Tre unga mäns omvändelseberättelser

Kriminologer har skildrat hur unga män ofta har erfarenhet av att vara både brottsutsatt och gärningsman. Samtidigt tenderar dessa båda roller att betraktas som delar i ett statiskt motsatsförhållande, och brottsoffret och gärningsmannen som väsensskilda personer. I detta kapitel ska jag analysera samtalsintervjuer med tre unga män av invandrarbakgrund som utsatts för våld. I analysen kommer männens relation till offerskap att aktualiseras: de har utsatts för misshandel men inte sett sig som brottsoffer i behov av stöd. Delar av deras narrativ skulle kunna placera dem i en så kallad icke-ideal offerroll. Vid det tillfälle då männen blev utsatta för våld identifierade de sig samtidigt med en roll som bråkmakare och våldsverkare. Denna erfarenhet blir därför en väsentlig del av deras berättelse om sig själva som brottsutsatta. De tre berättelserna kommer att betraktas som en form av “omvändelse- eller utvecklingsnarrativ”; det är personliga segrar, vändpunkter och insikter som framhålls i berättelserna. Gestaltningen av etnicitet ges ett särskilt utrymme i denna narrativ

The feeling rules of victim offender mediation

This paper is based on an ethnographic study conducted in Sweden and focuses on the emotional aspect, both its rhetoric and interaction, of the victim offender mediation process. The emotion culture is examined, as well as the basic feeling rules that tell victims and offenders how to feel, value, and manage their own, and the other party's feelings in the mediation process. If mediation is done 'with your heart', then mediation is also the practice of managing hearts. The practice of mediation is influenced by both a victim discourse and an impartiality discourse, which encourages participant control of emotions but also support spontaneous emotional expressions as a natural part of the remedial ritual

Välviljans variationer. Moraliska gränsdragningar inom brottsofferjourer

Voices from within the victim movement express a need for morality to have fixed boundaries between good and evil, right and wrong. However, such a morality is not always easy to define and uphold. It is thought important to consider the victims particular experiences, through another logic and morality than the strictly legally defined. This dissertation studies victim support as a moral definition process. Moral philosophers tend to give the impression that moral questions are something that people consider dispassionately, in solitude. Here a different, sociological, perspective on morality is adopted. . Instead of taking for granted that we know what a crime victim and a humanitarian volunteer is, the study examines the interactions and definition processes around the social phenomenon voluntary victim support. Rather than viewing morality as an abstract system of values, it is showed how morality is practised co-operatively. Such co-operation may equally be emotionally charged and rationally defined, but above all I view it as intimately linked to the practical and daily contacts of the people involved, in this case the voluntary workers. My aim is to investigate the process by which a situation and the people involved are officially named and given meaning. However, a definition process is not only accomplished on the level of social policy and ideology. I study the relationship between two levels of definition: how participants uphold meaning, establishing the crime victims as a group deserving special sympathy and support; and negotiate meaning, defining who should be seen as a victim in terms of their support work, deciding how each individual should be supported, and who is friend or foe in the struggle to define and solve the problem. Definitions are not final, but are part of a continuous negotiation process, a fact highlighted in the interactionist and constructionist analysis I present. I link these sociological perspectives to my qualitative data, mainly drawn from interviews and participant observations, to arrive at something new: a concept of the victim path. The idea of a victim path stems from the changes in identity someone who has been affected by crime is presumed to undergo. However, it also refers to the various roles the support workers supposedly take within the process. I have concentrated on how the moral career of the crime victims is connected to the moral careers of humanitarian volunteers. To become a support worker one has to be screened, given a brief training, and be supervised; all demonstrate a professional control exerted over the voluntary role

Not Afraid at All? Dominant and Alternative Interpretative Repertoires in Discourses of the Elderly on Fear of Crime

This article demonstrates how a dominant and an alternative interpretative repertoire are activated and negotiated within two focus group discussions conducted with elderly people around the issue of fear of crime: the active, competent actor and the potential victim. In contrast to quantitative generalist studies that tend to neglect the ambiguity and complexity of group membership and identification, a contextualized, dynamic, and interactive understanding of the elderly – as well as of the victim – identity is presented

“You don’t have to say straight out …” : Directed Impression Management at Victim–Offender Mediation Pre-meetings

Based on a study of two mediation centers in Sweden, this research shows how mediators encourage victim and offender impression management, regarding looks, attitudes, and speech. It shows how they supervise the emotion work of participants, preparing them for mediation encounters. The author investigates how mediators try to create a “balanced” interaction (e.g., preventing expressed prejudices or irresponsible attitudes between the parties). The mediation meeting is seen as an institutionalized interaction with a particular desired outcome. The suggested impression management can be seen as a corrective strategy, implying social control. This article aims to present new ways to understand the mediation process from a micro-sociological and dramaturgical viewpoint. Even if the encounter between offenders and victims is seen as the essence of restorative justice practices, analyses of the process are rare and needed. This process-based approach offers new insights for research in the fields of social science and restorative justice

Ambiguous but Crucial Boundaries - Professionals Differentiating Sibling Abuse from Sibling Quarrels

The subject of sibling violence is a blind spot in both social research and popular culture in Sweden, where we have conducted our empirical study. There is a normalizing discourse around sibling quarreling, with the act generally being seen as a natural part of children’s development. On the other hand, there is a problematizing discourse in an international context; violence perpetrated by and against a sibling has been highlighted as one of the most common forms of violence perpetrated against children. However, the difference between sibling quarrel (or rivalry) and sibling violence (or abuse) often does not come out clearly in existing studies. To put sibling violence on the map of existing societal problems, we need to both critically review definitions and examine how the phenomenon of sibling violence differs from related phenomena, such as sibling quarrels, in the experience of professionals who (potentially) meet victims in their work. The emphasis in the article is on social boundary work, analyzing interviews with social workers and psychotherapists regarding this phenomenon. The analysis shows that it is possible to define sibling violence, though complex, when it comes to how the boundaries are shaped and interpreted in concrete social and psychological work, as well as different situations and contexts