"I think we should consider the possibility that this attempted murder was a hate crime."
"What, as opposed to one of those 'I really, really like you' type of murders?"
- Life on Mars
This week we took the approach of radical victimology, with its stress on power and injustice as the context for crime, and applied it to a different area: ethnicity and 'race'.
Radical victimology starts from the basis that some people hold power over others, and do so in ways that are unaccountable and unjust. Is this a useful way of thinking about ethnicity? It's certainly not true to say that every member of an ethnic minority is less powerful than every White person. Nor is it true to say that all White people would discriminate against Asians (for example) if they had the chance - any more than all Asians would discriminate against Whites.
The point is more about the relationship between prejudice and power. This country, like many others, has a long history of discrimination against ethnic minorities: fifty or a hundred years ago it would have been completely routine and unsurprising to see positions of power reserved for White people, and to see those people using their power in discriminatory ways. This is no longer normal or acceptable, but it still goes on - and it's no secret that there are people who would like it to be normal and acceptable again. Because of that history, and because those discriminatory values do still survive, the White majority - on the scale of society as a whole - has a power that ethnic minorities don't have: the power to discriminate, in ways that have a major effect on people's life chances. It's not a coincidence that black and minority ethnic people are significantly more likely to live in poorer areas - and, as a result, significantly more likely to become victims of crime, including 'normal' crimes with no racial motivation. This is the sense in which ethnicity, and the more-or-less imagined categories of 'race', has to do with power and injustice.
Whether it's useful to talk about racist crime in terms of 'hate crime' is another question; the police certainly think it is. Personally I'm sceptical; this is partly for the reason given by Gene Hunt, partly because I think the 'hate crime' label is too general. If members of any group can be a victim of 'hate crime', then 'hate crime' is purely about irrational prejudice - and not about power and histories of injustice. I think losing that background makes racist crime harder, not easier, to explain and to challenge.
Tuesday 11 December 2012
Tuesday 4 December 2012
Week 11: Corporate crime
This week and next week are a two-parter to round off the term; they both look at different aspects of radical victimology. Next week we'll be looking at ethnicity as a factor in crime, including crimes which aren't overtly racist in nature or motivation. This week we looked at corporate crime: crimes and other serious harms committed by businesses.
What these very different types of crime have in common is that they both take place against the backdrop of unequal power relations, which affect both the likelihood of becoming a victim of crime and the likelihood of gaining recognition as a victim. Businesses large and small have much more power over us than we do over them, and in some cases the power they have is exercised in unlawful ways: selling us sub-standard products, persuading us to buy insurance policies we can never claim on, ordering us to work excessive hours.
Even when it takes directly life-threatening forms, corporate crime has a tendency to remain invisible - "man crushed by machinery at workplace" may be an item on the local news but it won't make the national press, and it won't get into the crime statistics. Nobody knows how much law-breaking goes on in business. One reason for this is that business regulation - the main approach used to control commercial rule-breaking - has a strong orientation towards gaining compliance rather than prosecuting wrong-doers. Where prosecution is used, it is used as a last resort: inspectors will try to get managers to co-operate, then use the threat of prosecution to try and induce compliance. Actually taking a company to court is an implicit admission that other methods have failed, and is almost a punishment in itself.
As we saw in the seminar, there are good reasons for using this 'responsive', compliance-oriented approach: being treated with respect encourages managers and employees to commit themselves to the rules being enforced, rather than just treating them as a box-ticking exercise. The more punitive approach of prosecuting everything that can be prosecuted leads to stressed and demotivated staff, who only care about sticking to the rules because they're afraid they'll lose their jobs. (That's the theory, at any rate; in practice the results may be more mixed.) But even if it does produce better results, with less disruption, than a more punitive approach, there's a question-mark over the responsive approach when it comes to the victims of corporate crime.
Should corporate criminals always be prosecuted for the sake of doing justice to the victims? Or are the victims better served by regulation that leads to better practices being adopted, so that there are fewer victims in future?
What these very different types of crime have in common is that they both take place against the backdrop of unequal power relations, which affect both the likelihood of becoming a victim of crime and the likelihood of gaining recognition as a victim. Businesses large and small have much more power over us than we do over them, and in some cases the power they have is exercised in unlawful ways: selling us sub-standard products, persuading us to buy insurance policies we can never claim on, ordering us to work excessive hours.
Even when it takes directly life-threatening forms, corporate crime has a tendency to remain invisible - "man crushed by machinery at workplace" may be an item on the local news but it won't make the national press, and it won't get into the crime statistics. Nobody knows how much law-breaking goes on in business. One reason for this is that business regulation - the main approach used to control commercial rule-breaking - has a strong orientation towards gaining compliance rather than prosecuting wrong-doers. Where prosecution is used, it is used as a last resort: inspectors will try to get managers to co-operate, then use the threat of prosecution to try and induce compliance. Actually taking a company to court is an implicit admission that other methods have failed, and is almost a punishment in itself.
As we saw in the seminar, there are good reasons for using this 'responsive', compliance-oriented approach: being treated with respect encourages managers and employees to commit themselves to the rules being enforced, rather than just treating them as a box-ticking exercise. The more punitive approach of prosecuting everything that can be prosecuted leads to stressed and demotivated staff, who only care about sticking to the rules because they're afraid they'll lose their jobs. (That's the theory, at any rate; in practice the results may be more mixed.) But even if it does produce better results, with less disruption, than a more punitive approach, there's a question-mark over the responsive approach when it comes to the victims of corporate crime.
Should corporate criminals always be prosecuted for the sake of doing justice to the victims? Or are the victims better served by regulation that leads to better practices being adopted, so that there are fewer victims in future?
Wednesday 28 November 2012
Week 10: Youth, age and being a victim
This week we talked about two groups of people who don't entirely fit into our usual ideas about crime and victimisation: old people and young people, including children.
The majority of people in society are adult and able-bodied, and when we think about people becoming victims of crime we tend to assume an adult, able-bodied victim. (Even the little old lady Christie presented as the archetypal "ideal victim" is living a fairly active life.) People who aren't adult and able-bodied seem to drop out of the picture when we're thinking about victims - just as they do, arguably, in a lot of other contexts.
The way we overlook old people and children has two main consequences. Firstly, it means that we overlook the types of crime which those groups are particularly likely to experience. Adults may feel intimidated by fifteen-year-old hoodies, but what age-group is most likely to suffer actual crime at the hands of a fifteen-year-old - to be robbed or harassed or beaten up for looking weird? I'll tell you now, it's not adults. Crimes committed by children against children are a real dark figure, and they're a major factor in lots of kids' lives. Elder abuse is another example: it's a crime that is not so much hidden as completely invisible, except when a particularly scandalous example comes to light.
Secondly, and I think more importantly, we don't tend to see old people or children as people in their own right, who are affected by becoming victims of crime in the same way that we would be. We may be very kind and caring in the way that we interact with them, we may be selflessly dedicated to protecting and looking after them, but we don't usually think they should have a say in what happens to them - or what's done about it when something bad happens to them.
In this sense, the way that we think about old people and children is an example of a much broader issue, which is central to contemporary victimology. This is the question of who counts - who matters in society, who has rights which are violated by crime. Classical victimology drew a line that excluded lots of scruffy, disreputable, unbalanced people, and ended up drawing the category of deserving victims very narrowly indeed. Feminist victimology came on to the scene saying that women count: women have rights which are violated by crime, and by lots of other forms of unjust male power (including within the criminal justice system). Radical victimology, in its different forms, asserts the rights of other groups which have historically been pushed to the margins. All of these ways of looking at victims say that this group counts, and members of this group should be able to say when they think they've been a victim, when they think their rights have been violated.
Is there a strand of radical victimology for children, or for old people? Is anyone out there saying that a boy being beaten up for his dinner money is just as bad as a man being mugged, or that an old woman being taunted and slapped by her daughter-in-law is just as bad as a prisoner being brutalised by prison warders?
If not, do you think there ever will be?
Why, or why not?
The majority of people in society are adult and able-bodied, and when we think about people becoming victims of crime we tend to assume an adult, able-bodied victim. (Even the little old lady Christie presented as the archetypal "ideal victim" is living a fairly active life.) People who aren't adult and able-bodied seem to drop out of the picture when we're thinking about victims - just as they do, arguably, in a lot of other contexts.
The way we overlook old people and children has two main consequences. Firstly, it means that we overlook the types of crime which those groups are particularly likely to experience. Adults may feel intimidated by fifteen-year-old hoodies, but what age-group is most likely to suffer actual crime at the hands of a fifteen-year-old - to be robbed or harassed or beaten up for looking weird? I'll tell you now, it's not adults. Crimes committed by children against children are a real dark figure, and they're a major factor in lots of kids' lives. Elder abuse is another example: it's a crime that is not so much hidden as completely invisible, except when a particularly scandalous example comes to light.
Secondly, and I think more importantly, we don't tend to see old people or children as people in their own right, who are affected by becoming victims of crime in the same way that we would be. We may be very kind and caring in the way that we interact with them, we may be selflessly dedicated to protecting and looking after them, but we don't usually think they should have a say in what happens to them - or what's done about it when something bad happens to them.
In this sense, the way that we think about old people and children is an example of a much broader issue, which is central to contemporary victimology. This is the question of who counts - who matters in society, who has rights which are violated by crime. Classical victimology drew a line that excluded lots of scruffy, disreputable, unbalanced people, and ended up drawing the category of deserving victims very narrowly indeed. Feminist victimology came on to the scene saying that women count: women have rights which are violated by crime, and by lots of other forms of unjust male power (including within the criminal justice system). Radical victimology, in its different forms, asserts the rights of other groups which have historically been pushed to the margins. All of these ways of looking at victims say that this group counts, and members of this group should be able to say when they think they've been a victim, when they think their rights have been violated.
Is there a strand of radical victimology for children, or for old people? Is anyone out there saying that a boy being beaten up for his dinner money is just as bad as a man being mugged, or that an old woman being taunted and slapped by her daughter-in-law is just as bad as a prisoner being brutalised by prison warders?
If not, do you think there ever will be?
Why, or why not?
Wednesday 21 November 2012
Week 9: What is the reality of victimisation?
This week's lecture followed on from last week's look at crime statistics. The focus this week was on the experience of being a victim of crime, and how that can vary from one person to another. This led into a discussion of resilience: people's ability to recover from being a victim of crime and get on with their lives. We finished off by looking briefly at the process of moving on from being a victim - becoming an ex-victim, even - and how restorative justice can contribute to it.
This lecture covered quite a lot of ground! The common theme running through it is that there are things about victimisation that the statistics don't tell us: the lived experience of victims of crime doesn't get into the official picture of crime. (I'm not crazy about the term 'critical victimology', but this is the kind of point that people who call themselves critical victimologists make quite often.)
This argument has a number of different aspects. Here are three of them.
There are (probably) more victims than we think.
Sometimes the experience of victims of crime doesn't get into the statistics in the most basic way, because those particular crimes aren't counted. Children aren't interviewed for the British Crime Survey; parents may volunteer information about their children's experience of crime, but they won't always think of doing so, or even know about it. Something similar is true of old people, particularly old people in residential care. Sometimes the 'dark figure' of crime is very dark indeed.
In some cases it may not even be clear that a crime has been committed - at least, it may not be clear to the police or the law. In cases of workplace deaths, the Health and Safety Executive can prosecute the company involved but rarely does so. If there is no prosecution, does this mean that a crime has not been committed? If a company is prosecuted after a workplace fatality, the sentence is usually a relatively small fine; does this mean that the crime is less serious than homicide outside the workplace?
The effect of crime is (sometimes) worse than we think.
The author and accordionist Lemony Snicket defined an optimist as someone who loses an arm and says, "Well, this isn't too bad - at least nobody will ever ask me whether I am right-handed or left-handed." This level of optimism is quite rare, but it's true that some people can shrug off quite severe injuries and accidents. Others may be severely affected by minor incidents. Being hard up, out of work or lonely makes crime worse. Not fitting the profile of the 'ideal victim' can make it worse, by making people less sympathetic.
Having the same thing happen to you over and over again definitely makes it worse. Which is worse, being shouted at by the neighbour's kids or being assaulted and breaking a rib? If this is the thirtieth day in a row that those kids have shouted at you - or the fiftieth, or the hundredth - you might prefer the broken rib. But the official picture of crime has trouble incorporating this kind of factor. (There is such a concept as anti-social behaviour, but it's very hard to define and even harder to measure - counting incidents of ASB makes counting crimes look easy.)
Getting over crime is (often) harder than we think.
Crime is a disruptive, invasive event - it invades your privacy, your personal space, your safety zone. It disrupts some very important beliefs that most people carry around all the time: the belief in personal invulnerability ("I can take whatever life throws at me"); the belief in an ordered world ("Everything happens for a reason"); and the belief in a positive self-image ("I'm one of the good guys, and I will be rewarded for it"). These beliefs aren't necessarily very well-founded, but they are very psychologically healthy - they're good for getting you through the day. We know rationally that the world doesn't make sense and that lots of horrible things could happen, but we don't, usually, live our lives on that basis - you'd never get out of bed. Being a victim of crime disrupts all of these beliefs, and getting over being a victim of crime means finding a way to rebuild them.
And everyone has different ways of rebuilding the world-view which crime disrupts. One victim of assault may take weeks off sick; another may bury himself in work. The second one looks like he's been less severely affected, but is that true? One victim may talk about the crime for weeks or months afterwards, another may refuse to talk about it from day one: which one is making a better recovery? All victims are victims, whatever their coping strategy looks like: whether they're forgiving or vengeful, whether they're laid low for weeks or shrug it off straight away. Victims need lots of different things, but all victims need attention - more attention than the criminal justice system currently gives them.
This lecture covered quite a lot of ground! The common theme running through it is that there are things about victimisation that the statistics don't tell us: the lived experience of victims of crime doesn't get into the official picture of crime. (I'm not crazy about the term 'critical victimology', but this is the kind of point that people who call themselves critical victimologists make quite often.)
This argument has a number of different aspects. Here are three of them.
There are (probably) more victims than we think.
Sometimes the experience of victims of crime doesn't get into the statistics in the most basic way, because those particular crimes aren't counted. Children aren't interviewed for the British Crime Survey; parents may volunteer information about their children's experience of crime, but they won't always think of doing so, or even know about it. Something similar is true of old people, particularly old people in residential care. Sometimes the 'dark figure' of crime is very dark indeed.
In some cases it may not even be clear that a crime has been committed - at least, it may not be clear to the police or the law. In cases of workplace deaths, the Health and Safety Executive can prosecute the company involved but rarely does so. If there is no prosecution, does this mean that a crime has not been committed? If a company is prosecuted after a workplace fatality, the sentence is usually a relatively small fine; does this mean that the crime is less serious than homicide outside the workplace?
The effect of crime is (sometimes) worse than we think.
The author and accordionist Lemony Snicket defined an optimist as someone who loses an arm and says, "Well, this isn't too bad - at least nobody will ever ask me whether I am right-handed or left-handed." This level of optimism is quite rare, but it's true that some people can shrug off quite severe injuries and accidents. Others may be severely affected by minor incidents. Being hard up, out of work or lonely makes crime worse. Not fitting the profile of the 'ideal victim' can make it worse, by making people less sympathetic.
Having the same thing happen to you over and over again definitely makes it worse. Which is worse, being shouted at by the neighbour's kids or being assaulted and breaking a rib? If this is the thirtieth day in a row that those kids have shouted at you - or the fiftieth, or the hundredth - you might prefer the broken rib. But the official picture of crime has trouble incorporating this kind of factor. (There is such a concept as anti-social behaviour, but it's very hard to define and even harder to measure - counting incidents of ASB makes counting crimes look easy.)
Getting over crime is (often) harder than we think.
Crime is a disruptive, invasive event - it invades your privacy, your personal space, your safety zone. It disrupts some very important beliefs that most people carry around all the time: the belief in personal invulnerability ("I can take whatever life throws at me"); the belief in an ordered world ("Everything happens for a reason"); and the belief in a positive self-image ("I'm one of the good guys, and I will be rewarded for it"). These beliefs aren't necessarily very well-founded, but they are very psychologically healthy - they're good for getting you through the day. We know rationally that the world doesn't make sense and that lots of horrible things could happen, but we don't, usually, live our lives on that basis - you'd never get out of bed. Being a victim of crime disrupts all of these beliefs, and getting over being a victim of crime means finding a way to rebuild them.
And everyone has different ways of rebuilding the world-view which crime disrupts. One victim of assault may take weeks off sick; another may bury himself in work. The second one looks like he's been less severely affected, but is that true? One victim may talk about the crime for weeks or months afterwards, another may refuse to talk about it from day one: which one is making a better recovery? All victims are victims, whatever their coping strategy looks like: whether they're forgiving or vengeful, whether they're laid low for weeks or shrug it off straight away. Victims need lots of different things, but all victims need attention - more attention than the criminal justice system currently gives them.
Wednesday 14 November 2012
Week 8: Who are the real victims?
Over the last few weeks we've been looking at what different theories say about crime and victimisation. We've seen that there's a big difference between theories that start from the perspective that society is basically working well (classical and 'lifestyle' victimology) and theories that start from the position that society is characterised by unjust power relations (feminist and radical victimologies). For a classical victimologist, crime is a localised problem to be dealt with - or minimised - so that we can all get on with our lives. For a radical victimologist, crime is one example of much broader injustices that run through society: somebody who's a victim of crime is likely to have been a victim of other social problems already.
This is all well and good, but it's all theoretical: it doesn't tell us who victims of crime actually are. For that matter, theory doesn't tell us whether we can make any generalisations about victims of crime: perhaps crime is just something that strikes at random, like lightning. (SPOILER: it isn't.) So this week we looked at what we know about crime victims, and how we know about crime victims.
There was a lot in the lecture, too much to summarise here: the history of victim surveys, the demographics of violent crime, the use and misuse of statistics about domestic burglary... Hopefully you will have got something interesting out of it. For this blog post I want to stress two points.
Firstly, our knowledge is incomplete. This is a common problem with social statistics: this is the reason why the news doesn't report the number of unemployed people, but always gives the number of those out of work and claiming benefits. Nobody knows precisely how many people are not working; the DSS does know precisely how many people claim unemployment-related benefits. Similarly with crime: nobody knows precisely how many crimes are committed. We do know precisely how many crimes are recorded by the police, but we also know that lots of crimes aren't - which is why we use figures from the British Crime Survey. But the BCS is a sample-based survey - they ask roughly 50,000 people about their experiences of crime, then multiply out to give an estimate of the number of crimes in the country as a whole. There is no precisely accurate figure for the number of crimes that are committed. What's more, because it's a residential survey completed by adults, we know that the BCS is highly unlikely to record crimes against some groups of people: for example, children, dependent elderly people, students living in halls, people of no fixed abode... Every statement about crime levels should be followed by "as far as we know".
Secondly, crime is highly patterned (as far as we know). To some extent, the feminist and radical versions of victimology are borne out by the figures. Social exclusion: living in a neighbourhood with "high levels of disorder" is associated with a higher risk of crime. Ethnicity: BME people are statistically at a higher risk of crime than Whites, even if we're only talking about "colour-blind" crimes like burglary. Gender: almost half of all victims of domestic violence are repeat victims, suggesting very strongly that domestic violence is - as feminists say - part of a continuing relationship of unequal power.
There are also some interesting and very significant findings about age, which don't quite fit any of the main variants of victimology. If you're under 25, your statistical risk of crime is much higher than average, particularly if you're living alone or with other young people; this is especially true of men, but it's true of women as well. Generally, being young seems to aggravate all the other risk factors. It may also make it that much harder to get redress, or to be taken seriously by the criminal justice system at all. Radical victimology comes in many different forms, but as far as I know there isn't much of a school of anti-ageist victimology; this could be an opportunity for someone.
I hope you liked the film, or at least found it thought-provoking. Next week we'll be looking at the whole process of 'moving on' from victimisation (and from victimhood?). We'll also be doing some serious talking about the essay, so if you've got any questions about your essay, do bring them along to a seminar.
This is all well and good, but it's all theoretical: it doesn't tell us who victims of crime actually are. For that matter, theory doesn't tell us whether we can make any generalisations about victims of crime: perhaps crime is just something that strikes at random, like lightning. (SPOILER: it isn't.) So this week we looked at what we know about crime victims, and how we know about crime victims.
There was a lot in the lecture, too much to summarise here: the history of victim surveys, the demographics of violent crime, the use and misuse of statistics about domestic burglary... Hopefully you will have got something interesting out of it. For this blog post I want to stress two points.
Firstly, our knowledge is incomplete. This is a common problem with social statistics: this is the reason why the news doesn't report the number of unemployed people, but always gives the number of those out of work and claiming benefits. Nobody knows precisely how many people are not working; the DSS does know precisely how many people claim unemployment-related benefits. Similarly with crime: nobody knows precisely how many crimes are committed. We do know precisely how many crimes are recorded by the police, but we also know that lots of crimes aren't - which is why we use figures from the British Crime Survey. But the BCS is a sample-based survey - they ask roughly 50,000 people about their experiences of crime, then multiply out to give an estimate of the number of crimes in the country as a whole. There is no precisely accurate figure for the number of crimes that are committed. What's more, because it's a residential survey completed by adults, we know that the BCS is highly unlikely to record crimes against some groups of people: for example, children, dependent elderly people, students living in halls, people of no fixed abode... Every statement about crime levels should be followed by "as far as we know".
Secondly, crime is highly patterned (as far as we know). To some extent, the feminist and radical versions of victimology are borne out by the figures. Social exclusion: living in a neighbourhood with "high levels of disorder" is associated with a higher risk of crime. Ethnicity: BME people are statistically at a higher risk of crime than Whites, even if we're only talking about "colour-blind" crimes like burglary. Gender: almost half of all victims of domestic violence are repeat victims, suggesting very strongly that domestic violence is - as feminists say - part of a continuing relationship of unequal power.
There are also some interesting and very significant findings about age, which don't quite fit any of the main variants of victimology. If you're under 25, your statistical risk of crime is much higher than average, particularly if you're living alone or with other young people; this is especially true of men, but it's true of women as well. Generally, being young seems to aggravate all the other risk factors. It may also make it that much harder to get redress, or to be taken seriously by the criminal justice system at all. Radical victimology comes in many different forms, but as far as I know there isn't much of a school of anti-ageist victimology; this could be an opportunity for someone.
I hope you liked the film, or at least found it thought-provoking. Next week we'll be looking at the whole process of 'moving on' from victimisation (and from victimhood?). We'll also be doing some serious talking about the essay, so if you've got any questions about your essay, do bring them along to a seminar.
Wednesday 7 November 2012
Week 7: Radical victimology
The trouble with the word 'radical' is that it seems to mean so many different things. George Galloway is a radical leftist. Nick Griffin is a radical right-winger. Abu Hamza is a radical Islamist. Andrea Dworkin was a radical feminist... and so on. You can apply it to political policies as well: the Coalition is making radical reforms to the NHS; Tony Blair made radical changes to the Labour Party...
These are all true statements, but what do they mean? "Radical" obviously isn't a political programme: we're not saying that the Coalition's NHS reforms would please Nick Griffin and Abu Hamza. (That may be true, I wouldn't really know.) The clue is in the etymology: "radical" comes from the Latin radix, meaning "root". "Radical" basically means "going down to the root" - it's a way of saying that really big changes need to be made.
So when we talk about "radical victimology" we're talking about a perspective on society which says that things are not all right: we are not living (as the classical victimologists believed) in a basically functional society, with crime as a marginal, manageable problem. Radical victimologists, like feminist victimologists, believe that society is structured by relationships of unequal power; that those relationships are systematically unjust; and that this is the context within which we should think about crime and victimisation.
Let's take those points one at a time.
Society is structured by relationships of unequal power: in everything you do, every day of your life, you are always interacting with people who have power over you. Some of the time the tables are turned and you have power over other people; if you're very lucky, very ambitious or both, you can reach a point where you have power over a lot of other people. Most people spend most of their time interacting with people who have power over them - the boss, the DSS, the police...
Those relationships are systematically unjust: from the day they're born, some people are much, much more likely to grow up to be doctors and lawyers than others; some people are much, much more likely to end up living in poverty and be victims of violence and theft. These differences aren't random: the Bad Fairy doesn't pick every fourth baby in a maternity ward, or all the babies whose surnames begin with an R. Being born into a disadvantaged group is bad luck in terms of future prosperity. And that bad luck doesn't simply get handed out on day one: it's dealt out over and over again as you go through life.
This is the context in which we should think about crime: radical victimologists, like feminist victimologists, argue that this context of systematic injustice makes a huge difference to how we think about crime. Is it a good idea to put security guards on the doors of a shopping centre and tell them to bar suspicious-looking characters? Is it a good idea to double police foot patrols on an estate to address concerns about youths hanging around? If a teenage drug addict has confessed to a burglary, is it a good idea to lock him up? You'll get very different answers to those questions, depending on whether you start from the classical position (society is basically working OK, except for this problem of crime) or a radical position (urban youth are systematically discriminated against in our unjust society).
I said at the outset that "radical" doesn't necessarily mean "left-wing". Radical victimologists generally are left-wing in one way or other, but they don't all see society in terms of class: there are radical victimologists who focus on ethnicity and racism, on white-collar crime, on disability and on sexuality. The key points are the ones I listed above - that power relations are fundamental to the way society is structured; that those power relations are unjust; and that those unjust power relations are the context within which we should think about crime and victimisation.
Two brief points about terminology
1: I mentioned above that the late Andrea Dworkin was a radical feminist. "Radical feminist" means something specific, which I talked about in the lecture on feminist victimology. You can be a radical feminist, and a feminist victimologist, but that wouldn't make you a radical victimologist. Sorry about that, it's just the way the words are used.
2: Sandra Walklate argues that "radical victimology" is something specific, based on the "left realist" school of criminology and the use of crime surveys to measure the prevalence of crime in working-class areas. She advocates what she calls "critical victimology", which would be less class-based. Some victimologists have started using this label, but others haven't. I think it's simpler just to say that radical victimology doesn't have to be class-based and use the label more generally.
These are all true statements, but what do they mean? "Radical" obviously isn't a political programme: we're not saying that the Coalition's NHS reforms would please Nick Griffin and Abu Hamza. (That may be true, I wouldn't really know.) The clue is in the etymology: "radical" comes from the Latin radix, meaning "root". "Radical" basically means "going down to the root" - it's a way of saying that really big changes need to be made.
So when we talk about "radical victimology" we're talking about a perspective on society which says that things are not all right: we are not living (as the classical victimologists believed) in a basically functional society, with crime as a marginal, manageable problem. Radical victimologists, like feminist victimologists, believe that society is structured by relationships of unequal power; that those relationships are systematically unjust; and that this is the context within which we should think about crime and victimisation.
Let's take those points one at a time.
Society is structured by relationships of unequal power: in everything you do, every day of your life, you are always interacting with people who have power over you. Some of the time the tables are turned and you have power over other people; if you're very lucky, very ambitious or both, you can reach a point where you have power over a lot of other people. Most people spend most of their time interacting with people who have power over them - the boss, the DSS, the police...
Those relationships are systematically unjust: from the day they're born, some people are much, much more likely to grow up to be doctors and lawyers than others; some people are much, much more likely to end up living in poverty and be victims of violence and theft. These differences aren't random: the Bad Fairy doesn't pick every fourth baby in a maternity ward, or all the babies whose surnames begin with an R. Being born into a disadvantaged group is bad luck in terms of future prosperity. And that bad luck doesn't simply get handed out on day one: it's dealt out over and over again as you go through life.
This is the context in which we should think about crime: radical victimologists, like feminist victimologists, argue that this context of systematic injustice makes a huge difference to how we think about crime. Is it a good idea to put security guards on the doors of a shopping centre and tell them to bar suspicious-looking characters? Is it a good idea to double police foot patrols on an estate to address concerns about youths hanging around? If a teenage drug addict has confessed to a burglary, is it a good idea to lock him up? You'll get very different answers to those questions, depending on whether you start from the classical position (society is basically working OK, except for this problem of crime) or a radical position (urban youth are systematically discriminated against in our unjust society).
I said at the outset that "radical" doesn't necessarily mean "left-wing". Radical victimologists generally are left-wing in one way or other, but they don't all see society in terms of class: there are radical victimologists who focus on ethnicity and racism, on white-collar crime, on disability and on sexuality. The key points are the ones I listed above - that power relations are fundamental to the way society is structured; that those power relations are unjust; and that those unjust power relations are the context within which we should think about crime and victimisation.
Two brief points about terminology
1: I mentioned above that the late Andrea Dworkin was a radical feminist. "Radical feminist" means something specific, which I talked about in the lecture on feminist victimology. You can be a radical feminist, and a feminist victimologist, but that wouldn't make you a radical victimologist. Sorry about that, it's just the way the words are used.
2: Sandra Walklate argues that "radical victimology" is something specific, based on the "left realist" school of criminology and the use of crime surveys to measure the prevalence of crime in working-class areas. She advocates what she calls "critical victimology", which would be less class-based. Some victimologists have started using this label, but others haven't. I think it's simpler just to say that radical victimology doesn't have to be class-based and use the label more generally.
Wednesday 24 October 2012
Week 5: Feminist victimology
I'm not a feminist. There, I've said it.
I'm not a feminist for a number of reasons; the main one is that I'm a man. I suppose it's not impossible for a man to define his political identity in terms of women's interests, but I think it would be rather unrewarding.
So you don't have to be a feminist to understand feminist victimology, or to appreciate the importance of feminist victimology. All you need is a bit of an understanding of classical victimology and the 'ideal victim' model, and - most important - a bit of an understanding of what was wrong with them.
Classical victimology started from the assumption that things were basically OK. There was society, consisting mostly of nice, normal people and functioning in a normal and orderly way; within that, there was a problem of crime, just as there might be a localised problem of poverty or overcrowded housing or whatever. Each of these problems was associated with a particular sub-section of society; once governments understood those parts of society better, they could bring in reforms to address the problems.
In the case of crime, the classical victimologists thought they'd identified a sub-section of society consisting of criminals and victims: victim-prone individuals, victim-precipitators, members of a sub-culture of violence and so on. Thinking of victims as a social problem, like bad drainage or failing schools, meant that we no longer had to think of them as victims. Only when one of those nice, normal people became a victim of crime - somebody who couldn't be dismissed as 'victim-prone', part of a 'victim-offender dyad' and so on - only then were we dealing with people who deserved recognition as victims of crime. This is the function of the 'ideal victim' model - it puts some victims on a pedestal, at the cost of ignoring all the rest.
The key, fundamental point about feminist victimology is that it started from the assumption that things are not OK. To put that in more academic language, feminists saw society in terms of an unjust balance of power between the sexes - male power over women, in short. Looked at from that perspective, it becomes obvious that a lot of crimes against women are actually crimes of male power over women. This makes it impossible to lump criminals and victims together, or treat victims as part of the problem of crime. Instead, the problem of crime (against women) becomes part of a much bigger problem, the problem of male dominance.
Classical criminology had a tendency to downgrade and ignore a lot of victims of crime, but it tended in particular to ignore women victims of male violence: the victim of domestic violence who is hopelessly 'victim-prone' or part of a 'dyad'; the rape victim who 'precipitated' the attack on her. Feminists argued that this is not so surprising. After all, classical victimology is committed to the idea that society is basically functional, working reasonably well; if our society is actually one of unjust male dominance, then classical victimologists are inevitably going to end up covering it up. Which is a problem, particularly if you're a victim of crime - or a victim of forms of male dominance that aren't seen as a crime, but perhaps should be. (See the Jimmy Savile story for many examples of this.)
So the key insight of feminist victimologists was that crime isn't a marginal problem within a society that's working OK; it's a serious problem, and a symptom of bigger problems in a fundamentally unjust society. This insight was later built on by radical victimologists, who used the same approach to relate crime to other fundamental problems in society - but that's for the week after next.
Happy reading!
I'm not a feminist for a number of reasons; the main one is that I'm a man. I suppose it's not impossible for a man to define his political identity in terms of women's interests, but I think it would be rather unrewarding.
So you don't have to be a feminist to understand feminist victimology, or to appreciate the importance of feminist victimology. All you need is a bit of an understanding of classical victimology and the 'ideal victim' model, and - most important - a bit of an understanding of what was wrong with them.
Classical victimology started from the assumption that things were basically OK. There was society, consisting mostly of nice, normal people and functioning in a normal and orderly way; within that, there was a problem of crime, just as there might be a localised problem of poverty or overcrowded housing or whatever. Each of these problems was associated with a particular sub-section of society; once governments understood those parts of society better, they could bring in reforms to address the problems.
In the case of crime, the classical victimologists thought they'd identified a sub-section of society consisting of criminals and victims: victim-prone individuals, victim-precipitators, members of a sub-culture of violence and so on. Thinking of victims as a social problem, like bad drainage or failing schools, meant that we no longer had to think of them as victims. Only when one of those nice, normal people became a victim of crime - somebody who couldn't be dismissed as 'victim-prone', part of a 'victim-offender dyad' and so on - only then were we dealing with people who deserved recognition as victims of crime. This is the function of the 'ideal victim' model - it puts some victims on a pedestal, at the cost of ignoring all the rest.
The key, fundamental point about feminist victimology is that it started from the assumption that things are not OK. To put that in more academic language, feminists saw society in terms of an unjust balance of power between the sexes - male power over women, in short. Looked at from that perspective, it becomes obvious that a lot of crimes against women are actually crimes of male power over women. This makes it impossible to lump criminals and victims together, or treat victims as part of the problem of crime. Instead, the problem of crime (against women) becomes part of a much bigger problem, the problem of male dominance.
Classical criminology had a tendency to downgrade and ignore a lot of victims of crime, but it tended in particular to ignore women victims of male violence: the victim of domestic violence who is hopelessly 'victim-prone' or part of a 'dyad'; the rape victim who 'precipitated' the attack on her. Feminists argued that this is not so surprising. After all, classical victimology is committed to the idea that society is basically functional, working reasonably well; if our society is actually one of unjust male dominance, then classical victimologists are inevitably going to end up covering it up. Which is a problem, particularly if you're a victim of crime - or a victim of forms of male dominance that aren't seen as a crime, but perhaps should be. (See the Jimmy Savile story for many examples of this.)
So the key insight of feminist victimologists was that crime isn't a marginal problem within a society that's working OK; it's a serious problem, and a symptom of bigger problems in a fundamentally unjust society. This insight was later built on by radical victimologists, who used the same approach to relate crime to other fundamental problems in society - but that's for the week after next.
Happy reading!
Thursday 18 October 2012
Week 4: Classical and lifestyle victimology
Contemporary victimology is one of the more critical parts of criminology - and, to a large extent, older forms of victimology are what it's critical of. This week, we looked at those older ways of talking about victims.
There are three main points I want to make in this post. First, I want to stress - stop me if you've heard this one before - that the Ideal Victim is not an ideal. To explain what I mean, put yourself in the position of an insurer who doesn't want to pay out, or a compensation authority with a limited budget. If you're that insurer or compensation board, the Ideal Victim represents those people who you do want to pay, because they seem the most deserving. If you pay out to the 'ideal victim' cases and only those cases, you can save a lot of time and money but the public won't mind - it will look like you're doing your job properly. The more we think in terms of the 'Ideal Victim', the less attention we pay to all the other poor so-and-so's who are victims of crime but whose faces don't fit. A lot of contemporary victimology, including Nils Christie's essay itself, is all about paying attention to the other poor so-and-so's.
Second, a lot of classical victimology is - in academic language - highly controversial and rests on discredited assumptions. In less academic language, it's horrible. (Don't say this in your essay.) If you go back to the 1960s and 70s, you can find very respectable academic victimologists arguing that men hit their wives because their wives nag them, or that a girl who gets raped after a night out has brought it on herself. (The Accused only came out in 1988, and it was pretty controversial even then.) These arguments rest on highly discredited assumptions - in other words, they're wrong. But they represent a certain way of looking at victims - and this is where classical victimology connects up with the 'Ideal Victim'. Classical victimology uses an array of distancing devices - victims are victim-prone, i.e. they're pathologically vulnerable to crime; victims precipitate attacks on them, i.e. they're self-destructive and neurotic; victims are part of a sub-culture of violence, i.e. they're socially marginal individuals with chaotic lifestyles. Whichever way you look at it, victims - most victims - are not like us; we can reserve our sympathy for the minority of victims who fit the 'Ideal Victim' template. Classical victimology is about ignoring, or downgrading, or refusing sympathy to the majority of actual victims of crime.
Third, and finally, classical victimology did, ironically, give us some useful ways of looking at crime. Once you stop seeing victims as a problem - once you acknowledge that sympathy should be given, in principle, to all victims - the 'toolkit' of classical victimology turns out to have some quite useful things in it. We don't now call people 'victim-prone' because we think they're weird and pathologically self-destructive; nevertheless, it's a matter of sociological fact that young males are more likely to be victims of violent assault, that poorer residential areas are more likely to be high-crime areas, and so on. Maybe 'victim-proneness' is a social category, not a personal one. The idea of a 'subculture of violence', handing deviant values down from generation to generation, is seen as a bit melodramatic and stereotypical these days, but it's undeniable that some people have more violent lifestyles than others. Similarly, victim-precipitation as a way of blaming the victim is discredited, but if you take blame out of the equation and look at it as a way of understanding the sequence of events that leads up to a crime, it could be quite useful.
One other thing: when we talk about classical victimology and the Ideal Victim, we very often seem to be talking in gendered terms - the virtuous little old lady, the 'victim-offender dyad' of domestic violence, rape and victim precipitation. Why do you think this is?
Next week: feminism.
There are three main points I want to make in this post. First, I want to stress - stop me if you've heard this one before - that the Ideal Victim is not an ideal. To explain what I mean, put yourself in the position of an insurer who doesn't want to pay out, or a compensation authority with a limited budget. If you're that insurer or compensation board, the Ideal Victim represents those people who you do want to pay, because they seem the most deserving. If you pay out to the 'ideal victim' cases and only those cases, you can save a lot of time and money but the public won't mind - it will look like you're doing your job properly. The more we think in terms of the 'Ideal Victim', the less attention we pay to all the other poor so-and-so's who are victims of crime but whose faces don't fit. A lot of contemporary victimology, including Nils Christie's essay itself, is all about paying attention to the other poor so-and-so's.
Second, a lot of classical victimology is - in academic language - highly controversial and rests on discredited assumptions. In less academic language, it's horrible. (Don't say this in your essay.) If you go back to the 1960s and 70s, you can find very respectable academic victimologists arguing that men hit their wives because their wives nag them, or that a girl who gets raped after a night out has brought it on herself. (The Accused only came out in 1988, and it was pretty controversial even then.) These arguments rest on highly discredited assumptions - in other words, they're wrong. But they represent a certain way of looking at victims - and this is where classical victimology connects up with the 'Ideal Victim'. Classical victimology uses an array of distancing devices - victims are victim-prone, i.e. they're pathologically vulnerable to crime; victims precipitate attacks on them, i.e. they're self-destructive and neurotic; victims are part of a sub-culture of violence, i.e. they're socially marginal individuals with chaotic lifestyles. Whichever way you look at it, victims - most victims - are not like us; we can reserve our sympathy for the minority of victims who fit the 'Ideal Victim' template. Classical victimology is about ignoring, or downgrading, or refusing sympathy to the majority of actual victims of crime.
Third, and finally, classical victimology did, ironically, give us some useful ways of looking at crime. Once you stop seeing victims as a problem - once you acknowledge that sympathy should be given, in principle, to all victims - the 'toolkit' of classical victimology turns out to have some quite useful things in it. We don't now call people 'victim-prone' because we think they're weird and pathologically self-destructive; nevertheless, it's a matter of sociological fact that young males are more likely to be victims of violent assault, that poorer residential areas are more likely to be high-crime areas, and so on. Maybe 'victim-proneness' is a social category, not a personal one. The idea of a 'subculture of violence', handing deviant values down from generation to generation, is seen as a bit melodramatic and stereotypical these days, but it's undeniable that some people have more violent lifestyles than others. Similarly, victim-precipitation as a way of blaming the victim is discredited, but if you take blame out of the equation and look at it as a way of understanding the sequence of events that leads up to a crime, it could be quite useful.
One other thing: when we talk about classical victimology and the Ideal Victim, we very often seem to be talking in gendered terms - the virtuous little old lady, the 'victim-offender dyad' of domestic violence, rape and victim precipitation. Why do you think this is?
Next week: feminism.
Thursday 11 October 2012
Week 3: The Ideal Victim
This week we looked at Nils Christie's paper "The Ideal Victim".
I'm not going to talk here about the model of the 'ideal victim' and how it's put together - that's all in the lecture (and on the slides), and the paper itself is easy enough to read. What I'm going to focus on is the purpose of the model, and how it links up with critical perspectives on victims of crime - perspectives like those of feminist and radical victimology.
As you know, Christie argues that we have a lot of preconceptions about what a victim ought to be like. The result is that we give actual victims of crime more or less recognition, take them more or less seriously, depending on how closely they fit the model of the 'ideal victim'. The more vulnerable and innocent the victim is, essentially, the easier it is to see them as a victim; if we want people to take somebody seriously as a victim, we will tend to emphasise how weak they are and how virtuously they were acting at the time of the crime. This makes it possible to draw a nice clear line between the victim (weak, innocent and one of us) and the offender ("a dangerous man coming from far away" in Christie's words).
Thinking about some of the (real and fictional) examples we've looked at so far, and about your own knowledge of crime, I hope you'll agree that the "weak innocent victim"/"big bad stranger" model is very far from being typical of actual crimes; most victims aren't whiter-than-white in their conduct (why should they be?) and most offenders aren't predatory strangers. So the 'ideal victim' makes it harder to see actual victims of crime, and actual offenders, for what they are. (Christie doesn't leave it there - he goes on to suggest that the 'ideal victim' will always cloud our thinking about victims, so perhaps we should get away from labelling people as victims at all. We'll come back to this argument later in the unit, but we need to put it on one side for the time being.)
For now - and looking ahead to the first essay - there are two points to bear in mind. Firstly, Christie didn't make up the 'ideal victim': there's a lot of pressure in society to concentrate on people who live up to the model of the 'ideal victim' (from the government, from the media, from our own prejudices). Secondly, there are lots of victims of crime who don't live up to that model, and consequently don't get much sympathy or support.
Without doing any reading about criminological theory*, what relation do you think there might be between those two points and a feminist approach to victimology? Or a radical left-wing approach?
*Unless you have done already.
I'm not going to talk here about the model of the 'ideal victim' and how it's put together - that's all in the lecture (and on the slides), and the paper itself is easy enough to read. What I'm going to focus on is the purpose of the model, and how it links up with critical perspectives on victims of crime - perspectives like those of feminist and radical victimology.
As you know, Christie argues that we have a lot of preconceptions about what a victim ought to be like. The result is that we give actual victims of crime more or less recognition, take them more or less seriously, depending on how closely they fit the model of the 'ideal victim'. The more vulnerable and innocent the victim is, essentially, the easier it is to see them as a victim; if we want people to take somebody seriously as a victim, we will tend to emphasise how weak they are and how virtuously they were acting at the time of the crime. This makes it possible to draw a nice clear line between the victim (weak, innocent and one of us) and the offender ("a dangerous man coming from far away" in Christie's words).
Thinking about some of the (real and fictional) examples we've looked at so far, and about your own knowledge of crime, I hope you'll agree that the "weak innocent victim"/"big bad stranger" model is very far from being typical of actual crimes; most victims aren't whiter-than-white in their conduct (why should they be?) and most offenders aren't predatory strangers. So the 'ideal victim' makes it harder to see actual victims of crime, and actual offenders, for what they are. (Christie doesn't leave it there - he goes on to suggest that the 'ideal victim' will always cloud our thinking about victims, so perhaps we should get away from labelling people as victims at all. We'll come back to this argument later in the unit, but we need to put it on one side for the time being.)
For now - and looking ahead to the first essay - there are two points to bear in mind. Firstly, Christie didn't make up the 'ideal victim': there's a lot of pressure in society to concentrate on people who live up to the model of the 'ideal victim' (from the government, from the media, from our own prejudices). Secondly, there are lots of victims of crime who don't live up to that model, and consequently don't get much sympathy or support.
Without doing any reading about criminological theory*, what relation do you think there might be between those two points and a feminist approach to victimology? Or a radical left-wing approach?
*Unless you have done already.
Wednesday 3 October 2012
Week 2: What is a victim of crime?
This week's lecture looked at the definition of a 'victim of crime'. We started from first principles - a 'crime' is what happens when you break the law; a 'victim' is somebody who suffers from somebody else's actions - but rapidly made the picture a lot more complicated.
Why did we do this? What's wrong with sticking to the simple definition? Three reasons, which all have to do with the way we usually think about victims.
Firstly, the concept of 'victim of crime' is fuzzy. There isn't a straightforward list of all the 'crimes' in the world; even if there were, there would be room for lots of argument about whether a particular crime should be a crime, and whether a particular legal action ought to be made illegal. A couple of years ago the drug mephedrone (meow meow) was made illegal after having been legally available for several months. Should it have been illegal all along? Why, or why not?
Not only that, there isn't a definitive list of ways in which you can be a victim of a crime. In the case of a murder, we think of the victim's partner as a 'victim' of the crime - what about the victim's friends or workmates? What if the crime isn't murder but a violent assault that leaves the victim disabled? What if it's a burglary that the victim finds particularly traumatic? We feel as if there ought to be a line to draw somewhere, but it's not at all clear where or why.
Secondly, the concept of 'victim of crime' is powerful: to say that somebody's a victim of crime is to say that attention should be paid to them, they're someone with a claim on the rest of us. To say that a particular social problem creates victims of crime is a very powerful way of drawing attention to it. Some people argue that the crimes associated with prostitution are victimless crimes, and that prostitution is only illegal because of moral objections to it. Others say that most prostitutes are victims - of trafficking, of pimps, of drug dealers - and that prostitution needs to be cracked down on for their sake. This way of looking at it is much more likely to get media attention than the first one.
The logic applies to crimeless victims as well as victimless crimes. If I take out an insurance policy that I don't need because of an honest mistake, that's just sad. If the policy was deliberately sold to me by somebody who knew I didn't need it, then perhaps I'm a victim of crime - and something will need to be done. There is always pressure to recognise more people as victims of crime.
Thirdly, the reason why the concept of 'victim of crime' is powerful is that it's symbolically loaded. We don't recognise just anybody as being a victim of crime; it's much easier to get acknowledged as a victim of crime if you match certain characteristics (we'll be looking at those characteristics next week). We seem to have certain expectations of victims of crime; I think what these come from is the revulsion we feel towards the experience of being victimised (turned into a victim). To be made a victim is to have your world turned upside down (we'll be looking at that in a couple of weeks' time). The person who does that to you has to be a monster; and if the offender's a monster, the victim must be... what?
We'll answer that question next week when we look at the Ideal Victim.
As for this week's seminar, it was all about the connection between crime and blame - how we're more likely to think in terms of blame (and hence think that there's a victim) if a law has been broken, and more likely to think in terms of bad luck if no law is broken. I think we all learned something from that seminar, and what I learned is that I need to prepare more material next time. Subsequent seminars will run to fifty minutes minimum, probably. You have been warned.
For now... over to you. Any questions?
Why did we do this? What's wrong with sticking to the simple definition? Three reasons, which all have to do with the way we usually think about victims.
Firstly, the concept of 'victim of crime' is fuzzy. There isn't a straightforward list of all the 'crimes' in the world; even if there were, there would be room for lots of argument about whether a particular crime should be a crime, and whether a particular legal action ought to be made illegal. A couple of years ago the drug mephedrone (meow meow) was made illegal after having been legally available for several months. Should it have been illegal all along? Why, or why not?
Not only that, there isn't a definitive list of ways in which you can be a victim of a crime. In the case of a murder, we think of the victim's partner as a 'victim' of the crime - what about the victim's friends or workmates? What if the crime isn't murder but a violent assault that leaves the victim disabled? What if it's a burglary that the victim finds particularly traumatic? We feel as if there ought to be a line to draw somewhere, but it's not at all clear where or why.
Secondly, the concept of 'victim of crime' is powerful: to say that somebody's a victim of crime is to say that attention should be paid to them, they're someone with a claim on the rest of us. To say that a particular social problem creates victims of crime is a very powerful way of drawing attention to it. Some people argue that the crimes associated with prostitution are victimless crimes, and that prostitution is only illegal because of moral objections to it. Others say that most prostitutes are victims - of trafficking, of pimps, of drug dealers - and that prostitution needs to be cracked down on for their sake. This way of looking at it is much more likely to get media attention than the first one.
The logic applies to crimeless victims as well as victimless crimes. If I take out an insurance policy that I don't need because of an honest mistake, that's just sad. If the policy was deliberately sold to me by somebody who knew I didn't need it, then perhaps I'm a victim of crime - and something will need to be done. There is always pressure to recognise more people as victims of crime.
Thirdly, the reason why the concept of 'victim of crime' is powerful is that it's symbolically loaded. We don't recognise just anybody as being a victim of crime; it's much easier to get acknowledged as a victim of crime if you match certain characteristics (we'll be looking at those characteristics next week). We seem to have certain expectations of victims of crime; I think what these come from is the revulsion we feel towards the experience of being victimised (turned into a victim). To be made a victim is to have your world turned upside down (we'll be looking at that in a couple of weeks' time). The person who does that to you has to be a monster; and if the offender's a monster, the victim must be... what?
We'll answer that question next week when we look at the Ideal Victim.
As for this week's seminar, it was all about the connection between crime and blame - how we're more likely to think in terms of blame (and hence think that there's a victim) if a law has been broken, and more likely to think in terms of bad luck if no law is broken. I think we all learned something from that seminar, and what I learned is that I need to prepare more material next time. Subsequent seminars will run to fifty minutes minimum, probably. You have been warned.
For now... over to you. Any questions?
Wednesday 26 September 2012
Week 1: Introducing the unit
Hello world!
This is the first post on the unit blog for Victims and Victimology, 2012/13; thanks for checking it out.
I'll be using this blog to post feedback on our seminar discussions and any other ideas, thoughts and comments relating to each week's teaching. There's not a lot to say in this first week, except
You can leave comments on this blog, incidentally, although anything that's intended for me personally is probably better done by email.
This is the first post on the unit blog for Victims and Victimology, 2012/13; thanks for checking it out.
I'll be using this blog to post feedback on our seminar discussions and any other ideas, thoughts and comments relating to each week's teaching. There's not a lot to say in this first week, except
- do read; the more you read for this unit the more you'll get out of it
- do read "The Ideal Victim" in particular; it's an easy read but there's a lot in there
- do start thinking about real-life examples of victims of crime
- do ask if there's anything you don't understand; and
- don't panic!
You can leave comments on this blog, incidentally, although anything that's intended for me personally is probably better done by email.
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