ebook img

Administrating Victimization: The Politics of AntiSocial Behaviour and and Hate Crime Policy PDF

146 Pages·2014·1.828 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Administrating Victimization: The Politics of AntiSocial Behaviour and and Hate Crime Policy

Administrating Victimization DOI: 10.1057/9781137409270.0001 Other Palgrave Pivot titles Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew J. Strathern: Working in the Field: Anthropological Experiences across the World Audrey Foster Gwendolyn: Hoarders, Doomsday Preppers, and the Culture of Apocalypse Sue Ellen Henry: Children’s Bodies in Schools: Corporeal Performances of Social Class Max J. Skidmore: Maligned Presidents: The “Gilded Age” Lynée Lewis Gaillet and Letizia Guglielmo: Scholarly Publication in a Changing Academic Landscape Owen Anderson: Reason and Faith in Early Princeton: Piety and the Knowledge of God Mark L. Robinson: Marketing Big Oil: Brand Lessons from the World’s Largest Companies Nicholas Robinette: Realism, Form and the Postcolonial Novel Andreosso-O’Callaghan, Bernadette, Jacques Jaussaud, and Maria Bruna Zolin (editors): Economic Integration in Asia: Towards the Delineation of a Sustainable Path Umut Özkırımlı: The Making of a Protest Movement in Turkey: #occupygezi Ilan Bijaoui: The Economic Reconciliation Process: Middle Eastern Populations in Conflict Leandro Rodriguez Medina: The Circulation of European Knowledge: Niklas Luhmann in the Hispanic Americas Terje Rasmussen: Personal Media and Everyday Life: A Networked Lifeworld Nikolay Anguelov: Policy and Political Theory in Trade Practices: Multinational Corporations and Global Governments Sirpa Salenius: Rose Elizabeth Cleveland: First Lady and Literary Scholar StenVikner and Eva Engels: Scandinavian Object Shift and Optimality Theory Chris Rumford: Cosmopolitan Borders Majid Yar: The Cultural Imaginary of the Internet: Virtual Utopias and Dystopias Vanita Sundaram: Preventing Youth Violence: Rethinking the Role of Gender and Schools Giampaolo Viglia: Pricing, Online Marketing Behavior, and Analytics Nicos Christodoulakis: Germany’s War Debt to Greece: A Burden Unsettled Volker H. Schmidt: Global Modernity. A Conceptual Sketch Mayesha Alam: Women and Transitional Justice: Progress and Persistent Challenges in Retributive and Restorative Processes Rosemary Gaby: Open-Air Shakespeare: Under Australian Skies Todd J. Coulter: Transcultural Aesthetics in the Plays of Gao Xingjian Joanne Garde-Hansen and Hannah Grist: Remembering Dennis Potter through Fans, Extras and Archives Ellis Cashmore and Jamie Cleland: Football’s Dark Side: Corruption, Homophobia, Violence and Racism in the Beautiful Game Ornette D. Clennon: Alternative Education and Community Engagement: Making Education a Priority Scott L. Crabill and Dan Butin (editors): Community Engagement 2.0? Dialogues on the Future of the Civic in the Disrupted University Martin Tunley: Mandating the Measurement of Fraud: Legislating against Loss DOI: 10.1057/9781137409270.0001 Administrating Victimization: The Politics of Anti-Social Behaviour and Hate Crime Policy Marian Duggan Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Sheffield Hallam University, UK and Vicky Heap Lecturer in Criminology, Sheffield Hallam University, UK DOI: 10.1057/9781137409270.0001 © Marian Duggan and Vicky Heap 2014 Foreword © Pamela Davies 2014 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-40926-3 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saff ron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. Th e authors have asserted their rights to be identifi ed as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fift h Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–1–137–40927–0 PDF ISBN: 978–1–349–48857–5 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. www.palgrave.com/pivot doı: 10.1057/9781137409270 Contents Foreword vi Pamela Davies Preface xii Acknowledgements xiv About the Authors xv List of Acronyms xvi Introduction 1 1 Conceptualizing Victims 13 2 Victims as Vote Winners 29 3 Prioritized Political Focus: ASB and Hate Crime 59 4 Reconceptualizing Victims 91 References 112 Index 127 DOI: 10.1057/9781137409270.0001 v Foreword In 1988 Maguire and Pointing (1988: 1) wrote: Fifteen years ago, it would have been difficult to find any- one in Britain working in either criminological research or in any agency connected with criminal justice, who gave the problems of crime victims more than a passing thought. The primary interest then was in the motivation of the offender. The victim was simply a source of information about the offending behaviour, or a witness when the case was heard in court. Yet today there is a fast growing research literature on the needs and rights of victims. Since the early 1970s, a period editors Maguire and Pointing were reflecting on, ‘victims of crime’ research and literature have proliferated and the victim is no longer the forgotten player in the criminal justice system (CJS). The year 2014 is a highly apposite time to write a commentary on victim policy in the UK. With the recent exposure of child sexual exploitation by predatory individuals and organized groups, high-profile cases of sexual abuse and discoveries of historical abuse, the rights, needs and welfare of victims are rarely far from the media spotlight. None of these necessarily suggests the victim of crime has regained centre stage. My task here is to introduce you to, and contextualize, the main points of Administrating Victimization: The Politics of Anti-Social Behaviour and Hate Crime Policy. The focal point for this book is ostensibly 2010, and the formation of the current Coalition government by David Cameron (Conservative Prime Minister) with Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister) who jointly vi DOI: 10.1057/9781137409270.0002 Foreword vii set out the Coalition’s programme of policies over the next five years (Cabinet Office, 2010). Apart from a fleeting reference to a ‘Victims’ Surcharge’ there is no specific mention of victim policy in any section of this document including the programme for ‘Justice’, ‘Crime and Policing’ and ‘Social Action’. Nevertheless, Duggan and Heap contend that the Coalition has co-opted victims and victimization, emulating a tactic employed under New Labour which they suggest was advantageous for vote-winning purposes. They argue that the Coalition’s redefining and hierarchization of victimization has led to enhanced levels of individual, community and organizational responsibilization, in line with broader neoliberal ideologies. Victims of crime have a rapidly changing role in the CJS in England and Wales and, at the time of writing, rarely a week goes by without reference in the media to changes in victim policy whether this be meas- ures to protect witnesses in court or vulnerable victims, rights to review decisions by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), new guidelines for prosecutors of cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation or the appointment of new public figureheads such as the Victims’ Champion, Commissioner and Minister or the publication of a New Victims’ Code (2013). From a position some forty years ago when victims were acknowledged to be the forgotten people, largely overlooked in the CJS, it is now commonly accepted that victims and victim policies have moved, if not to centre-stage, at least onto the main agenda of criminal justice policy. Several changes to the UK CJS have led to an increasing visibility and engagement with victims after decades of concentrating mainly on offenders. Many changes have been introduced, particularly since 1990, aimed at (perhaps a rather over simplistic) re-balancing of the system in favour of victims (and, by implication, at the expense of offenders). Victims have been increasingly afforded greater visibility and participation in crime prevention, prosecution and punishment. This burgeoning of theorizing, research, policy and practice related activities has enhanced the resources available to scholars, research- ers, policy makers and practitioners interested in knowing about and understanding the causes of criminal victimization, its nature and extent and the policy context and practice in relation to working with victims of crime. For me, as a criminologist with an interest in a gender sensitive victimization agenda, an inter-disciplinary victimology offers some brain teasing conundrums about the gendered nature of crime and victimization and has allowed my colleagues and I to explore some very DOI: 10.1057/9781137409270.0002 viii Foreword vexing and challenging social justice questions about official landscapes of victimization, hidden and dismissed experiences of victimization and the impact of victimization upon social divisions in society. What con- stitutes victimization and definitions of victimhood are highly contested and should always, in my opinion, be problematized. Influences, besides the edited volume referred to above, that shaped my own appreciation and understanding of who victims are and which victims are visible in criminal justice arenas include the seminal work of Nils Christie. His oft-cited article ‘The Ideal Victim’ (1986) remains ever useful in understanding present common sense and popular conceptu- alizations of victim–offender relations. Alongside Smart’s (1977) expo- sure of assumptions in mainstream criminology resulting in particular understandings and images of the female offender and the female victim of crime, these influences are amongst those that shaped my own grow- ing interest in gender, crime and victimization. However, at the same time that Smart published ‘Women, Crime and Criminology’, Christie had ‘Conflicts as Property’ published in the British Journal of Criminology. In this article he suggested that the state has ‘stolen’ the crime – crime representing a conflict between offender and victim – by taking over the functions of prosecution and sentencing and excluding the victim from the process. The abstract of this article is reproduced below in full with the aim of kindling reader’s interest in critically examining forty years of victim-oriented policy change. Conflicts are seen as important elements in society. Highly industrialised societies do not have too much internal conflict, they have too little. We have to organise social systems so that conflicts are both nurtured and made visible and also see to it that professionals do not monopolise the handling of them. Victims of crime have in particular lost their rights to participate. A court procedure that restores the participants’ rights to their own conflicts is outlined. (Christie, 1977: 1) The idea that formal criminal justice represents the theft of conflicts, removing responsibility for resolving conflict from the parties involved, connects with a critical perspective of ‘the powerful’. Juxtaposing these ideas has inspired my current research inquiries into the needs of, and support for, families of child sexual abuse and doing justice for vulnerable victims. In this research hierarchies of victimization are illustrated and shown to play out in terms of victims who are, and others who are not, supported via official policy and practice developments. It also illustrates DOI: 10.1057/9781137409270.0002 Foreword ix how vulnerability is a poorly understood and interpreted concept in the context of the CJS. Children and young people who have experienced sexual violence, exploitation and/or physical abuse, have mental health problems or learning difficulties (often as a result of institutionalization) comprise a large vulnerable victim group who are denied access to the CJS or fail to progress through it without being re-victimized. Although the police have increasingly adopted a victim-focused approach and the CPS now claim they adopt a merits-based approach, focusing on the overall case, ignoring myths and stereotypes rather than dwelling exclusively on the credibility of the victim, there is little evidence of vulnerable victims successfully accessing or proceeding confidently and with satisfactory outcomes, through the CJS. Though there is little academic research on the ‘justice gap’ for vulner- able victims there is some evidence in connection with the approaches taken by police and prosecutors, that many complaints of victimization from those deemed vulnerable are no-crimed, dismissed or sifted out, or, ‘alleged victims’ are put on trial as non-credible victim-witnesses. Prosecutorial approaches currently allow for the dismissal of accounts from vulnerable victim-witnesses. Keir Starmer QC, Director of Public Prosecutions before he stepped down in October 2013, has suggested there is a category of vulnerable victims left unprotected by the law ...’ (Starmer, 2013: 2) and suggests a legislated and mandatory approach is warranted to achieve a collective national consensus and cultural shift in the way the CJS treats victims of crime. What follows in this book is a critique of institutional developments concerning victims and the provision of victim-related activities in the UK, specifically, the role of the government in setting up or coordinat- ing victim-related activities. A distinction can be made between three potential stages of victims’ experiences. Stage 1 covers from the time the offence occurs to the time the case is closed or a suspect charged. Here the primary responsibility for victim-related activities lies with the Home Office, police and non-governmental organizations provid- ing victim support. Two government initiatives in 2012 significantly impact upon the role of the police. First, the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 which lead to the election of Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) who were tasked with a responsibility for public funding of victim services and assessing police response to victims; second, Consultation Paper CP3/2012 and the reformulation of the Victim Charter. Stage 2 is the period up to, and including, trial. Here DOI: 10.1057/9781137409270.0002

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.