This edited collection updates and adds new material to the first edition published in 2007. Its contents reflect much that has changed and much that has remained the same in the study of victims and victimisation in the intervening ten years. Those continuities and discontinuities are also reflected in the contributors to this second edition, some of whom are new, some of whom contributed to the first edition. I owe a debt of gratitude to all of you. That you all stayed the course will me over the long gestation period of this collection is hugely appreciated. In the contemporary academic environment, contributing to handbooks is not always valued in ways commensurate with the thought and effort demanded by such collections in mapping fields of enquiry and charting their prospects for the future. I hope this handbook will provide the kind of intervention that victimology will take note of and as a result your collective efforts will be rewarded. I would also like to extend my thanks to the reviewers of the first edition who offered very valuable feedback on the direction in which this second edition might take. It has not been possible to act upon all of your suggestions, and the shape and form of what follows is a result a number of processes some of which were beyond my control. I am acutely aware of some of the gaps that remain within it. Others I am not. I fully acknowledge that the faults which remain are mine and mine alone. In the process of pulling this collection together, it would be hugely remiss of me not to mention Hannah Catterall and Tom Sutton at Routledge/Taylor and Francis. Their unwavering support for this project has been immense. Particular thanks to Hannah for her support in helping me get contributors over the line. It was not for lack of trying that we did not always succeed. Finally, but by no means least, thanks to my Liverpool colleagues Ross McGarry and Gabe Mythen for their ever-present intellectual support and to my husband, Ron Wardale, for much more.