From Crime Policy To Victim Policy

The 1980s saw official crime policy in the United States shifting its focus from crime and criminals to victimization and victims. In this thought-provoking book, Robert Elias evaluates the effectiveness of this shift in policy and argues that victims have been politically manipulated for official objectives. From a thorough examination of victim legislation, get-tough crime policies, media crime coverage, the victim movement, and the wars on crime and drugs, Elias concludes that little victim support has actually occurred and that victimization is, in fact, escalating. He argues for a change in the structural sources of crime and proposes a `new culture' that could lead to substantially less crime.

This book represents an effort by a number of leading criminologists to articulate a pragmatic crime policy for America—a policy that combines academic insights about crime prevention with the realities of contemporary politics.

This edited volume contains 22 papers organized into three sections under the following headings: part I is entitled On Promoting Victim Policies; Part II On Reforming Criminal Justice; and Part III On Restorative Justice. All three areas are ones to which Tony Peters, former Professor of Criminology in Leuven, has made a significant contribution and for which he is known as an international authority. During his long and productive academic career Tony Peters led many struggles for criminal justice reform. He was a leading figure in the movement to recognize crime victims' plight and to reaffirm their rights. In Belgium, he spearheaded the early initiatives in restorative justice and became one of its outspoken proponents nationally and internationally. There is no doubt that these three major topics and the various developments and reforms that are addressed in the papers will dominate the thinking about, and the practice of, criminal justice in the years to come. Thus, in addition to paying homage to a congenial friend and an illustrious colleague, it is hoped that this book will appeal and prove useful to all those who have an interest in victims issues, in criminal justice reform, and last but not least, in the promising paradigm of restorative justice.

There has been a great deal of research on criminal victimization, legislation supporting victims and victim programmes and services, but no book has taken recent stock of these advances. Victims of Crime provides a state of the art review of many facets of criminal victimization and many of the efforts that have been made to ameliorate the pain and loss of crime victims. It is a book which will be of great interest to academics and students of the criminal justice system and anyone involved in the help and support of crime victims.

Nils Christie’s (1986) seminal work on the ‘Ideal Victim’ is reproduced in full in this edited collection of vibrant and provocative essays that respond to and update the concept from a range of thematic positions. Each chapter celebrates and commemorates his work by analysing, evaluating and critiquing the current nature and impact of victim identity, experience, policy and practice. The collection expands the focus and remit of ‘victim studies’, addressing key themes around race, gender, faith, ability and age while encompassing new and diverse issues. Examples include sex workers as victims of hate crimes, victims’ experiences of online fraud, and recognising historic child sexual abuse victims in Ireland. With contributions from an array of academics including Vicky Heap (Sheffield Hallam University), Hannah Mason-Bish (University of Sussex) and Pamela Davies (Northumbria University), as well as a Foreword by David Scott (The Open University), this book evaluates the contemporary relevance and applicability of Christie’s ‘Ideal Victim’ concept and creates an important platform for thinking differently about victimhood in the 21st century.

Many contributions in research, prevention, treatment and public policy relating to the process of victimization are united and the authors present their studies and practical ideas in such areas as victimization dynamics, the victim and the justice system, child victims and sexual offences.

Paul Rock's intellectual history over the last fifty years has run parallel to and in conversation with the evolution of the discipline of sociological criminology. His classic journal articles brought together here reflect two of his preoccupations, theoretical and empirical, and form part of what has been, in effect, a running series of comparative ethnographies of government decision-making about the role of the victim in and around the criminal justice system.