We're into Part Three of the unit now. Part One was about introducing the idea of the victim and explaining why it's so problematic; this involved looking at the difference between experiencing victimisation and being recognised as a victim, which led on to some discussion of different schools of thought in victimology and a fair old bit about the "*d**l v*ct*m", about which I suspect you are by now sick of hearing.
In Part Two we built on our discussions of radical and feminist victimology by getting into the politics of victimisation and victimhood. We know that not everyone suffers from crime, and not everyone who suffers from a crime will be recognised as a victim; are these random processes, or can we make any predictions as to who is more likely to be a victim of what kind of crime, and who is more likely or less likely to be recognised as a victim? If we can, do our predictions have anything to do with other things we know about society? Looking at questions of gender, ethnicity, class and corporate power, I've been arguing that the answers to those two questions are Yes and Yes: both exposure to the risk of crime and non-recognition as a victim are strongly associated with broader injustices and imbalances of power.
Part Three is about victims in the criminal justice system. There's more descriptive material in this part of the unit - more about how the system actually works - but the angle of the unit is still critical: we're not just asking "how does the system look after victims?" but "does the system look after victims properly?", and even "can the system look after victims properly?".
This week's lecture was about how important victims are to the police (answer: very important indeed); it was also about the politics involved in responding to victims' needs. My argument was that the criminal justice system has made great advances in terms of paying attention to victims, but that this isn't necessarily as positive a development as it sounds. The problem is the way that the government sees victims. Very often, politicians see victims of crime rhetorically, as a way of demonstrating how serious the problem of crime is and how punitive the system needs to be: victims, in this way of thinking, are good people whose lives are blighted by the fear of crime, who are consumed with anger about the wickedness of the offender, and who will tell the Daily Mail all about it if the government doesn't do something to pacify them. The good fearful victim is counterposed to the evil unpunished offender, very much in an ideal victim/ideal offender style. This is a realistic representation of the way some victims of crime feel, but not all or even most of them.
Alternatively, governments see victims bureaucratically: a victim of crime, in this way of thinking, is someone who has accessed services designed for victims of crime (services operated by the police, the courts, the probation services...). Once the machinery of those services has been set in motion, the thinking goes, the victim should have the right to expect a certain level of service from it, e.g. the right to make a statement about the impact of the crime or the right to receive information about an offender's release from prison. This approach is basically a good thing - it's better than not having the right to make a statement about the impact of the crime, after all. But it has its own problems, which we'll be looking at in more detail during the rest of the unit. The key point is that this approach involves the criminal justice system looking at victims from the perspective of the system - not from victims' own perspective. This means that the system can give victims a lot of what they need and want, but only by improving or adding to what it already does. I would argue that the key thing victims have historically been denied by the criminal justice system is respect - and making that a reality means a bit more than giving the police new standards and targets.
Also this week: the second essay. I'll post something on Moodle about this for the benefit of anyone who was unable to get to the seminar.
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