Administrating Victimization

The Politics of Anti-Social Behaviour and Hate Crime Policy

M. Duggan, V. Heap

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137409263
• eBook ISBN: 9781137409270
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

This study addresses the management of victims and victim policy under the Coalition government, in light of an increasing move towards neoliberal and punitive law and order agendas. With a focus on victims of anti-social behaviour and hate crime, Duggan and Heap explore the changing role of the victim in contemporary criminal justice discourses.

1

Conceptualizing Victims

Abstract: Chapter 1 provides a framework for conceptualizing victims in light of victims’ changing role and status in research, theory, policy and practice. The discussion begins with the origins and developments in victimology which informs the evaluation of how such scholarship influenced the construction of victim categories or identities, attributable to victim types. Foucault’s concept of governmentality is then adopted as a theoretical framework within which to address the relationship between the victim and the state to address how processes of individualization and responsibilization have shaped contemporary notions of victimization and, in turn, the development of policies related to the process of managing the victim experience.

Keywords: Foucault; governance and governmentality; ideal victim; state legitimacy; victimology; victim typologies

Duggan, Marian and Vicky Heap. Administrating Victimization: The Politics of Anti-Social Behaviour and Hate Crime Policy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. DOI: 10.1057/9781137409270.0008.

Evolutions in the study of victims and victimization have produced a wealth of information about the direct and indirect effects and impacts of crime, as well as victims’ and witnesses experiences of engagement with the criminal justice system (CJS). With the majority of criminal acts producing at least one discernable victim, this is a cohort which governments overlook at their peril. However, as it is clear that governments cannot guarantee the prevention of crime – and, consequently, victimization – it stands to reason that they might instead seek to address (or deflect some of the responsibility for) existing victims’ expectations, experiences and needs. Some victims prove easier to manage in these respects than others, thus the separating out of people according to victimization type allows for a targeted approach to interacting with certain groups, possibly to the detriment of others.

This chapter begins the book’s analysis of victim policy by focusing on two key areas. First, an overview of victimology demonstrates the evolution of victim considerations in scholarly and theoretical domains. Of particular note here is the emergence of victim typologies, which have become increasingly attached to idealized notions of ‘deservedness’. The concept of deservedness divides victims along good and bad lines, with some being seen as more worthy of an enhanced criminal justice focus than others. Nonetheless, the sheer number of victims created through crime remains a pressing burden on criminal justice resources. Therefore, deflecting some of the responsibility for crime prevention onto the public not only frees up state resources, but also diverts the focus away from its failure to protect citizens in the ways in which the state is expected to. The discussion around theorizing governance and governmentality contained in the latter half of the chapter explores how victims have increasingly been constructed as stakeholders by the government. The nature and impact of this elevated status outlined here informs various aspects of analysis throughout the remainder of the book.

The evolution of victimology

This section charts the socio-political development of the victim identity, providing a historical context to the origins and development of victimology in the UK by assessing the impact of positivistic, critical and radical approaches to victims. The brief introduction to victimology illustrates the emergence of victim typologies, or categorizations. These were founded on personal characteristics or perceptions of culpability, deservedness or legitimacy depending on the types of actions or behaviours displayed. The qualities attributed to different groups of victims according to their identities, experiences or actions and behaviours give an early indication as to why some groups of victims may be prioritized by policy makers. The more blameless a victim can appear to be the easier it is to promote punitive law and order policies related to the offender. However, as will be demonstrated later, enhanced criminalization is not necessarily in the best interests of the victim.

Conceptualizing the crime victim

Unlike perpetrators of crime, or indeed the criminal justice system itself, victims of crime have not traditionally commanded much scholarly focus, attention or investigation. This may in part be due to the state acting on behalf of the victim when pursuing justice through a criminal trial. In 1976, Nils Christie delivered a speech on ‘Conflicts as Property’ at the University of Sheffield which was later published in the British Journal of Criminology (Christie, 1977). In what has become a seminal piece of writing, he argued that highly industrialized societies have formalized and mechanized conflicts to assert a guise of power and control but, whilst doing so, have ‘stolen’ these from the victim and their community. His paper illustrated how changes have occurred which result in the two key parties to the conflict (ordinarily the victim and offender) being represented by the state but to differing degrees, so much so that the victim is ‘pushed completely out of the arena, reduced to the trigger-off of the whole thing’ (1977: 3). Thus, victims may be strategically removed and reintroduced at various junctures during the criminal justice process in a manner which illustrates their malleability, usefulness and relative powerlessness. Contrastingly, by involving itself in conflicts, the state legitimizes its existence and decisions in relation to victims and offenders. In liberal democracies, it can claim to be doing this in a representative capacity, given that it has been democratically elected by the voting public.

Although a focus on victims has been historically less evident in comparison to offenders, they have not been overlooked entirely. Kearon and Godfrey (2007) provide a comprehensive backdrop against which to assess what they deem to be the ‘re-emergence’ of the victim in academic and political debates during the mid-twentieth century. They conclude that, historically, three distinct periods characterize victims’ involvement – and visibility – in criminal justice processes: their role as an ‘essential actor’ pre-nineteenth century, a ‘symbolic actor’ from the mid-nineteenth to late twentieth centuries, and as a ‘fragmented actor’ from the late twentieth century onwards (2007: 30–31). It was during this middle, ‘symbolic’ period that scholarly focus on the victim and their experience developed. However, prior analyses on offenders and offending had a strong impact on the origins and development of theorizing victims and victimization.

Ideas about crime, criminality and control rapidly developed following the Enlightenment period. Key thinkers such as Cesare Beccaria, the ‘father of criminology’, considered the relationship dynamics between the offender, victim, state and society when crimes occurred. In what has become known as the ‘Classical’ theory of crime, Beccaria noted how shifts had occurred from the Middle Ages, when the victim was central to the pursuit of justice in identifying the transgression and seeking retribution from the perpetrator without recourse to the state, through to a system whereby the state punished offenders without much consideration of the victim. The impact of criminological theory on a codified system of criminal justice during the onset of the Industrial Revolution indicated changes in the regulatory dynamics of society through enhanced state control and surveillance underpinned by the desire for greater discipline and power (see Foucault, 1975). The criminal justice system as it is conventionally understood (with the establishment of the police, prison and probation services in the nineteenth century) is approximately two centuries old. The foundations of this CJS were aided by developments in theories of crime which correlated with social control during a period of extensive social change characterized by advances in transportation, industrialization and urbanization. The focus on punishing offenders and preventing offences, coupled with the financial benefits that state-controlled punishment brought through fines, meant that the visibility afforded to crime victims was slowly eroded from the increasingly formalized system of justice.

Classical criminological theorizing began from the premise that the offender must be engaged in some form of rational decision making and that they were aware of what they were doing (Beccaria, 1767/1963; Bentham, 1798/1996). These ideas developed as part of the broader Enlightenment period where grand enquiries into the nature of man emerged from philosophical perspectives. This was later refuted by Darwin-inspired biological and psychological positivistic notions which addressed internal and external factors which may determine the freedom of choice regarding engagement in criminal activity (Lombroso, 1876/2006). These varied approaches inferred that crime was something that could be rationalized, measured, understood and clearly identified. With this in mind, when the focus turned to researching victims of crime in the mid-twentieth century, positivistic-informed theories, research and frameworks of analysis were strongly evident in the emerging victimological arena.

Five key theorists are credited with producing the sub-discipline of victimology: Benjamin Mendelsohn (1947), a Romanian lawyer working in the US; Hans von Hentig (1948), a Hungarian criminologist working in the US; Marvin Wolfgang (1957), an American sociologist and criminologist; Stephen Schafer (1968), a German-American psychiatrist; and Menachem Amir (1971), a student of Marvin Wolfang. These early victimologists sought to investigate the nature of the criminal or victimizing act, the relationship between the criminal and victim, the actions of either or both preceding the act, and the actions – if any – taken by the victim to deflect or deter victimization from occurring. This resulted in the production of victim typologies (based on the victim’s identity characteristics) and classifications of victim responsibility (based on the victim’s actions or behaviours) which were used to determine the level of culpability attributable to a victim of crime. An overview of these early theorists’ work now follows, providing a foundation from which to analyse an apparent return to these core themes of responsibility, culpability and accounting for the victim–offender relationship.

Categorizing victims: typologies, culpability and deservedness

Benjamin Mendelsohn is credited with first coining the term ‘victimology’ in the 1940s to describe the growing body of scholarly work which sought to account for victimization. He, like his contemporaries, sought to attribute some level of blame or responsibility to the crime victim as well as the offender. The specific focus of this work was not to identify the needs, wants or experiences of victims, but instead to seek to identify causal factors which would both hold them to account for the crimes or harms they had incurred, and aid the development of crime prevention. The core themes of precipitation, facilitation and provocation fuelled victimological enquiry in a manner which was largely aimed at expanding knowledge about how to reduce criminal offending, rather than addressing experiences of victimization. A key factor of note is the impact of chosen research methodologies and frameworks of analysis on the social construction of victim blaming. Von Hentig, Mendelsohn and Schafer looked at a wide variety of cases to determine the nature and impact of, amongst other things, inter-personal relationships within a criminal incident as well as any relevant factors prior to, during and after it had occurred. As a result, their findings indicated that clear distinctions were drawn between identity factors (such as being very young or old, being female or being mentally impaired) and situational factors (such as being engaged in criminal conduct or the commission of a crime at the time, or provoking a criminal response from an aggressor) which went towards determining the level of culpability or blame to be bestowed upon that particular victim.

Following the production of these typologies, it was only a matter of time before specific crime types would be subjected to a closer inspection within these theoretical frameworks to learn more about criminal victimization and its possible prevention. Wolfgang’s research into homicides in America was the first such study to address victim precipitation within a singular crime type. He demonstrated that over a quarter (26%) of the 558 homicides he examined in Philadelphia involved one or more of the following factors: male offenders and victims, histories of violent offending, alcohol consumption, weapon possession, and the initiation of physical violence (Wolfgang, 1957). Many of the cases began as minor altercations which escalated to homicides due to the presence of one or more of these contributing factors. This proved useful to indicate the steps which could be taken in similar situations to potentially prevent an argument resulting in a homicide. However, this study influenced one of Wolfgang’s students to produce research which not only sparked controversy through the highly publicized, critical feminist backlash to the findings, but would mark the beginning of the modern victims’ movement.

In 1971, Menachem Amir studied a sample of forcible rape incidents obtained from police reports in Philadelphia, USA. Using only the data obtained from the reports (and not any interaction with the victims or perpetrators themselves), he concluded that a fifth of the rapes in his sample could be described as victim-precipitated. However, unlike the homicide victims in Wolfgang’s study who had been engaged in some form of criminal or semi-criminal behaviour (carrying weapons, engaging in drunken conduct, instigating physical violence), the culpable characteristics or attributes Amir outlined among the forcible rape victims in his study included: being intoxicated (with the level of voluntariness ignored); acting seductively; wearing seductive clothing; having a dubious reputation; or being seen as sexually ‘available’ (Amir, 1971). Crucially, however, it was Amir’s assertion that such factors were determined by the (male) perpetrator, not the (female) victim, which indicated a deeply gendered power imbalance and suggested that women, not men, were responsible for policing male sexuality and sexual victimization. Unlike other forms of criminal victimization, rape and sexual violence remains one of the few crimes where the victim’s reliability, credibility and potential culpability are scrutinized as closely, if not more so, as that of the alleged perpetrator.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Amir’s assertions prompted a backlash from women, many of whom were scholars and activists in the emerging second-wave feminist movement, who saw ‘victim-culpability’ as akin to ‘victim-blaming’. Taking hold in the late 1960s, second-wave feminism focused on the needs, wants and experiences of the (female) victim, seeking to address these with the establishment of support services for women, many of whom had been physically or sexually abused by men (Cook and Jones, 2007; Hoyle, 2007). As well as shifting the focus from culpability to need, feminists challenged the propensity to measure how ‘deserving’ a person was of embodying a victim status. In doing so, they indicated that this particular identity – ‘the victim’ – had become saturated with cultural meaning which could work in a person’s favour or against them. As Miers (1990: 227) outlines:

victims of crime occupy a social role ... where they are seen not to conform to the expectations associated with it, they diminish their chances of being sympathetically treated, and may even forfeit their occupancy of the role.

Miers (1978) also criticized the ideology behind the term ‘victim’ as encompassing passivity and suffering. Victimology has since been critiqued for doing little to address or challenge the ideology of passivity and vulnerability afforded to victims of crime (Newburn and Stanko, 1994; Godfrey et al., 2007). This has been similarly challenged by feminists who adopted the term ‘survivor’ instead (Kelly, 1988; Rock, 2007). ‘Survivor’ is predominantly used to refer to women and children who have survived abuse, most usually from men, as a way of counteracting the disempowering passivity (and elements of culpability) which had come to be associated with the ‘victim’ label. Survival is fluid, whereby victimhood appears static. Surviving abusive experiences also involves a greater degree of personal investment and struggle to ‘come out the other side’; something not captured in the ‘victim’ ideology. As Spalek (2006: 26) indicates: ‘Underpinning the “victim as survivor” identity is the theme of individual victim as agent who has resisted their abuse to become emotionally and psychologically stronger.’

The acknowledgement of how victimization can be assessed in terms of the ‘deservedness’ of the individual or their identity in addition to their experience of harm or crime is crucial in understanding perceptions of, and responses to, victims. Deservedness also forms the root of Nils Christie’s (1986) ‘ideal victim’ thesis, which remains popular in social and political discourses around victims and victimization. Christie noted the popular conceptualization of ‘ideal victims’ in society, invoking particular characteristics against which deservedness of legitimate victim status was measured. Deserving victims were characterized as weak in relation to the offender (ideally female, sick, very old or very young); virtuous, or engaged in legitimate...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  Conceptualizing Victims
• 2  Victims as Vote Winners
• 3  Prioritized Political Focus: ASB and Hate Crime
• 4  Reconceptualizing Victims
• References
• Index