A number of conclusions were reached in the various sections. The section on conceptions and dimensions of victimology agreed that the field of general victimology must be given clearer contours. The section on victim surveys focused primarily on the U.S. National Crime Surveys, which were praised, despite some criticism, as the single reliable index for the state of society in the United States. The surveys made possible reasonable victim protection laws and for the first time, realistic cost estimates. Reports also described other victim surveys in Scandinavia, Belgium, Japan, Germany, and the United States. The discussions made clear that crime rate statistics of both victimologists and police must be used cautiously in policy decisions. The third section was devoted to vulnerable victim groups, e.g., women and children, as well as to such topics as victimization as a political phenomenon, subjective victimization, intra-group victimization, and applications of victimological research to policy. The fourth section on victim treatment, compensation, and prevention measures especially emphasized the need for sensitivity to the problems and interests of the victim. In section five on the role of the victim in causing the offense and in social control, the main focus of most reports was on prevention. The final section on the victim in the criminal justice system encompassed a wide range of very specialized topics. The principal presentations of the conference covered the meaning of victimology for the practice of police and of the justice system, victim/witness programs, victim surveys from theoretical and practical perspectives, the application of victimological research to social reintegration of the victim, and the problem of collective victimization and the individualization of the victim. Workshops treated victims of the German National Socialists; the interrelationships among housing projects, city planning, and crime prevention; and violence in the family. In a special session of the symposium the World Society of Victimology was founded.