In this perspective, criminal law must be the departure point for victimological studies, with emphasis on factors related to the process of victimizations, i.e., victim crime precipitation, victim crime proneness, and victim responsiveness to the justice system. According to radical/critical criminology, criminal behavior is not to be viewed as unsuitable deviation from a natural social order based consensus, but rather as whatever is defined as illegal by those with political power. Through this 'hegemony of the prevailing ideology,' rules and symbols of the dominant class are supposedly imposed on the remainder of society, creating a forced consensus, strongly upheld by the media and criminal law. The hegemony interpretation has been applied sucessfully in feminist rape literature: the large unreported number of rapes is explained by the dominance of a male power structure. A similar interpretive approach should be applied to other aspects of victimology as well. Notes and a 23-item bibliography are supplied.