and elder abuse; street violence; hate crimes and terrorism; treatment of victims by the media, courts, police, and politicians; community response to crime victims; physical design for crime prevention; victims of nonviolent crimes; deterrence and prevention; helping and counseling crime victims; international and comparative perspectives, and more.