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This chapter argues for the need to make victimised lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGB and/or T) people visible within discussions of eligibility for ideal victim status. In considering two examples of victimisation the authors consider why LGB and/or T people can more easily access an ideal victim status when victimised by hate than is possible for those victimised by (or enacting) DVA. The contrasting examples demonstrate that LGB and/or T individuals’ status as ideal victims (or offenders) is tenuous and dependent on the type of victimisation experienced. In both cases, the importance of raising awareness, countering victim-blaming and building trust and accessibility of support services is critical to improve responses to LGB and/or T people.
This chapter uses Christie’s (1986) ideal victim’s framework to critically deconstruct notions of anti-social behaviour (ASB) victimisation, by conceptualising individual and community experiences of ASB. An examination of ‘personal’ ASB (ONS, 2012) assesses how far Christie’s thesis can be applied to individual victims of targeted non-criminal behaviour, with a focus on social housing, stigmatisation and vulnerability. As ‘environmental’ and ‘nuisance’ ASB (ONS, 2012) can be experienced by more than one victim, perceptions of communities suffering from ASB victimisation is also considered, with examples from both residential neighbourhoods and public spaces explored to provide a contemporary understanding of these phenomena. Overall, the chapter illustrates how political priorities, societal and media discourses, and hierarchies of victimisation make conceptualising victims of ASB far from ideal.
This chapter reiterates the importance of Christie’s work, and this volume’s reinterrogation of the ‘Ideal Victim’, both historically and in our modern age. The chapter then explores the relationship between Christie’s work and the development of restorative and transitional justice movements. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the volume and suggests further work to be undertaken both in keeping with Christie’s work and in the field of victimology more generally.
This chapter suggests that problems over the perception of the nature of hate crime mean that often victims of disablist hate crime are overlooked. Developed partly through campaign group activism and high profile cases, hate crime has become a solid part of criminal justice policy and practice. The legal framework recognises different forms of crime motivated by prejudice or hostility towards victims based on their race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or disability. However, this chapter demonstrates that there are particular problems with the implementation of provisions related to disablist hate crime which can be understood by utilising Christie’s ‘ideal victim’ typology. Born out of an identity politics which sought recognition for the specific harms of hate crime, the development of policy has been shaped by sometimes simplistic perceptions of what it is to be victimised, often framed around issues of stranger danger and attributing recognition to ‘deserving victims’. This reliance on identity politics often means that victims of disablist hate crime are portrayed as weak and vulnerable, which can contribute to anxiety. This chapter shows the relevance of Christie’s ideal victim thesis due to an increasing emphasis on identity politics being used to determine ‘deserving’ and ‘legitimate’ victims.
Lynndie England’s conviction, and highly publicised dishonourable discharge from the United States military, for crimes that included photographically documented acts of sexual violence against male detainees in her care, finally succeeded in bringing female sexual offending against male victims to the fore, and served as a watershed moment that forever changed the discourse. Except it didn’t. This event did not disrupt orthodox discourse. It did not breach the gendered binary that casts men as offenders and women as victims. A decade later, it can instead be argued to have bolstered it – being pivotal in maintaining ‘discursive equilibrium’ in preservation of those gendered, normative, binaristic, subject positions that serve to cast men outside of legitimate victimhood; particularly men assaulted by women. This Foucauldian analysis of knowledge production in the academy will examine this stasis, and articulate the discursive mechanisms underlying it - arguing that the ideal victim binary, in the area of sexual violence, constitutes a gender-normative taxonomy that functions as a governmentalised ‘regime of truth’. Ironically, this influence is most stymieing amongst those best placed to resist it.This chapter complexifies Christie’s (1986) concept of the ideal victim through the lens of Foucauldian theory, presenting a clarion call to victimology.
Online fraud victimisation affects millions of individuals globally. Despite its prevalence, it remains a contested area, whereby there is a strong victim blaming attitude towards those who are victims. There is a strong negative stereotype that victims are greedy, gullible, uneducated and somewhat deserving of their victimisation. This works as a barrier to silence and stigmatise individuals who are fearful to disclose their victimisation to family, friends, law enforcement and other third parties. Using Christie’s (1986) notion of the ‘ideal victim’, this chapter examines how online fraud victims are denied victim status despite the offences perpetrated against them. Through an application of the five characteristics that Christie (1986) asserts constitute an ideal victim, this chapter explores the challenges that currently exist for online fraud victims to be recognised as legitimate victims, and the factors which operate to deny them of this victimisation status. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications for online fraud victims in the current environment. It advocates the need for change to better respond to online fraud victims, rather than exacerbating or adding to the trauma they have already experienced at the hands of offenders.
This chapter continues the tradition of concentrating on the sociology of phenomena by invoking a case study which draws on a personal experience of the closure of an aluminium plant in the north-east of England. From a victimological and feminist inspired perspective tensions between social and environmental justice are briefly summarised. The chapter first considers the victim in the context of green criminology and specifically the human victim in relation to environmental and global justice. The chapter then considers community victimisation as harm and as non-ideal victimisation. Next, the corporation as monster and non-ideal offenders are considered. A discussion about victimisation from environmental governance leads into the conclusion which laments the under-developed moral and ethical debates arising from a case study that has broader global relevance.
Revisiting the ‘Ideal Victim’ is a collection of academic responses to the late Nils Christie’s (1986) seminal piece on the ‘ideal victim’ in which he addressed the socially constructed concept of an idealised form of victim status or identity. Highlighting the complex factors informing the application or rejection of victim status, Christie foregrounded the role of subjective and objective perspectives on personal and societal responses to victimisation. In sum, the ‘ideal victim’ is: “a person or category of individuals, who – when hit by crime – most readily are given the complete and legitimate status of being a victim” (1986: 18, original italics). This concept has become one of the most frequently cited themes of victimological (and, where relevant, criminological) academic scholarship over the past thirty years. In commemoration of his contribution, this volume analyses, evaluates and critiques the current nature and impact of victim identity, experience, policy and practice in light of Christie’s framework. Demonstrating how the very notion of what constitutes a ‘victim’ has undergone significant theorisation, evaluation and reconceptualization in the intervening three decades, the academic contributors in this volume excellently showcase the relevance of this ‘ideal victim’ concept to a range of contemporary victimological issues. In sum, the chapters critically evaluate the salience of Christie’s concept in a modern context while demonstrating its influence over the decades..
Revisiting the ‘Ideal Victim’ is a collection of academic responses to the late Nils Christie’s (1986) seminal piece on the ‘ideal victim’ in which he addressed the socially constructed concept of an idealised form of victim status or identity. Highlighting the complex factors informing the application or rejection of victim status, Christie foregrounded the role of subjective and objective perspectives on personal and societal responses to victimisation. In sum, the ‘ideal victim’ is: “a person or category of individuals, who – when hit by crime – most readily are given the complete and legitimate status of being a victim” (1986: 18, original italics). This concept has become one of the most frequently cited themes of victimological (and, where relevant, criminological) academic scholarship over the past thirty years. In commemoration of his contribution, this volume analyses, evaluates and critiques the current nature and impact of victim identity, experience, policy and practice in light of Christie’s framework. Demonstrating how the very notion of what constitutes a ‘victim’ has undergone significant theorisation, evaluation and reconceptualization in the intervening three decades, the academic contributors in this volume excellently showcase the relevance of this ‘ideal victim’ concept to a range of contemporary victimological issues. In sum, the chapters critically evaluate the salience of Christie’s concept in a modern context while demonstrating its influence over the decades..
In light of the polarized debate surrounding the limits of ethical State responses to migration, two radical discourses can be identified. On the one hand, it is deeply worrisome how the notion of the deviant and dangerous migrant ‘other’ in societal imagination bears an intimate link to the ‘moral panics’ underlying national security discourses and increasingly stricter ‘crimmigration’ laws. The ascension of this derogatory stereotype resonates with Nils Christie’s assessment that the more foreign and less human a person may be, the closer they come to the notion of ‘ideal offender’. On the other hand, expansion of globalized networks of solidarity has propelled a powerful albeit double-edged discourse on migrant vulnerability in human rights advocacy, framing migrants as ‘ideal vulnerable victims’ of human rights violations as a means to tackle the anti-migrant discourse which purports to construct the image of migrants as a priori offenders until proven otherwise. In this chapter, Christie’s ‘ideal victim’ theory will underpin a critical analysis of the recognition of human rights victims in the context of migration, focusing on how regional human rights courts adopt the notion of ‘vulnerability’ as legal heuristic to ascertain the victim status of migrant applicants.
