Essentials of Victimology: Crime Victims, Theories, Controversies, and Victims' Rights, Second Edition

Jan Yager, PhD, the former J.L. (Janet Lee) Barkas, has a PhD in Sociology from The City University of New York Graduate Center, where she had a predoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation. She also has an MA in Criminal Justice from Goddard College Graduate Program. Her master’s thesis was entitled, “Victims of Crime and Social Change.” Her thesis advisor was Dr. Arthur J. Niederhoffer, a police officer who became a Sociology Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Dr. Yager also did a year of graduate work in art therapy at Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia.

The author has been teaching part-time and full-time at the college and graduate level since her mid-twenties, beginning at The New School followed by Temple University, St. John’s University, Penn State (visiting assistant professor for one semester), New York Institute of Technology (full-time 1983-1985), and part-time at the University of Connecticut (1999-2006). Since 2014, Dr. Yager, an Adjunct Associate Professor, has been teaching criminology, victimology, and sociology courses in the Department of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where she has received the Mentoring Excellence and Teaching Excellence Adjunct Award multiple times. She has also been teaching victimology or sociology courses at William Paterson University, Baruch College, Iona University, Sam Houston State University, and Kean University.

A prolific author, Dr. Yager has published more than 60 award-winning books translated into 35 languages, including Victims, originally published by Scribner’s in 1978 under her maiden name of J.L. Barkas; When Friendship Hurts, published by Simon & Schuster and translated into 29 languages; Help Yourself Now; Time Management and Other Essential Skills for College Students; How to Finish Everything You Start; Friendgevity; Effective Business and Nonfiction Writing; Friendshifts; Business Protocol; 125 Ways to Meet the Love of Your Life; Skills Building Workbook for College Students; and the novels Untimely Death and Just Your Everyday People, co-authored with her husband Fred Yager; On the Run; The Pretty One, a novel about a best-selling author and psychologist who is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse; and “Please Don’t Forget Me,” a one-act play that deals with victims of hot car syndrome and their mournful perpetrators, their parents.

Dr. Yager’s practical experience in the criminal justice system includes working on a crime victim hotline; developing and running a crime prevention resource center; participating in a volunteer program to help incarcerated women at a state prison with their reentry into society; being a participant observer for 1-1/2 years in a support group for adult survivors of sexual violence; and certifying (1995) and then recertifying (June 2021) as a crisis counselor/advocate in the state of Connecticut. Dr. Yager’s extensive original research into victimization and crime has also included conducting in-depth in-person, phone, and Zoom interviews, distributing and analyzing surveys, as well as visits to shelters, prisons, police departments, and crime victim programs throughout the United States and in Canada, England, France, the Netherlands, and Germany. It was the robbery and murder of her 23-year-old older brother, Seth Alan Barkas, by a teenage gang when she was a 20-year-old college senior that started Dr. Yager on her life-long journey to study, teach, and advocate for primary crime victims as well as for those who help them (tertiary victims), and for the secondary victims — their family, friends, co-workers, and classmates.

For more information on Dr. Yager, visit her main website: https://www.drjanyager.com. To contact Dr. Yager: drjanyager123@gmail.com.