Victims, Crime and Society

An Introduction

Pamela Davies,Peter Francis,Chris Greer

• Éditeur: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Année: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781473910928
• Édition: 2
• Sujet: Social Sciences
• Sous-sujet: Criminology

This book provides a thorough account of victimisation across the social spectrum of class, race, age and gender. The second edition has been fully revised and expanded, with two parts now spanning the key perspectives and issues in victimology.

Covering theoretical, social and political contexts, the book:

• Includes new chapters on defining and constructing victims, fear and vulnerability, sexuality, white collar crime and the implications of crime policy on victims
• Examines a global range of historical and theoretical perspectives in victimology and features a new chapter on researching victims of crime
• Reinforces your learning through critical thinking sections, future research suggestions, chapter summaries and a glossary of key terms

Victims, Crime and Society is the essential text for your studies in victimology across criminology, criminal justice, community safety, youth justice and related areas.

1 Victims, Crime and Society: An Introduction

Pamela Davies

Peter Francis

Chris Greer

This is a book about victims of crime, survivors of abuse, the consequences of social harm, the nature of victimhood and the extent and impact of victimisation. It is a book concerned with the study of victims and victimisation, and is written from a critical perspective that seeks to: challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about the study of victimology; question key concepts and approaches to thinking about victims and survivors; critique ways of understanding the nature and extent of victimisation; and provide an alternative reading of many conventional approaches to responding to victims’ needs and experiences. It is a book that provides students of criminology, criminal justice and victimology with an all-encompassing, in-depth critical analysis of the relationship between victims, crime and society. We hope it will become essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the social, political, economic and cultural context of victims in society, historically, contemporaneously and globally.

Throughout its chapters the book addresses a number of critical questions including: Who are the victims of crime? How did the study of victims emerge? What is the nature, extent and impact of victimisation? What are the core perspectives that shape victimological thinking? How do media constructions influence our understanding of crime victims and victimisation? What is the relationship between social relations, politics, globalisation, the economy and structure and agency in generating, exacerbating and/or obfuscating forms of victimisation? What are the factors that drive unequal experiences of victimisation across social groups, geographical locations, jurisdictions and historical periods? How can victimisation be managed, prevented and/or responded to?

Having studied and taught victimology for many years, it is our contention that these questions not only animate students’ curiosity, and thus their criminological imagination, they also underpin important societal questions about the precise nature of crime, victimisation, harm and injustice in contemporary society. The study of victims and victimisation has converged with the discipline of criminology for many decades now. It is our view that over the next few decades victimology will become more contested as it continues to challenge at the heart of the study of crime and its control. Victimology has the potential to shape debates that affect the future landscape of victimisation and the ability and willingness of the state and its agencies to provide for victims of crime. Moreover, it has the capacity to challenge criminology to transform itself into a progressive social democratic discipline willing and able to provide a social blueprint for understanding and intervention. In order to explore those questions detailed above, and to bring alive what is after all a fast-moving (and exciting) area of academic study, the book is structured around three key central organising themes.

The first key organising theme is the relationship between theory, method and practice in making sense of victimhood and victimisation. It is here that we are interested in: the nature of media representation about victims and victimisation; the conceptual and theoretical approaches underpinning the study of victims and victimisation; the social construction of victimhood; the ways in which evidence about the nature, extent and impact of victimisation is uncovered and understood; and in the way in which victimological ideas, assumptions and approaches have developed and impacted on policy and practice over time and place, historically, internationally and globally.

The second key organising theme concerns the nature of criminal victimisation in relation to the intersecting and overlapping social divisions of class, race, age, religion, sexuality and gender. Beneath this rubric, the book explores: the unequal distribution of criminal victimisation; the patterning and nature of risk; the experiences of crime victims as groups and individuals; and the social, political and criminal justice response to both crime victims and criminal victimisation. It foregrounds how social divisions provide a useful starting point for understanding the complex and dynamic nature of criminal victimisation in society.

The third key organising theme explores the frequent tensions between social divisions, criminal victimisation and state policy and practice. Across the chapters of this book contributors explore the interconnections between theory, method and practice, all informing what to do about victimisation. It is important that this thematic is cross-cutting across all chapters in that a key message that runs throughout the book is that any dislocation between theory, research and intervention will invariably be unable to deliver evidence-based, theoretically informed, targeted and effective intervention capable of addressing the needs and rights of those identified as victims and survivors.

Specifically, chapters within this book critically examine and evaluate:

• the key conceptual, theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches that are important for understanding criminal victimisation in contemporary society;
• the core models of victimological thinking and their impact on policy and practice;
• the importance of media representation for understanding social divisions, inequality and criminal victimisation;
• the political, cultural, global and social context of criminal victimisation and public and ‘official’ responses;
• the role of social divisions – class, race and ethnicity, age, gender, sexuality, religion – in the unequal distribution, patterning and experiences of criminal victimisation;
• the various political, governmental and policy responses to crime victims and criminal victimisation and the role of the voluntary and community sectors in supporting victims of crime.

Our aim in the rest of this introductory chapter is to map out the key organising themes of the book, identify various ‘golden threads’ that run throughout its pages and, in so doing, introduce, contextualise and interconnect the various chapters that follow.

First, we introduce the importance of media analysis to an understanding of victims, crime and society. Second, we outline the various social research methods that have been used to uncover the nature, extent and impact of criminal victimisation. Third, we present the relationship between the study of victims, victimisation and justice – victimology, and the study of crime, criminalisation and crime control – criminology, and outline the key models of victimology. Fourth, we articulate the concept of social divisions as social categories, discuss their constructed nature and examine the connectedness between social divisions, inequality and victimisation. Fifth, we discuss political and policy responses to victimisation. Finally, we conclude this chapter by introducing the various pedagogic features that we have used throughout the book. Under each section we offer a brief summary of each thread, and offer further reading and ‘pause for review’ study questions.

Media Representations of Victims of Crime

The problem of crime is a ‘socially constructed’ problem. The same can be said of victimisation and social harm. Try telling the victim of a violent assault that their pain is ‘socially constructed’ and they are likely to give you short shrift. We are not proposing that criminal victimisation has no external reality, or that this reality is unknowable in any meaningful, empirical way. What we mean is that since most of us have limited first-hand experience of serious criminal victimisation, we are reliant on other sources of information for much of our knowledge about it. Few of these sources are more important than the media. Media representations contribute to shaping what the issues of crime, criminal victimisation and social harm ‘mean’ to people. They help to socially construct these issues by presenting particular ‘views of reality’. There is no necessary connection, however, between what is constructed in the media and what is happening ‘in the real world’. The issues of crime, victimisation and social harm, then, are highly mediatised. On this basis, it is our contention that any comprehensive critical exploration of crime victims, victimisation and wider social harm must engage with media constructions and (mis)representation.

As Stanley Cohen (1972) noted decades ago, while the media may not necessarily tell us what to think, they can be remarkably effective in shaping what we think about. They are of fundamental importance to those who would promote a particular view of crime victims and victimisation, or seek to challenge or change existing views. They are a key site of contestation on which policy makers seek to legitimise and secure popular consent for new measures affecting victims of crime. Groups espousing competing values, interests and beliefs struggle to secure ‘ownership’ – and with it, political power – of a plurality of contested victim-related issues and debates across media forums.

In the digital age, where communications technologies occupy a central and increasingly important role in most people’s lives, understanding complex social issues like crime and victimisation, control and social order requires engaging with media. As one of us has argued elsewhere (Greer, 2013: 143):

The rapid and relentless development of information technologies over the past 100 years has shaped the modern era, transforming the relations between space, time and identity. Where once ‘news’ used to travel by ship, it now hurtles across the globe at light speed and is available 24 hours-a-day at the push of a button. Where once cultures used to be more or less distinguishable in national or geographical terms, they now mix, intermingle and converge in a constant global exchange of information. Where once a sense of community and belonging was derived primarily from established identities and local traditions, it may now also be found, and lost, in a vi...