This book discusses the manifold levels (micro vs. macro) and forms (physical, sexual, etc.) of victimization.

Since the 1960s, the field of victimology has developed into a variegated discipline with its own theoretical and methodological traditions. In the early 1990s two texts were published—Towards a Critical Victimology (Fattah, 1992) and Critical Victimology (Mawby and Walklate, 1994)—that concretized critical victimology as a paradigm within victimology. Since then, the field has remained conceptually stale and with few a few exceptions there has not been a considerable lacuna of works from a critical perspective. Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology: Interventions and Possibilities provides a rejoinder to the two aforementioned texts and demonstrate how critical victimology can be reconceptualized, where interventions can be made in this victimological paradigm, and possibilities for future theorizing and research in this provocative field. Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology includes eleven papers on the forms of victimization and issues pertinent to victims written by leading and emerging international scholars in the field of critical victimology. It is interdisciplinary in scope and contains contributions from leading and emergent international scholars on victims and victimization. Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology serves as a crucible to demonstrate the complexities of and the multitude of factors that interact to complicate victim status, the vagaries of victim response, and the phenomenology of violence and victimization.

This second edition of the Handbook of Victims and Victimology presents a comprehensively revised and updated set of essays, bringing together internationally recognised scholars and practitioners to offer substantial research informed overviews within their specialist fields of investigation. This handbook is divided into five parts, with each part addressing a different theme within victimology: Part I offers a scene-setting exploration of new developments in the field, enduring issues that remain relatively unchanged and the gaps and traps within the contemporary victimological agenda Part II examines of the complex dimensions to victim experiences as structured by gender, age, ethnicity, sexuality and intersectionality Part III reflects on the problems and possibilities of formulating policy responses in the light of the changing appreciation of the nature and extent of victimhood Part IV focused on the value of a comparative lens and the problems and possibilities of victim policies when seen through this lens, explored along three geographical axes: Europe, Australia and Asia Part V considers other ways of thinking about who counts as a victim and what counts as victimhood and extends the boundaries of the victimological imagination outward Building on the success of the previous edition, this book provides an international focus on cutting-edge issues in the field of victimology. Including brand new chapters on intersectionality, child victims, sexuality, hate crime and crimes of the powerful, this handbook is essential reading for students and academics studying victims and victimology and an essential reference tool for those working within the victim support environment.

This Advanced Introduction charts the growth and development of victimology since the Second World War. Exploring competing theoretical perspectives, data sources, and policy emphases, it presents a critical overview of the field and suggests future directions of travel for researchers. Topics covered include trauma creep, witnessing pain, gaining knowledge of suffering, compensation, the role of offenders, and victim-centred justice.

This book explores what victimology, as both an academic discipline and an activist movement, has achieved since its initial conception in the 1940s, from a variety of experts’ perspectives. Focussing on nine, dynamic and contemporary case studies covering topics like violence against women and girls, bereaved family activism, and environmental victims and climate change activists, each chapter critically examines how different crime victims have been politicised and explores the impact of victim-centred reforms upon criminal justice professional cultures. This book comprehensively and critically examines the historical, social and political factors, including the work of activists, that have shaped the development of theories, policies and reforms in this field, including how victimhood has come to be understood and responded to. The chapters also consider the future developments of this area, including how digital technologies are creating new forms and experiences of victimisation. Speaking to undergraduates, postgraduates and professionals in criminal justice and third sector organisations, this book discusses the links between theory, policy and professional practice and how they contribute to and facilitate debates regarding what the role of crime victims is in a 21st century criminal justice system.

Over 23 chapters this Handbook reflects the diversity of methodological approaches employed in the emerging field of narrative criminology.

While international criminal courts have often been declared as bringing ‘justice’ to victims, their procedures and outcomes historically showed little reflection of the needs and interests of victims themselves. This situation has changed significantly over the last sixty years; victims are increasingly acknowledged as having various ‘rights’, while their need for justice has been deployed as a means of justifying the establishment of international criminal courts. However, it is arguable that the goals of political and legal elites continue to be given precedence, and the ability of courts to deliver ‘justice to victims’ remains contested. This book contributes to this important debate through an examination of the role of victims as civil parties within the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Drawing on a series of interviews with civil parties, court practitioners and civil society actors, the book explores the way in which both the ECCC and the role of victims within it are shaped by specific political, economic and legal contexts; examining the ‘gap’ between the legitimising value of the ‘imagined victim’, and the extent to which victims are able to further their interests within the courtroom.

This book explores how the experience of war and related atrocities tend to be visually expressed and how such articulations and representations are circulated and consumed. Each chapter of this volume examines how an image can contribute to a richer understanding of the experience of war and atrocity and thus they contribute to the burgeoning field of the "criminology of war". Topics include the destruction of war in oppositional cultural forms - comparing the Nazi period with the ISIS destruction of Palmyra - and the visual aesthetics of violence deployed by Jihadi terrorism. The contributors are a multi-disciplinary team drawn mainly from criminology but also sociology, international relations, gender studies, English and the visual arts. This book will advance this field in new directions with refreshing, original work.

This book provides a rich analysis of the history of Swedish victim support. With the majority of research on victim support centering on the Anglosphere, this book offers a unique case study for considering the role of the victim in the criminal justice system. While Sweden has enacted many laws to support victims, and victim assistance programs have grown rapidly, welfare policy has become more restrictive and crime policy, to some degree, more punitive. Drawing on archival material and interviews with key representatives for the Swedish Association for Victim Support (BOJ), this book examines what role the victim movement has played in a changing welfare state. It argues that BOJ filled a function in the decentralization and privatization of the Swedish welfare state and explores distinctive features of the Swedish victim movement and the form it has taken, as compared to that in other countries. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of criminology, sociology, social policy, civil society studies, and social work, and those engaged in studies of victims and victimology.

This book examines the survivors of political violence and terrorism, considering both how they have responded and how they have been responded to following critical incidents. As this work demonstrates, survivors of comparatively rare and spectacular violence hold a mirror up to society’s normative assumptions around trauma, recovery, and resilience. Drawing on two years of observational field research with a British NGO who work with victims and former perpetrators of PVT, this book explores contested notions of ‘resilience’ and what it might mean for those negotiating the aftermaths of violence. Examining knowledge about resilience from a multitude of sources, including security policy, media, academic literature, and the survivors themselves, this book contends that in order to make empirical sense of resilience we must reckon with both its discursive and practical manifestations. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, victimology, criminal justice, and all those interested in the stories of survivors.