Open Access‘Respectable’ victims and safe solutions: the hidden politics of victimology?
Author(s) -
Ciaran McCullagh
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
northern ireland legal quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2514-4936
pISSN - 0029-3105
DOI - 10.53386/nilq.v68i4.63
Subject(s) - victimisation , criminology , politics , victimology , empowerment , sociology , criminal justice , restorative justice , political science , dominance (genetics) , genocide , economic justice , law , poison control , human factors and ergonomics , child abuse , environmental health , medicine , biochemistry , chemistry , gene
This paper offers a critique of the dominance that victim discourse has come to occupy in debates about criminal justice in Ireland. It argues that such a discourse works with an unacceptably simplistic notion of the term ‘victim’, it can lead to reforms that result in revictimisation rather than victim empowerment and it distorts the experiences of many crime victims for whom victimisation is inconvenient rather than traumatic.