Handbook of Victims and Victimology

Sandra Walklate, Sandra Walklate

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317496243
• Edición: 2
• Categoría: Social Sciences
• Categoría: Criminology

This second edition of the Handbook of Victims and Victimology presents a comprehensively revised and updated set of essays, bringing together internationally recognised scholars and practitioners to offer substantial research informed overviews within their specialist fields of investigation. This handbook is divided into five parts, with each part addressing a different theme within victimology:

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• Part I offers a scene-setting exploration of new developments in the field, enduring issues that remain relatively unchanged and the gaps and traps within the contemporary victimological agenda

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• Part II examines of the complex dimensions to victim experiences as structured by gender, age, ethnicity, sexuality and intersectionality

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• Part III reflects on the problems and possibilities of formulating policy responses in the light of the changing appreciation of the nature and extent of victimhood

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• Part IV focused on the value of a comparative lens and the problems and possibilities of victim policies when seen through this lens, explored along three geographical axes: Europe, Australia and Asia

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• Part V considers other ways of thinking about who counts as a victim and what counts as victimhood and extends the boundaries of the victimological imagination outward

Building on the success of the previous edition, this book provides an international focus on cutting-edge issues in the field of victimology. Including brand new chapters on intersectionality, child victims, sexuality, hate crime and crimes of the powerful, this handbook is essential reading for students and academics studying victims and victimology and an essential reference tool for those working within the victim support environment.

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Part I
Perspectives on victims and victimisation

Introduction to Part I

Sandra Walklate

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Over the last ten years, interest in victims, the processes of victimisation and the experience of victimhood has both consolidated its position as a focal concern for academic and policy intervention and grown exponentially across a wide range of jurisdictions. Despite this ever-increasing interest, accompanied by a wide range of available data and data sources, some issues and lacunae within this interest remain resolutely the same. The chapters in the first part of this collection draw attention not to only the developments in this field of study but also to those issues about which relatively little has changed.

In Chapter 1, Barry Godfrey sets the scene against which to make sense of current pre-occupations within victims and victimisation in revisiting his earlier contribution (on that occasion written with Tony Kearon) on the historical role of the victim in the criminal justice system in England and Wales and its subsequent development. In many respects, of course, the historical analysis offered in chapter one remains much the same. The point is well made, as in the first iteration of this chapter, that from the time of the Conquest to Queen Victoria’s Silver Jubilee, victims were absolutely central to the business of criminal justice. Without them, little or no crime would have been detected or prosecuted. Moreover, whilst victims did disappear from an active role in criminal justice subsequently, this was only for a relatively short time period. They certainly had an ongoing and active presence in the popular cultural representations of crime which has considerable currency in contemporary media and political discourses. So much so that Valier (2004) was able to observe a ‘return to the Gothic’ and perhaps more significantly there is now some genuine and active interest in taking further Mythen’s (2007) first iteration of a cultural victimology (see inter alia McGarry and Walklate 2015). Importantly, Godfrey’s history also considers the historical context in which the academic interest in victims and victimology emerged. In this respect his chapter serves as a sound reminder of the interconnections not only between victimology and criminology but also the way in which those interconnections were conceived and developed at particular historically informed moments. The shape and form of that academic interest is taken up by Paul Rock in Chapter 2.

Paul Rock’s chapter asks us to think critically about any claims to theory within victimology. His chapter charts a remarkable journey, refracted through the discipline of criminology, which clearly outlines the neglect of the victim of crime within that discipline. At every stage of this journey, his analysis encourages the reader to be acutely sensitive to the question of what counts as theory. For him, there have been three main developments within the study of criminal victimisation: the differential development of the concept of victim precipitation, the feminist contribution to understanding the nature and extent of criminal victimisation (a theme that is developed in later chapters in this book); the popularisation of criminal victim surveys (also discussed in Chapter 3 by Tim Hope and in Chapter 14 by Jan Van Dijk and Marc Groenhuijsen in Part IV of this volume); and the later influence of routine activity theory in contributing to understanding who is likely to be victimised when. In addition, Rock points to the different but important influence of particular empirical studies of criminal victimisation in extending our understanding of the impact of crime (developed more fully by Simon Green and Antony Pemberton in Chapter 4). His discussion charts the disputed origins of the ‘discipline’ of victimology, taking as his starting point that to search for anything that could claim the status of a theory of victimisation faces very similar problems to those who would make claims for a theory of crime. Yet claims have been made by those working within victimology for the presence of different theoretical perspectives variously labelled as positive, radical and critical victimology.

Despite such claims, Rock expresses the view that theory within victimology is in a poor state. The efforts made to claim different theoretical perspectives for this area of work he argues comprise ‘opportunistic theorising’ borrowing as they do from criminology and/or sociology. From this point of view, victimology is no more than another rendezvous sub-discipline, a meeting place for all those who share a common interest in the victim of crime. Acceptance of Rock’s analysis, of course, rather depends upon whether or not the reader considers that victimology (or criminology for that matter) carries with it the status of a discipline with a clearly defined unit of analysis as opposed to a meeting place for people interested in a particular substantive problem. However, given the increasing symbolic use to which constructions of victimhood are being put, highlighted by Godfrey and developed later by Gabe Mythen and Will McGowan in Chapter 19, the conceptual apparatus used by victimologists, whatever its status or however it has been generated, needs to be able to make sense of how victimhood is being harnessed. Whether or not such an apparatus carries the status of a theory is clearly a moot point. Nevertheless Rock is right to encourage a deeply critical stance towards theoretical thinking about the victim (of crime). This is an issue we shall return to in the Conclusion.

In a similarly critical vein in Chapter 3, Tim Hope, following the line he took in his first iteration of this chapter, offers a deeply critical appreciation of what can and cannot be known by the data generating process called the criminal victimisation survey. He, like Rock, points out the paucity of what can be done in terms of prevention on the basis of such data and its conceptual basis. This ultimately results in what he calls the paradox of prevention. He comes to this view by making what some will consider a rather radical assertion: the need to study non-victims, that is, to explore the counter-factual. At the root of this assertion is a desire to return victimological work to first principles and not be distracted by only focussing on those who possess the characteristics this ‘discipline’ is interested in: those who have been victimised. Only paying attention to the positive values of victimisation simultaneously blinkers (and distorts) victimology from the outset. As he goes on to argue (and as is well illustrated in the case of domestic violence), victims experience victimisation as an event that is embedded in everyday life. As such, identifying the cause of such an event is nigh on impossible since any survey cannot measure the underlying generative mechanism that might result in such an event neither can it observe non-victimisation. Hence, since it is impossible to observe criminal victimisation holistically, it is not possible to produce an explanation for it and thereby talk about appropriate prevention. Though some optimism is expressed concerning the (ideal) concepts of immunity and exposure for evaluating different approaches to crime prevention. Hope concludes by suggesting forging the causal links between what is recorded by criminal victimisation survey data; explanation and prevention present the biggest challenges to those working within this field.

Echoing a recent intervention by Lippens (2016), in Chapter 4, Simon Green and Antony Pemberton explore the experience of victimisation and its impact starting from the position that the victim is sovereign not subject. In other words they make the case that victimologists must engage with victims as social actors with agency rather than just people who have had things done to them. In taking this stance they develop the 2007 iteration of this chapter by Green and push the concerns expressed then into the contemporary realm. They do this in a number of ways: by outlining the contemporary biases in victimology; by engaging in a thorough critical evaluation of the role of intent and grievance as central but over-looked in the victim experience; and finally by proposing an agenda for narrative victimology that centres agency, meaning and some new values for the victimological endeavour. The resistance to the objectifying of the victim experience seen here to be a current feature of mainstream victimological work is empathetic with the critical stance adopted by Hope. Indeed, similar to Hope, Green and Pemberton resist the temptation to review the empirical findings about the impact of crime (more than adequately catalogued by the work of Shapland and Hall (2007), as just one example) and opt to engage in a conceptual review. This review offers a fundamental overhaul of how victimology has understood impact, i.e. rather like Hope, they identify and argue for a need to go back to first principles. Thus their radical agenda for victimology certainly does render the victim sovereign and centres the need to understanding the harms experienced as grounded and owned by the victims themselves.

Conclusion

Taken together, Part I sets a challenging agenda for any claims to knowledge about criminal victimisation. Each in their own way point to the need not only to constantly revisit the assumptions in which victimology has become embedded (particularly as they pertain to positivist assumptions) but also to consider other ways of thinking about crime, its impact and responses to that impact. At the same time, these opening chapters also allude to gaps and traps within the contemporary victimological agenda. The gaps are pointedly discussed here by all four contributions to which might be added a fuller consideration of the question posed by Rock (2002) some time ago. At present still little is known about the process whereby someone might become a victim and then move on to embrace a victim identity. It is important to remember that not all those who have been victimised do this. There are interesting questions to be considered around who does and who does not and why. This gap is not only ripe for some thoughtful consideration perhaps along the lines implied by Green and Pemberton but also affords a space for some deeper psychological (as opposed to psychiatric) consideration. This gap applies not only to individuals of course it also applies to collective responses to victimisation. This is a point well made in a recent intervention by Shute (2016) in offering a comparative analysis of families bereaved by mass (and lethal) violence and their differential and collective response to such experiences. The major trap for victimology, also implies by all the chapters here, is to assume that the term victim is a unitary, universal and universalising category. It is not as much of the rest of the collection will proceed to illustrate but particularly those contributions in part two where the question of difference is more fully explored.

References

Lippens, R. (2016) Sovereign bodies, minds and victim culture. In D. C. Spencer and S. Walklate (eds) Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology: Interventions and Possibilities. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, pp. 1–14.

McGarry, R. and Walklate, S. (2015) Victims: Trauma, Testimony, Justice. London: Routledge.

Mythen, G. (2007) Cultural victimology: are we all victims now? In S. Walklate (ed.) Handbook of Victims and Victimology (1/e). Cullompton: Willan, pp. 464–93.

Rock, P. (2002) On becoming a victim. In C. Hoyle and R. Young (eds) New Visions of Crime Victims. Oxford: Hart Publishing, pp. 1–22.

Shapland, J. and Hall, M. (2007) What do we know about the effects of crime on victims? International Review of Victimology, 14(2): 175–217.

Shute, J. (2016) Bereaved family activism in the context of mass violence. In D. C. Spencer and S. Walklate (eds) Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology: Interventions and Possibilities. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, pp. 173–90.

Valier, C. (2004) Crime and Punishment in Contemporary Culture. London: Routledge.

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Chapter 1
Setting the scene

A question of history¹

Barry Godfrey

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Introduction

For much of the last two hundred years, the victim of crime was either ignored in criminological debates or portrayed as a marginal and passive figure in the criminal justice system (Hoyle and Young 2002: 526). As Miers (1978: 15) noted, the very term ‘victim’ inevitably promotes an image of passivity, where the victim has ‘traditionally been viewed as the ‘sufferer’ in a simple ‘doer-sufferer’ model of criminal interaction’. This perception has (not withstanding growing debates about the role of the victim in restorative justice) become something of a ‘given’ in twenty-first century criminology, although essays in this collection will go a long way towards re-assessing that view. Historical research has provided a measure of empirical evidence to challenge the ‘marginality’ of victims in past centuries. However, debates about the historical position and importance of victims in the criminal justice process have had to be pieced together from disparate sources. Victims make an appearance in essays on the development of policing services, descriptions of change in the prosecution process, but only as bit part actors. If George Rude’s opinion in 1985 that historical research had pretty much bypassed victims is now looking a little dated, it is certainly true that victims, and the part they have played in the operation of the criminal justice system, are not well served by historians (see Rude 1985: 76). However, let us start with so...