Sandra Walklate

Communicating the terrorist risk: Harnessing a culture of fear?

Following the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, Madrid and London, state agencies have been bound up with the problem of how to effectively communicate the risk of terrorism to the general public. This article charts the UK governments attempts to engage in this process and illustrates how the communication of the terrorist risk meshes into broader cultural formations of crime and (in)security. Our analytical framework utilizes the risk society as the scene in which governmental strategies are parcelled up and unpacked. It is posited that the framing of the terrorist problem through the political discourse of ‘new terrorism’ has built upon and escalated a cultural climate of fear and uncertainty. At the level of political communication, it will be elucidated that media representations of the terrorist threat have served to further embed discourses of responsibilization. In our view such processes not only articulate a reduced notion of safety, they also pave the way for the simplistic construction of a non-white ‘terroristic other’ that has negative consequences for ethnic minority groups in the UK.

Gender, Crime and Criminal Justice

Preface and acknowledgements Introduction: women and crime or gender and crime? Part 1 Theory 1 Criminology, victimology and feminism 2 Criminology, victimology and masculinism Part 2 Practice 3 Crime, fear and risk 4 Gendering sexual violence Part 3 Policy 5 Is criminal justice mens work? 6 Gender, the law and criminal justice policy Conclusion: gender, crime and politics References Index

Handbook of victims and victimology

involves thinking long-term, involvement of staff in problem-solving at their place of work and close co-operative working with key suppliers. He uses this approach both to analyse organizations and to propose another way of working. He introduces a concept of public value although in my view this is not fully articulated in the book. This is an important book for anyone seeking to understand the current management ideology in Prison and Probation. It is an easy book to read as it avoids both theoretical debate and translates management jargon into a more easily understood language. Seddon’s analysis of targets, the lack of trust, outsourcing and other key managerial methods resonates strongly with the probation experience.

Reframing criminal victimization: Finding a place for vulnerability and resilience

The purpose of this article is to examine the ways in which studies of criminal victimization have contributed to this presumption of human vulnerability, and to examine the potential in understandings of resilience for overcoming this presumption. In order to do this the argument falls into three parts. In the first part I shall consider the different ways in which victimization and vulnerability have been linked together. In the second I shall examine the concept of resilience and its relationship, if any, with vulnerability and victimization. Throughout this discussion I shall draw on feminist informed work as a way of suggesting a differently oriented approach to both of these concepts: presented here as thinking otherwise. In the final and concluding part of this article the implications of contemporary understandings of these concepts will be situated within the broader policy context characterized by Aradau (2004) as informed by a ‘politics of pity’.

Whom can you trust? The politics of ‘grassing’ on an inner city housing estate

This paper derives from an ongoing research project concerned to explore how people living in, going to work in, attending school in, high crime areas manage their routine daily lives. It focuses on one of our research areas in which we argue that the question of the ‘fear of crime’ is much better understood through an appreciation of how the question of trust manifests itself in that community. In other words, whom you trust, when, and by how much, mediate the way in which people living in this area manage their routine daily lives and within that their sense of security.

Crime and community : fear or trust ?

The fear of crime has been at the centre of political and policy debate for some time. The purpose of this paper is to examine critically the continued relevance of that debate in the light of findings from an in-depth two and a half year research project. The findings from that project suggest that the relation people have with crime, criminal victimization, and the fear of crime is mediated by the relevance of their relationship with their local community and their structural position within that community. Understanding the nature of these relationships suggests the question of trust is of greater value in highlighting who is and who is not afraid of crime.

‘Why Should We Have to Prove We’re Alright?’: Counter-terrorism, Risk and Partial Securities:

Under the auspices of the ‘war against terrorism’, New Labour’s period of political governance in the UK was characterized by an activist, pre-emptive approach to (inter)national security. This approach was domestically embedded in specific counter-terrorism measures such as extensions to detention without charge, the expansion of stop and search measures and the deployment of control orders. Situated in this context, this article analyses the reflections of a group of young British Pakistani Muslims living in the north-west of England. First, we detail the process of risk subjectification through which institutional labelling narrowly defines Muslims as threatening and dangerous. Second, we consider the consolidation of practices of self-surveillance through which young Muslims seek to protect themselves and deflect stigmatization. In conclusion, we suggest that counter-terrorism policies have succeeded in reproducing a state of partial securities in and through which certain groups are protected and ‘others’ exposed to scrutiny and hostility.

Beyond risk theory: Experiential knowledge and ‘knowing otherwise’

The central purpose of this article is to trace the conflicting co-existence of three narratives in relation to the ‘risk society’ and the practices that it engenders. The first of these narratives is theoretical: the problems and possibilities of the risk society thesis. The second is practical: how the concept of risk has been translated into policy and practice in the form of risk assessment tools for both ‘at risk’ offenders and ‘at risk’ victims. The focus in this narrative will be on criminal justice responses to violence in general with particular emphasis on responses to partner violence. The third narrative focuses on ‘real lives’: the experiential. Here attention will be paid to what is it that is, or is not, captured by the first two narratives. The concern will be to illustrate the extent to which the discordance that can be found between these three narratives reveals much about the risks of politics and the politics of risk.

Witnessing Wootton Bassett: An Exploration in Cultural Victimology

The media reporting and visual witnessing of repatriations at Wootton Bassett have become an increasingly frequent occurrence since the first spontaneous saluting of what was then a lonely procession, by Royal British Legion members in 2007. UK military deaths from the war in Afghanistan have now reached over 300 and media sources have begun speculating as to which entry point is likely to replace Wootton Bassett when RAF Lyneham closes in August 2011. Our purpose in this paper is to explore the ‘public performance’ and ‘witnessing’ of these events through two ‘lenses’: the literal via photography and the theoretical by way of victimology. Our intention is to situate ourselves as visual, critical, and certainly not neutral, witnesses. In so doing, we wish to use pictures taken by the photographer Stuart Griffiths to propose three cultural trends that our witnessing of his pictures of Wootton Bassett suggests. In so doing we present three themes that we think are identifiable within these photographs: the compression of private and public grief; gothicism and the emergence of ‘dark tourism’; and displays of resistance. By way of conclusion we discuss the implications of this analysis for victimology.

Excavating the Fear of Crime: Fear, Anxiety or Trust?

The central purpose of this article is to offer a critical examination of the fear of crime debate and to suggest a different conceptual framework through which what might be called the fear of crime might be understood. A critical appreciation of fear as the other, fear as rational/irrational, fear as safety and fear as anxiety will be offered. It will be argued that none of these ways of exploring the concept of fear has resonance with the experiences of those living in high crime areas where questions of trust seem to have a greater salience. Indeed it is through an exploration of the concept of trust, and its underlying generative mechanisms, here suggested as the state, the (dis)organization of crime, the (dis)organization of community and finally processes of sociability, that expressed concerns about crime might be better understood.