Revisiting the 'Ideal Victim'

Developments in Critical Victimology

Duggan, Marian

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2018
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781447339151
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Nils Christie's (1986) seminal work on the 'Ideal Victim' is reproduced in full in this edited collection of vibrant and provocative essays that respond to and update the concept from a range of thematic positions. Each chapter celebrates and commemorates his work by analysing, evaluating and critiquing the current nature and impact of victim identity, experience, policy and practice. The collection expands the focus and remit of 'victim studies', addressing key themes around race, gender, faith, ability and age while encompassing new and diverse issues. Examples include sex workers as victims of hate crimes, victims' experiences of online fraud, and recognising historic child sexual abuse victims in Ireland. With contributions from an array of academics including Vicky Heap (Sheffield Hallam University), Hannah Mason-Bish (University of Sussex) and Pamela Davies (Northumbria University), as well as a Foreword by David Scott (The Open University), this book evaluates the contemporary relevance and applicability of Christie's 'Ideal Victim' concept and creates an important platform for thinking differently about victimhood in the 21st century.

Table of contents

• REVISITING THE ‘IDEAL VICTIM’
• Contents
• List of abbreviations
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword: thinking beyond the ideal
• Preface
• Introduction
• The Ideal Victim
• Part 1. Exploring the ‘Ideal Victim’
• 1. The ideal victim through other(s’) eyes
• 2. Creating ideal victims in hate crime policy
• 3. The lived experiences of veiled Muslim women as ‘undeserving’ victims of Islamophobia
• 4. Being ‘ideal’ or falling short? The legitimacy of lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender victims of domestic violence and hate crime
• 5. New victimisations: female sex worker hate crime and the ‘ideal victim’
• 6. The ‘ideal migrant victim’ in human rights courts: between vulnerability and otherness
• 7. ‘Our most precious possession of all’1: the survivor of non-recent childhood sexual abuse as the ideal victim?
• 8. ‘Idealising’ domestic violence victims
• 9. Environmental crime, victimisation, and the ideal victim
• Part 2. Exploring the ‘Non-Ideal’ Victim
• 10. Revisiting the non-ideal victim
• 11. Conceptualising victims of anti-social behaviour is far from ‘ideal’
• 12. The ‘ideal’ rape victim and the elderly woman: a contradiction in terms?
• 13. Denying victim status to online fraud victims: the challenges of being a ‘non-ideal victim’
• 14. Male prisoners’ vulnerabilities and the ideal victim concept
• 15. A decade after Lynndie: non-ideal victims of non-ideal offenders – doubly anomalised, doubly invisibilised
• 16. Towards an inclusive victimology and a new understanding of public compassion to victims: from and beyond Christie’s ideal victim
• Conclusion
• Index