The criminal justice landscape has evolved significantly during the last four decades, with its predominant focus on the offender shifting to the background, while the role and experiences of the victim have emerged as centre stage, rhetorically at least. The focus of this book is to examine the range of complex factors that have impacted upon and altered this landscape. In particular, the interplay between victimology as an academic discipline, the role and activism of individuals and special interest groups, and the subsequent impact upon policy making and professional practices. The merger of narratives, from the basic tenets of the early positivist victimologists to the challenges of radical, critical and cultural approaches, have altered the trajectory of the criminal justice process, influencing political rhetoric and policy responses, challenging professional cultures and gradually changing perceptions of the crime victim and their treatment. This chapter will provide a brief overview of the historical, social and political contexts that have subsequently shaped the criminal justice landscape. In particular, it will explore the emergence of Victimology as a valid and credible academic discipline, its origins, influence, impact and potential for the future.
VictimologyâA Theoretically Informed Humanist Endeavour?
The roots of victimology have been traced back to the theoretical musings of unconventional male scholars in the 1940s and 1950s. Often referred to as a sub-discipline of criminology, victimology was viewed with suspicion by some criminologists within academia, one critic describing their endeavours as âthe lunatic fringe of criminologyâ (Becker 1981, cited by Rock 2018: 35). Undeterred, early theorists challenged the offender-centric focus of criminology by questioning the absence of the victim in debates about crime and offenders. Commenting on this omission, Rock (2018: 32) observes: âThere was almost no place there for the pathos and pains of individual victimisation or the personal and communal costs of everyday crime.â
Following in the methodological footsteps of positivist criminology, Hans von Hentig (1948), an early pioneer of victimology, was keen to identify why some people became victims of crime, whilst others did not. Introducing the concept of âvictim pronenessâ, von Hentig identified typologies from the characteristics that appeared to make some people more prone to victimisation than others. Later work by Mendelsohn (1956) focused on âculpabilityâ, introducing a sixfold typology of victimsâ culpability ranging from the completely innocent to the guiltiest, which also included the criminal who became the victim.
Whilst such typologies, by their very nature, have been challenged and criticised for being anecdotal and lacking in empirical ratification, it was the later, more sophisticated work within this conventional perspective that successfully translated victim culpability into the powerful concept of âvictim precipitationâ. Such perspectives tended to place responsibility upon the individual to avoid behaviour that may result in their own victimisation, as indicated by Wolfgangâs (1958) study of homicide and Amirâs (1971) controversial study on rape. Again, as observed by Rock (2018: 34), there was a general sense of unease and otherness about victims and a desire to distance oneself from those stigmatised by misfortune:
Their very existence is disturbing because it can challenge the belief in a just world where people simply cannot incur harm unless they have somehow earned their suffering through their own misdeeds or foolishness⌠To think otherwise would turn the moral order quite upside down.
Whilst this early thinking was later criticised for focusing purely on the role of the victim and for failing to acknowledge the wider social structures and constraints that may contribute to victimisation, these perspectives became and remain highly influential, determining âwhat might be considered reasonable and rational behaviour for a victimâ (Walklate 2001: 28). In particular, these early conventional theories were criticised for failing to acknowledge the social factors that contribute to increasing individualsâ and groupsâ vulnerability and risk to specific types of victimisation, such as, class, race and gendered power relations. In part inspired to redress this, radical and critical theories emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. These perspectives started to examine the wider social contexts in which crime and victimisation occurred, and the impact of crime as it affects different social groups (Goodey 2005: 101). With a particular focus on the gender order, MacKinnon (1989: 161) observed:
The state is male in the feminist sense: the law sees and treats women the way men see and treat women. The liberal state coercively and authoritatively constitutes the social order in the interest of men as a genderâthrough its legitimating norms, forms, relations to society, and substantive policies.
As such, it has been recognised that the agencies administering and implementing criminal justice are part of a wider traditional system operating within a deeply embedded patriarchal framework that privileges men (Mawby and Walklate 1994: 185). Essentially, âin everyday life, victim status depends upon wider historical, social and cultural processes and their relationship to human actionâ (Spalek 2017: 5), rather than the sole actions of an individual.
In response to the criticisms of the early conventional theories, later positivist theories emerged which focused on lifestyle and routine activities (Hindelang et al. 1978; Gottfredson 1981; Cohen and Felson 1979, all cited by Spalek 2017: 62), arguing that differences in lifestyle impact on the risk of victimisation, based upon particular locations, at certain times and contact with potential offenders. As observed by Goodey (2005: 71) âwhere you go, what you do, and who you are, as determined by the limited choices in your routine daily activities, determines your victimisation pronenessâ. However, these routine activity theories remain focused on the individual, rather than acknowledging the impact of wider social structures that govern peoplesâ routine activities and their ability to change them, if they so wish. Consequently, they continue to fail to recognise the power differentials that exist between social groups, created by socio-economic status, gender, race, culture and age, thereby rendering some groups more prone to certain types of victimisation than others (Tapley 2020). (For a fuller exposition of the early contributor perspectives on victimisation and critiques of these, see Francis 2007; Mawby and Walklate 1994; Rock 2018.)
Despite these criticisms, victim blaming has become a common default position and it is often left for victims themselves to demonstrate their legitimate status as an âideal victimâ (Christie 1986). However, attaining this status may prove problematic for many individuals and groups; social and legal processes often requiring them to go to some lengths to prove their âidealâ status (Duggan 2018). It can be argued that the obstacles encountered in achieving any sense of justice and the dissatisfaction felt by many victims and victim advocates, has provided the motivation and momentum to challenge some of the myths and assumptions associated with victimisation, through activism and the mobilisation of campaigns often targeted at specific types of offence and victims.
Academia, Advocacy and Activism
A fundamental aspect of the critical and radical theories emerging in the 1970s was their link to wider social movements, the questioning of grand theories and challenges to the wider post-war social and political consensus of the 1950s and 1960s. This was a distinctive feature of the emerging discipline of victimology. Developing in parallelâand sometimes in tandemâwith academic theorising and research was an identifiable, if not cohesive, âvictimâs movementâ (van Dijk 1988).
The 1960s and 1970s witnessed the activities of increasingly well-organised groups who set themselves up specifically to assist or campaign on behalf of victims and advocate their rights, particularly in the United States. Whilst commonly and conveniently referred to as a âmovementâ by many commentators, this term implies a misleading impression of unity and has been more accurately described by van Dijk (1988) as âideologically heterogeneousâ. For the âmovementâ, as such, remains a loose association of individuals and groups representing a diverse range of motivations and agendas, ranging from far right political movements, single-cause interest groups and more radical grassroots and critical perspectives. One key element of the movement had an agenda that became particularly aligned to the concerns of victims and victimologyâsecond-wave feminism. Whilst first-wave liberal feminism in the late 1800s had out of necessity campaigned for womenâs rights as citizens to education, politics, employment and finance; second-wave liberal, socialist, radical and post-modern feminisms challenged the conventional victimological agenda (Davies 2018: 109). In particular, past and present feminist perspectives challenge patriarchal structures that tolerate and condone the oppression of women through hidden forms of violence and abuse, and the failure of criminal justice agencies to recognise these forms of violence (often within a domestic context) as âreal crimeâ (Tapley 2010: 138; Tapley and Jackson 2019).
The significant contribution of feminist thought and activism to victimology as an academic discipline has been well documented (Davies 2018), but it also created tensions within the discipline of victimology. In particular, concerns about the erosion of victimology as a theoretical endeavour and fears it was becoming a humanist movement. Fattah (1997) warned of the dangers of creating a false contest between the rights of offenders and victims. He later reflected on what he viewed as the transformation of victimology âfrom an academic discipline into a humanistic movement, the shift from scholarly research to political activismâ and the serious implications of this âmetamorphosisâ on the negative impact on criminal policy (Fattah 2000: 25). Whilst Fattah (2000) is prudent to caution against the use of emotive language relating to victims where it is used to enhance political rhetoric promoting punitive political agendas, it is equally important to recognise the inability of some to achieve legitimate victim status. The dissatisfaction caused by a criminal justice process that fails to acknowledge the crucial role victims have, and which fails to afford them specific rights to protect their interests and assist in their recovery, is not a hallmark of an effective criminal justice system (Wedlock and Tapley 2016).
There is no doubt that the growth in populist politics and the immediacy of sound bite politics (Garland 2001) assisted in propelling the extraordinary ascendance of crime victims on the political agenda from the 1990s. A plethora of reforms aimed at modernising criminal justice ensued with political rhetoric pledging to ârebalance the system in favour of victims, witnesses and communities and to deliver justice for allâ (Home Office 2002, cited by Tapley 2005: 250). The aim of this book is to reflect upon the development of victimology and its contribution to these reforms. Victimology has been described as a discipline consisting of three strands: âresearch, activism and policyâ (Goodey 2005: 94). The chapters in this volume examine the influence of these three strands on criminal justice practices, policies and professional cultures in the twenty-first century. They variously explore, through theoretically informed debate, the past, present and future potential of the discipline of victimology and its capacity to impact upon and ameliorate the tendency for criminal justice processes to evoke secondary victimisation and incur further harm for both victims and offenders.
VictimologyâPresent and Future
The politicisation of crime victims is a central focus of this b...