Supporting and assisting victims of crime: the Indian scenario

[Extract] Being victimised by crime is not an unusual occurrence and, in fact, people are touched by it in every section of society. It is a blight that is widely distributed in developed as well as developing countries. In layman's terms, crime denotes an unlawful act punishable by the state, and to that extent, every country has a criminal or penal code prohibiting undesirable acts, that is, crimes against either individuals or society as a whole (White, Perrone, & Gillespie, 2010). While this definition appears to be fairly simple, it is actually a very complex phenomenon that is socially constructed, that is, what constitutes a crime may differ in time, space and culture (Winfree & Abadinsky, 2010)