Jan van Dijk

Free the Victim: A Critique of the Western Conception of Victimhood

In Western languages those affected by crime are universally labelled as ‘victims’, meaning the sacrificed ones. According to the author this practice seems to originate from the association of the plight of victims with the suffering of Jesus Christ. In his view, the victim label, although eliciting compassion for victims, assigns to them a social role of passivity and forgiveness that they may increasingly find to be restraining. He analyses the narratives of eleven high-profile victims such as Natascha Kampusch, the couple McCann and Reemtsma to illustrate this thesis. The article continues with a critical review of biases deriving from the unreflexive adoption of the victim label in various schools of thought in victimology and criminal law. Finally, the author argues for the introduction of stronger procedural rights for crime victims in criminal trials and for a new focus within victimology on processes of victim labelling.In Western languages those affected by crime are universally labelled as ‘victims’, meaning the sacrificed ones. According to the author this practice seems to originate from the association of the plight of victims with the suffering of Jesus Christ. In his view, the victim label, although eliciting compassion for victims, assigns to them a social role of passivity and forgiveness that they may increasingly find to be restraining. He analyses the narratives of eleven high-profile victims such as Natascha Kampusch, the couple McCann and Reemtsma to illustrate this thesis. The article continues with a critical review of biases deriving from the unreflexive adoption of the victim label in various schools of thought in victimology and criminal law. Finally, the author argues for the introduction of stronger procedural rights for crime victims in criminal trials and for a new focus within victimology on processes of victim labelling.

The International Crime Victims Surveys A retrospective

The International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS) has been carried out six times over the period 1989–2010. Although national and city samples are relatively small, the ICVS is a unique survey of the experience of being victimized in that it is standardized and far-reaching: it has been conducted in more than 80 countries in different regions of the world, with many countries having taken part more than once. This paper focuses not on the methodology of the survey but on four important areas of analysis that capitalize on the comparative nature of the ICVS, and its ability to look at victimization experience at the level of both individuals and countries. Firstly, it looks at the level of crime in different countries according to the ICVS, compared to the picture from police figures. It shows some distinct differences. Also taken up is how far the correlates of victimization risk are similar across countries, and whether the phenomenon of repeat victimization holds constantly. A special focus is on results from a multi-level analysis of the relationships between firearm ownership as measured by the ICVS and rates of serious violent crime victimization at the individual and national levels. The second focus of the paper concerns what ICVS measures of trends in crime show relative to trends in police figures. It looks here, too, at the relationships between the level of household security in different countries as shown by the ICVS and trends in property crime. The third focus is on victims reporting crime to the police and their level of satisfaction with the police response, as well as the provision of and need for specialized victim assistance, underlining the importance of the ICVS as an instrument to monitor the implementation of international standards on victims’ rights, and to benchmark national victim policies. The fourth focus of the paper is on attitudes towards crime and criminal justice, looking in particular at similarities and differences across country populations. One feature is a multi-level analysis of the social correlates of public attitudes towards punishment, in particular differentiating between victims and non-victims. The paper ends with some comment on the prospects for the ICVS in the future.

The case for survey-based comparative measures of crime

The author argues that statistics of police-recorded crimes have limited utility for cross-country analyses of crime, owing to varying legal definitions, reporting patterns and recording practices. In his view, stand-alone national victimization surveys, with their varying methodologies and questionnaires, cannot reliably be used for cross-national comparisons either. This is especially true for older versions of such surveys, modelled after the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) of the USA, which try to mimic their country’s official statistics of police-recorded crimes. Victimization surveys in the European tradition use less legalistic definitions of the public’s experiences of crime and are therefore more conducive to international standardization. When such surveys are standardized to cover the common ground of crime in multiple jurisdictions, as is the case in the International Crime Victims Survey, they can provide comparable data on the level and trends of crime of individual nations at relatively modest costs. In addition, such surveys can provide comparative data on crime reporting by victims, on satisfaction with responses from police and other agencies, as well as on public attitudes towards safety and criminal justice. In the discussion, the author argues for an expedient execution of the planned Safety Survey in the European Union and further work on the standardization of victimization surveys across the world by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.The author argues that statistics of police-recorded crimes have limited utility for cross-country analyses of crime, owing to varying legal definitions, reporting patterns and recording practices....

Transnational Organized Crime, Civil Society and Victim Empowerment

Organized crime has over the past thirty years been expanded and transformed by increased globalization. Governments are handicapped in combating transnational crime by their reliance on frameworks and tools designed for the control of domestic crime. In 2000, the members of the United Nations assembled in large numbers in the city of Palermo to sign the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its protocols against human trafficking and smuggling of migrants. In this article the author reflects on the slow implementation of the UNTOC and explores key political factors preventing Member States from following up the UNTOC. In his view implementation has failed because the fight against transnational organized crime has been framed as a national security concern. A better implementation will require a refocusing on the interests of individual and collective victims such as exploited persons and impoverished communities. In the coming years UNTOC implementation should be aligned not with the fight against terrorism but with the emerging international agenda of governance, human security and development.

Victim-centred restorative justice

? Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research ? You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain ? You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright, please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.In the 1985 Council of Europe (CoE) Recommendation on the Position of the Victim in the Framework of Criminal Law and Procedure, one of the earliest European legal instruments on victims’ rights, mechanisms that are currently known as restorative justice (RJ) were not included in the primary recommendations but listed under a secondary, tamely framed recommendation ‘to examine the possible advantages of mediation and conciliation schemes’. In the same year, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the UN Victims Declaration, Article 7 of which exhorts member states to utilise informal mechanisms ‘where appropriate to facilitate conciliation and redress for victims’. This is one of the subjects about which European victimologists were at the time more cautious than those experts from other regions, notably North America, who elaborated the draft of the Victims Declaration in Milan at the UN Crime Congress. The other area where diverging views surfaced was the right to express views and concerns in criminal proceedings, which found its way into the UN Declaration despite opposition and a formal reservation from the UK. Such a recommendation was nowhere to be seen in the CoE Recommendation of the same year. Clearly American and Canadian opinions in Milan prevailed over the European reservations that dominated the deliberations in Strasbourg. Since then the position of mediation, or RJ as it is now called in relevant legal instruments, has evolved. In 2000 the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the UN took note of the Basic Principles on the Use of Restorative Justice Programmes in Criminal Matters. This legal text no longer refers to the concept of reconciliation but is in other respects more ambitious than the previous one in the UN Victims Declaration. It states that RJ ‘should be generally available at all stages of the criminal justice process’. However, two years later the ECOSOC took note of a revised text which states that RJ ‘may be used at any stage of the criminal justice process, subject to national law’. However the verb

New Faces of Victimhood; Reflections on the Unjust Sides of Globalization

This book documents the magnitude of this “unjust side of globalization.” It discusses how globalization victimizes ordinary people and how recent improvements in the protection of victims of crime are compromized by the same processes. On the positive side globalization may create a new sensitivity to victimhood in far away corners. This chapter provides an introduction to the main themes and concepts used in this book.

The Criminal Victimization of Children and Women in International Perspective

In this article we will present an overview of the results of the national and international crime victims surveys regarding the distribution of victimization according to age and gender with a focus on violent crime. The results show a consistent inversed relationship between age and criminal victimization by all types of crime. Children are by far the most at risk to be victimized by criminal violence of all age groups. The violence is in large part committed by parents or other caretakers. The relationship between gender and victimization is less straightforward. Men are more exposed to various types of non-sexual violence by strangers, including homicide. Women are more exposed to sexual violence. Exposure to non-sexual violence by intimates is less strongly gendered than sexual violence by intimates according to the results of dedicated surveys on domestic violence among males and females. Cross-national analyses suggest that violence by intimates against females is most prevalent in countries where gender equality is low. However, self-reported victimization rates of violence against women by intimates are also relatively high in countries where gender equality is the highest, such as Scandinavian countries. This paradoxical result seems due to increased sensitivity to acts of less serious violence among female respondents in the latter countries. The various findings concerning the distribution of victimization risks across age and gender are interpreted with lifestyle-exposure theory and feminist perspectives on violence.

Procedural Justice for Victims in an International Perspective

This article seeks to make the case for the value of police using fair and considerate processes with victims of crime to enhance perceptions of the legitimacy of police and the willingness of former victims to subsequently report victimization to the police. To support this case results of older rounds of the International Crime Victims Surveys (ICVS) are revisited from a procedural justice perspective. Considering the positive findings of national experiments with improved services for victims and the potential to reach out to large segments of the general public through improved policies regarding reporting crime victims, the conclusion is drawn that procedural justice for victims should be at the center of programs to strengthen the legitimacy of police forces in the European Union.

Reconstructing Victim-Centered Justice on a Global Scale

The various chapters in this book can be read as examples of the blatantly unjust sides of globalization. They testify how processes of globalization are producing increasing numbers of victims of old and new forms of transnational or international crimes. Due to increased mobility and the use of Internet, residents of one country can more easily than ever before victimize residents in other countries. New faces of criminal victimhood include victims of human trafficking, international terrorism, transnational organized crime, cross-border environmental crimes, Internet-based identity theft, cyberstalking and misconduct by private military companies. The authors have addressed the grave consequences of these crimes.