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

146 Pages·2014·1.828 MB·English

by  Marian Duggan and Vicky Heap

Administrating Victimization
DOI: 10.1057/9781137409270.0001
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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
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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
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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.
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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