fourteen - Working with victims: values and validations

Summary

Introduction

Notions of victimisation in the UK have transformed in the past two decades. Once largely overlooked, the victim is now a far more strategic stakeholder in the British criminal justice system (CJS), inspiring a host of academic research, government policies and reports into best practice and victim satisfaction (Rock, 2002; Goodey, 2004). Myriad forms of victimisation have been officially recognised through new laws, particularly with regards to identity prejudice. The socially constructed nature of identity and its corresponding impact on legal engagement with victims and offenders provides an ample site for investigation to assess how value and validation shape the CJS's response to specific types of victimisation.

Addressing identity prejudice is the focus of both ‘hate crime’ legislation and the Equality Act 2010. ‘Hate crime’ refers to acts motivated by racial, religious, sexual orientation, disability and transgender prejudice, addressing this in the offence/sentencing process (see Chakraborti and Garland, 2009). The Equality Act consolidates and/or replaces pre-existing equality and anti-discrimination laws pertaining to seven ‘protected characteristics’: race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender and age. The Act also extends protections afforded to persons discriminated against because of their perceived or actual affiliation to someone with a protected characteristic. Carers of disabled people or partners/relatives of transsexual people are protected. Symbolically, addressing inequality or prejudice through such legislation promotes a broader message of intolerance to identity discrimination. However, while such measures appear progressive in theory, how applicable they are in practice may be impeded by social prejudices held towards historically marginalised groups.

The notion of ‘vulnerability’ is central to understanding these legal developments. In 2001, Betsy Stanko (2001, p 318) wrote of a need for the CJS to address ‘targeted victimisation’ through a conceptual lens of vulnerability, rather than creating new ‘hate crimes’ based on vaguely defined concepts of identity prejudice: ‘The social context of targeted violence recognises the special vulnerability of individuals because they are in some relational “disadvantage” to the perpetrator without bracketing the kind of vulnerability into a category’. Nonetheless, the legal incarnations that emerged firmly entrenched specified identity categories, diverting ensuing debates away from theorising vulnerability in favour of ascertaining the pros and cons of ‘hate crime’.

This chapter focuses on vulnerability, suggesting that factors exist that render certain victims more vulnerable to victimisation, but simultaneously impede them from accessing ‘justice’ or recognition.