The risks and rewards of researching victims of crime

The concept of emotional labour is described as any effort, conscious or not, to change one’s feelings or emotions, thereby offering a useful framework for understanding the experiences of qualitative researchers working within so-called ‘sensitive topics’. Despite this, it has received little research attention in criminology and criminal justice compared to related concepts such as vicarious trauma. Vicarious trauma refers to pervasive, cumulative and permanent changes that occur in a professional’s views of themselves, others and the world around them as a result of exposure to graphic and/or traumatic material. Conducting ‘sensitive topic’ research, such as with victims or offenders of crime, may expose researchers in this field to significant emotion work through engagement with potentially shocking and graphic experiences that are characteristic of serious trauma survivors. Victimisation is thought to be so disruptive because it challenges at a fundamental level our beliefs in a safe and benevolent world, and of ourselves as good (and hence undeserving) people. This article will draw on existing literature and the author’s extensive experiences of conducting in-depth interviews with victims of crime to explore the psychological impact of working closely with survivors of violent crimes. It will then show how the process of vicarious trauma mirrors that of trauma in victim/survivors. It will place this discussion against the backdrop of a rapidly changing and commercialising higher education sector and explore how the increasing pressures and reduced freedoms, in addition to the subject matter we study, require significant emotional labour and place us at a heightened risk for vicarious trauma. Finally, suggestions will be made regarding the best practice to avoid vicarious trauma and why, despite the risk, research in this area is still necessary and rewarding

What’s in a word? Victims on ‘victim’

Identifying as a victim of crime is a complex process involving both social and personal motivations. This paper utilises data gathered from victims of crime to examine how their thoughts, feelings and reactions to the victim label are influenced by societal stigma, and how this influence is mediated by personal beliefs and cognitive processes. It does this firstly by examining participants’ thoughts and reactions to the word ‘victim’, where findings indicate a distinct disconnect between how an incident of crime is labelled and how a victim identifies themselves, suggesting an acknowledgement of the incident as wrong and illegal, but denial of victimhood. Secondly, key themes considered by participants to be characteristic of victimhood are identified. These include weakness as a core characteristic of victims, the fluidity of the state of victimhood and the importance of effective coping versus suffering

Putting a face on the dark figure: Describing victims who don’t report crime

Since the inception of large scale victimisation surveys a considerable amount of research has been conducted investigating the so called ‘dark figure’ of unreported crime. Although this figure has consistently hovered around 60% of all victims, recent research reveals little about those who choose not to pursue formal avenues of justice. This article thus seeks to open a dialogue which focuses on the actual people behind the dark figure. It uses examples from the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey to describe these individuals and to explore explanations for their non-reporting. It highlights the importance of deprivation and vulnerability with regards to reporting crime but also the initial risk of victimisation. It concludes by arguing that the lack of focus on victims who don’t report leaves them vulnerable and invisible to the eyes of policy makers and the criminal justice system

Process of victimisation: investigating risk, reporting and service use

Much current research on victimisation focuses primarily on demographic risk factors associated with those who have experienced crime and how these factors affect the likelihood of a person breaching the so called ‘first hurdle’. That is, the probability of moving from a state of non-victim to one of victim. In contrast, this thesis will argue that in order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of victimisation, it is not only desirable but necessary to move beyond the study of the causes of criminal victimisation and examine the consequences for victims as well as the criminal justice system as a whole. Thus, it seeks to explain the experience of victimisation not just as an isolated incident, but as a process consisting of a number of steps or stages of progression through the criminal justice system, each one building on the last. As such, in addition to considering risk factors, this thesis also examines the decision to report a crime to the police, the use of victim services, as well as the perceived satisfaction with services received. In so doing it explores not only the causes and consequences of crime, but the longer term impact of criminal victimisation. The results presented here are based on the secondary analysis of data from the 2008/9 Scottish Crime and Justice Survey complimented by a data set acquired through in-depth interviews with victims of crime from the Edinburgh Local Authority. Interview data is used to provide a greater depth of meaning to the patterns which emerged from the survey data; lending insight into the psychological processes driving victim decision making and behaviour. This thesis thus provides an example of how a combination of techniques including multi-level modelling and interview analysis, provide a clearer understanding of how victims experience crime. Findings suggest that factors associated with each step of the process are related and may represent a more general underlying pattern of victimisation. It is also argued that by employing multi-level analysis, the thesis provides a more accurate explanation of how respondent’s experiences may differ according to the context in which they live. Finally, the analysis highlights the ongoing importance of emotion in victim decision making and the severity of long term impact. The analysis presented offers new insights into how we understand victimisation as an ongoing experience, as well as demonstrating the necessity of the analytic techniques employed. It is however somewhat confined by the coverage of survey questions and the limited generalizability of the data collected in interviews due to the small sample size. These concerns will be discussed, along with recommendations for victim policy and future research

Book review: Victims of terrorism. A comparative and interdisciplinary study-Lynch, Orla & Argomaniz, Javier (eds) Routledge: London, 2015; ISBN 9780415836593

No abstract available

An integrated model of victimization as an explanation of non-involvement with the criminal justice system

This article presents an integrated theoretical model of victimization supported by both quantitative and qualitative data. By combining and clarifying existing criminological and psychological theory it highlights the influence of victims’ perceptions and labelling of an incident on their subsequent response to the incident – that is, whether or not they perceived an incident as a crime (and thus themselves as victims), and the effects this perception has on their involvement with the criminal justice system. The results of logistic multi-level models of Scottish Crime and Justice Survey data indicate that this type of perception helps to explain not only the under-reporting of crime, but the low uptake of victim support services. Qualitative data help to explain this further through reference to Selective Evaluation Theory (Taylor et al., 1983), suggesting that victims may be motivated to use a number of cognitive tools to avoid a state of ‘victimhood’ (and the victim label) and any associated involvement with the criminal justice system. The implications of this research for theory and policy are discussed