The article considers the process of formation of scientific thought about juvenile victimhood. It is indicated that the study of theoretical achievements in the field of general and juvenile victimology from its inception (within criminology) to the present day, allows to classify the latter into three groups according to the subject: 1) the phenomenon of juvenile victimization, victimization and victim behavior values, determination, background phenomena); 2) the person of a minor victim of criminal wrongful encroachment (definition, structure, classification, typology and psychology); 3) victimological prevention (general characteristics, forms and methods, foreign and international experience). Particular attention is paid to the fact that both in the first, still basic criminological research, and in modern works, these three groups are unchanged (except for some, minor deviations in the subject and general approaches of the scientists themselves). It is noted that the first scientific research within the sciences of the criminal law cycle was devoted exclusively to the criminal offender, due to the belief of scientists that only he is the root cause of socially dangerous acts. The study of the identity of the subject of the offense was reduced to the search for physiological defects (features) that force a person to break the law. It is concluded that currently in Ukraine there is an active scientific work to study the peculiarities of victim behavior of both adults and minors.
 The first mention of victims of crime is remarkable in the works of Cesare Lombroso. However, the first criminologist to introduce the concept of «victimology» was the Romanian researcher B. Mendelssohn, who in 1975 in his monograph «General Victimology» proposed the victimological concept of «clinical» or «practical» victimology. Victim behavior of minors began to interest the scientific community in the postwar period, in the late twentieth century. In Ukrainian science, juvenile victims and the peculiarities of their behavior are found, mostly, within scientific articles.